Are Walter Kaufmann's translations of Nietzsche still considered the best? They have been the standard since the 1950s but to me they seem stiff, clunky, and lacking in the humor or literary panache that the originals are said to possess. Sometimes the word use is so odd that it makes me wonder about Kaufmann's grasp of English. Unfortunately I do not read German, so I can't tell. Is Nietzsche really like this? And are there more recent worthy translations?

If science (i.e. evolutionary psychology) can explain why I have the morality I do, does that mean morality is subjective? If what I believe about morality is just a product of my evolution and my upbringing, can I still expect other people to live up to my principles even though they may have had a different upbringing? What about myself? Can I still hold myself to my own standards or am I being deceived by my evolution into thinking it would be wrong to do so?

The notion of "free will" implies an agent can make its own choice independent of the deterministic laws of nature. However, within a causally closed system this is impossible. Why then would evolution endow agents with the feeling of control? Would it not be more efficient (and more expected) for evolution to produce automata without subjective (and superfluous) mental phenomena?

Should education be a means to an end?

Is it possible to deify an object, perhaps a penguin? If so, what qualities and/or properties would make it godlike? D.D.

If you were sent back 100 years in time and met a fellow philosopher, what advances in the field since his or her time would you tell him or her of? Would you be able to convince him or her of what you said?

Are we directly aware of reality, or is what we "sense" merely a representation of reality?

A discussion with a philosopher friend got me all bewildered. He claimed that we cannot say that animals feel pain, because a mind is necessary to feel pain, and animals don't have a mind. My argument was twofold: 1. How do we know that animals don't have minds? 2. Pain is a result of stimulus to certain parts of the brain. If we assume that animals don't have minds, we can still see that their brains respond to pain stimuli the same way as ours. Even if they are unable to cognitively translate an external factor into a thought train like "I stuck my hand on a hot plate, it hurt, so I removed my hand from the hot plate", surely we can watch them pull back from things that we would experience as painful. I was wondering what your thoughts are on this subject. Thanks.

I have located my personal spiritual 'conviction' within the domain of pantheism, but am dissatisfied with the general discussion for the absence of what is to me a fundamental premise. To consider oneself coextensive with the universe and the universe to be coextensive with God is not to depersonalize God at all. From 'my' perspective, this conciousness I call "I" is as a cell in the universal conciousness, as my body is a cell in the universal body. Where is the doctrine that supports this notion of divinity?

Presuming that it is impossible to write unbiased history, does that make the discipline invalid in that it can never be what it would ideally (at least for many) be: a completely truthful presentation of the past?