We really have to think about aging because women are living longer than men. More of the people who need care are women. A lot of them are living alone, with no one to care for them, or they're shunted into institutions. I would like to see a sensible aging policy more like what the Nordic countries have. They're cutting back those programs, but there you can still have in-home nursing care. You don't have to rely on your children. I personally don't want to be a burden on my daughter.

Economists get impatient with philosophy. They are often trained as skilled mathematicians. They don't like going back to ordinary language and first principles.

Singapore and China, which don't want to encourage democratic citizenship, are expanding their humanities curricula. These reforms are all about developing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Property rights can improve a woman's ability to stand up to violence in the home. You might think education and employment are important because they give women exit options, but property is as well. Give women equal property rights to inherited land, then they have an asset they can take out of the marriage. This gives husbands strong incentives to not beat them.

When a profession is protected by academic freedom and tenure, it tends to turn inward. To a large extent that's good.

I think the imagination helps us move out of the purely oppositional mentality and see the world in a richer and more variegated way.

But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.