As you say, purchasing a gun with the intention of causing harm to someone else is definitely unethical. (Or make that a ‘definite maybe’ - do deer count as ‘someone else’? To the animal rights activist, yes and to the hunter, no.) There are many of people who enjoy gun collecting as a hobby, from what I understand. To the collector, a gun could be a crafted object of beauty. Personally I’d rather have a nice oil painting. Or maybe a pastel. Anything, really, looks better over the couch than a gun. But from the tone of your email I don’t think you are contemplating hunters or gun connoisseurs. You are thinking of someone believes that guns are dangerous but nevertheless useful, someone who is drawn to gun ownership but fears her worst impulses (and/or lack of marksmanship). Such a person should not own a gun. I don’t it would be unethical, so much as impractical in this case. Having a gun in the house, I suspect, would be a source of discomfort and unease – which is probably the exact opposite...

First, I'm sorry your friend disappointed you. Your feelings of hurt, confusion, and disappointment are evident in your email (and quite justified, I think). It seems to me that your friend put herself and her needs above the promise she made to you. There are occasions where this would be perfectly understandable, but the magnitude of your email indicates this does not seem to be one of them. (Missing a lunch date because of urgent work duties - yes. Missing a wedding because of exciting sports event on television - no.) One issue I would like to set aside, though, is your question about truth-telling. I think people can be completely sincere and forthright, but still be confused about their own values or priorities (or be sincere but then too selfish to follow-through on those sincere sentiments). So your friend is not necessarily lying to you when she says she values you. But she hasn't acted like a real friend would, either. Delivering on promises is a...

I don't have an answer because I have always been puzzled by the same expression! Maybe the whole way of putting the problem is muddier than we thought. The memoir My Stroke of Insight: a Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Taylor vividly explains the left and right brain functions - and what happened to the author following a stroke to her ‘logical’ left side. After checking out this book I am really not sure that all thought is done 'in words' ... whatever that is supposed to mean.

One way to answer your question about loving others vs. loving oneself is to ask another question: What do you mean by ‘self’ ? There are at least two ways to think about how social life is organized. (1) The atomistic picture of the self (imagine atoms or billiard balls colliding against one another) tells us that we are each self-contained units – that we are fundamentally separate from one another and are ideally guided by reason and self-interest. I think your friend is an atomist when is comes to selves. That’s why your classmate thinks Antigone is looking out for her own concerns even when she makes her sacrifice. There is an alternative. (2) The relational picture of the self (imagine a tangle of knots on a string, with some knots overlapping) tells us that we are all connected – that we are fundamentally in relationships with others and our actions are ideally guided by social connectedness and inter-woven interests. I...

I don't have an answer at all, except to say what you already know: in our society authenticity is usually valued, and its opposite (which might be deception, or B.S., or being a phony) is usually disparaged. Why do we hold some values on high and reject others? Authenticity, as a value, is related to truth telling. Yet why is truth better than falsity? My buddy Nietzsche would say that it may not be. We are free to take fresh looks at long established values, perhaps to uncover the unsavory, hidden dark sides of our values - even values such as 'truth.' I really liked your question and have enjoyed being puzzled by it!

In my experience, a good way to start an introductory course in philosophy is by topics - beginning with ethics, politics, or social philosophy. Most students will not be jazzed about epistemology, for example, from the get-go because the questions asked in that discipline will be unfamiliar. But most everyone will have some background knowledge and life-experience of ethics, say. If it is a class of returning/older students, you can use this life-experience to your benefit in the classroom by asking students to write about an ethical dilemma they personally had to resolve. As the course unfolds, have the students rewrite the papers to incorporate 'What Plato would have said' or 'What Martin Luther King would have done,' and so on. Having gained some confidence that they, too, can be philosophers students will be ready to move on to related topics. (To keep with the above examples, how we should treat others is integrally related to what we know.) I also would...