By emphasizing human freedom and responsibility, existentialists are not asserting a claim in physics -- such as "it is false that human beings are mechanisms fully determined pursuant to physical laws of nature." Rather existentialists are making two different points. One is phenomenological. We are condemned to be free or forced to decide. You must decide whether to enlist in the army, whether to pull the trigger, and so on. Physical determinism, even if you could somehow know that it's true, could not take away this predicament of being forced to choose. The other is a normative point about how we ought to think about our decisions and agency. I ought to take full responsibility for the effects of my decisions. And when there is the slightest doubt about the reach of these effects, I ought to assume that this reach is greater rather than smaller. Existentialists urge this point retrospectively: I ought not to deflect responsibility by thinking/saying that things just happened ("I could...

National capitalism in the advanced industrialized countries worked after social security legislation -- pioneered by Bismarck in Germany -- was widely instituted (in the US through the New Deal). Such legislation became gradually accepted by the rich owners of capital (productive assets) as they understood (a) the workers' economic power wielded by their unions, (b) their own vulnerability in the event of civil unrest bred by severe domestic poverty, and (c) the advantages of the social security apparatus for stabilizing the economy. Once established, social security legislation is difficult to abolish given universal suffrage, which is now commonplace in the more affluent countries. The globalized capitalism that has been instituted mainly by the US and EU after the end of the Cold War is stimulated mainly by the economic gains it can bring to the owners of productive assets in those rich countries. These gains are of two main kinds. There are, first, the frequently emphasized economic gains from...

There are really three questions here, worth distinguishing clearly. Question 1 is whether pleasure and the avoidance of pain are the sole ends of human life or whether we rather have reason to value and seek other ends (as well). Here you may think about whether the value of pleasures is unaffected by the fact that they rest on false beliefs (e.g., the belief that you are loved and admired when in fact you are despised, etc.). An extreme case of this is Nozick's experience machine which, attached to your brain, stimulates in you the most wonderful experiences. Also, think about the burden of proof here. Why should it be somehow obvious that pleasure is worth pursuing while other ends (knowledge, wisdom, love, artistic excellence) stand in need of justification? It seems more plausible to start with a very general notion of well-being and then to examine with an open mind what one's well-being might consist in. Questions 2 and 3 were perhaps most interestingly (though...

I think the Cambridge University Press editions are probably best in all three cases, they tend to do very good editions -- both of translated and of originally Anglophone works. Typically, a good indicator is what the best recent secondary literature is using or what top scholars assign in their classes. This information is often easily obtainable through Amazon or the internet generally.

The answer depends a bit on the country you're in. I answer on the assumption that you are an undergraduate student in the US. Finding a job as a professional philosopher after completing a PhD in this field is a good bit harder than the average for all careers. Still, the odds are not against success. There are somewhere around 25,000 professional philosophers in the US and only about 75 philosophy departments producing PhDs. So, much of the selection takes place already at the stage where people apply to graduate schools. Those who get the PhD normally find a job. In this job search, the quality and prestige of the university, of its philosophy department, and of the student's supervisor do indeed play a major role. You can find lots of information about these matters on www.philosophicalgourmet.com and elsewhere. All this suggests that a philosophy major aiming to be an academic philosopher should think seriously about other careers if s/he cannot get into a philosophy department that...

You are right: You can possibly learn more from reading books than by going to college. But then it's also true that you might possibly learn more by going to college than from reading books on your own. The real question is: which path will gain you more, and more important, knowledge and understanding? This question is hard to answer in the abstract -- certainly for me, but also for you. If you choose the solitary reading program: Will you still be motivated to go on six months later? And after a year, will you still have a clear grasp of what you understood in the first month? And if you choose college: Will you get into a good one with lots of bright and interesting peers (in my experience, students tend to learn no less from one another than from their teachers)? And will you be able to find there classes taught by people who are truly engaging and inspiring? Given the uncertainties, I would suggest that you go to college (assuming you have a place for September) and give it...

Here are three reasons to consider. First, because they want to be respected. Sure, being dead, they do not want this now. But they did want it when they were alive -- just as you now want to be respected after your death. Imagine you have a certain deeply embarrassing secret that only your best friend knows. You very strongly want no one else to know. This fact gives your best friend a weighty reason not to tell others, even when she can do so in a way that you will never find out about. This reason may disappear when you change so that you no longer mind others knowing. But it persists when you die without having changed your mind -- or so one could hold. Second, because respecting the dead makes their lives better. The quality of our lives depends not merely on our mental states but also on our contributions to the world. These contributions can continue when we die: composers, artists, and novelists enrich many lives even after they die, and this in turn makes their own lives more valuable...

Any realistic criminal justice system will make both types of error: T-errors (terrible future crime committed by one wrongly acquitted) and I-errors (innocent person wrongly convicted). It seems morally more appropriate here to compare alternative systems feasible for the same society in terms of the total number of errors, not in terms of the ratios you focus on (ratio of T-errors to total number of acquitted, ratio of I-errors to total number of convicted). To see this, take a criminal justice system under which 100,000 are acquitted of whom 2000 are wrongly acquitted and go on to commit a terrible crime. Now suppose we modify this system so that many more innocent people are tried and properly acquitted. So now we have 200,000 acquitted of whom 2000 are wrongly acquitted and go on to commit a terrible crime. So we got the T-error rate from 2 percent down to 1 percent. But have we improved the system? Surely not. So I rephrase your question this way: In designing our criminal justice...

In this question, the words "can" and "love" are difficult. Take a simple understanding of what it means to love someone: to admire (at least some features of) this person and also to care greatly about his/her flourishing (eudaimonia, the quality of a human live comprehensively conceived). And take a narrow understanding of "can" in terms of conceivability. Then the answer is affirmative: It's quite conceivable that you might admire, and care greatly about the flourishing of, another, even while you have no admiration for yourself and do not care much about your own flourishing. The affirmative answer holds up when we take a broader sense of "can" as psychological possibility. Most people love themselves (in the sense specified), but a fair number do not. So it's psychologically possible not to love oneself. And I don't think lack of self-love makes it psychologically impossible to love another. To be sure, persons who do not love themselves may be depressed and less likely to love another. But it...

Your definition of fiction and non-fiction (your point (3)) seems flawed. For one thing, a lot of what commonly goes under the non-fiction heading is false, at least in part. Think of an book about the bombing of Pearl Harbor which, although marketed as an accurate historical account, is full of errors. So, what's characteristic of a work of non-fiction is that it presents its content to be a true account of something in the real world. Correspondingly, fiction might then be defined as a work that does not present its content to be a true account of something in the real world. Not presenting its content as true, such a work thus cannot be false (in relation to the real world) either. Someone who claims that Mark Twain's book is incorrect in some of what it says about Huckleberry Finn hasn't understood that this was meant to be a work of fiction. Works of fiction are neither true nor false much like -- to use a favorite example of Sidney Morgenbesser's -- the number 3 is neither married nor...