I am not a Hegel scholar, but my colleague, who is one, recommends: Tom Rockmore, Before & After Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel's Thought (University of California Press, 1993), and Frederick Beiser, Hegel (Routledge, 2005) Happy hunting!

As I understand it, hatred is something like anger, only whereas anger can be brief, hatred is much more durable. Anger might lead you, while you are in its grip, to want to do something hurtful or harmful to another, or in some other way act in a way that is contrary to or which undermines or frustrates the other's interest, where the other is the object of your anger. Hatred is a settled disposition to want to hurt or harm, or to undermine or frustrate the object of hatred. Like anger, hatred can be controlled--one can resist the impulse to hurt or harm, or to undermine or frustrate, when angry and when filled with hate. But the impulse nonetheless there. People who are angry or who hate may often avoid those at whom they are angry or whom they hate, because they do not wish to experience so vividly these negative impulses, or posssibly, because they fear acting on them. You can conclude that you have hated someone or something if what you have experience is like being angry at them for...

There is a very good entry on definitions in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (on-line), and a pretty good review of the various fallacies of definition in Wikipedia. Happy hunting!

In principle, the decisions made by corporate managers are, as a matter of contract and law, supposed to reflect and be answerable to the will of the shareholders. I can't think of any compelling reason to think that corporations should give to charity. But let's be clear what's at issue here. Is it nice when they do so? Of course it is. Those who benefit from that charity (or those charities) to which a corporation might donate are certainly benefited. Do corporations have responsibilities, as a result of the benefits they gain from society? Sure they do--that's why they either pay taxes or else make other agreements with cities, states, and nations that are supposed to exact a fair exchange of the goods that are enjoyed by the corporation and the goods returned back to the community. But I can't see how or why in addition to paying their fair share (in jobs, or taxes, or whatever) in exchange for receiving the goods they receive from society, they also have some responsibility to...

Depends on your view of things, obviously. If you are committed to the view that all forms of coercion are immoral, then this would be the result. But I don't know why anyone would think that. I (justifiably) exercise forms of coercion over my children, because there is simply no responsible way to raise children otherwise. I would also be justified to exercise coercion against anyone who try to invade my home or injure a member of my family. Again, the alternative is considerably worse. Governments exercise coersion alright, but that does not by itself merit either approval or disapproval. The questions arise when we ask why they do so, how they do so, and to what extent do they do so, and at what costs to other valuable elements of social and political life.

This kind of objection often comes up, but I think is based upon a misunderstanding of what it means to be a "peer" in the required (legal) sense. One is my "peer" if one is a fellow citizen with all associated rights and responsibilities. That person doesn't have to be my equal in strength, or intelligence, or at basketball--he or she simply has to be my equal as a citizen . If their vote counts as much as mine, they're my peer. In his Republic , Plato said (with evident contempt) that democracy was something like government by "bald-headed tinkers." (I resemble that!) But at the heart of democratic theory is the idea that all people are "created equal," by which the theorist cannot sensibly mean "equal in all things." The point is that we are all, or at least should be all, regarded as politically and legally equal. Other political theories--including especially Plato's--obviously reject this idea. Plato especially thought that political decisions--just like all medical...

Philosophers have debated this sort of question, but I think the consensus is that the question is not coherent. Being "all-powerful" obviously does not mean being able to do what is logically impossible. Think, instead, of the concept as making God into a being who can do anything that can (in principle) be done. Since lifting a rock of any size can in principle be done, God can always lift the rock. But making a rock so big that it can't in principle be lifted makes no sense at all, hence God's not being able to do that is no indication of not being all powerful, it is just to recognize that the description" a rock so heavy that God can't lift it" is nonsense.

This is the kind of case that makes reasonable people feel very squeamish, and over which reasonable people can disagree. But though I won't be surprised if others respond and reject what I am about to say, I'm inclined to side with the mother. Ethical theorists generally approach questions like these from one of three basic approaches. One of these is called the deontological approach, which tends to focus on our moral notions of basic obligations and responsibilities. If we think that everyone, no matter what their mental defects, has a fundamental right to autonomy, then the mother's actions obviously interfered with the daughter's autonomy with respect to having (her own biological) children. On the other hand, we may doubt that such a fundamental extends in an absolute or complete way to someone who is incapable of exercising that autonomy, which appears to be the fact about this case. The daughter could biologically have a child, but could not actually be responsible for the child she...

The world would be better without some governments, I think! Thomas Hobbes once famously remarked that human beings attempting to live outside the boundaries of goverment would live lives that were "nasty, poor, brutish, and short." I'm afraid that actually looking at places in the world where the local governments are extremely weak or ineffective confirms Hobbes's point. Even if such places are perhaps (and only sometimes) less of a menace to other countries than they might be with a bad (corrupt, or aggressive) government, it seems implausible to say that such places are better without any government than they would be if they had a good government. In most cases, even a bad government is better than no government at all--though there are limits as to how bad a government can get before it ends up being worse for the people living there than no government at all. But where we find extremely weak and ineffective governments in the world, we also always find massive human suffering. ...

There is always a more elegant and thorough way to address any philosophical question--that's why we're all still at it here in the world's second-oldest profession! But granting this, it seems to me that your own assessment is precisely right--our epistemic advantages over (at least most) other animals also bring with them greater ethical responsibilities. The cat can't consider whether playing with the live mouse until it dies (and then some more afterwards) is something he or she should be doing, but for us to be cruel or cause needless and excessive suffering is blameworthy. A further point, however: Some of what constitutes our greater epistemic advantages can also yield a degree of epistemic dis advantage, which is why the exercise of epistemic modesty and an open-mindedness to relevant evidence is essential to good reasoning on questions like yours. Human beings, at their best, can indeed comprehend suffering and recognize it as having negative value. Part of the way in which we...