The thing that I find so bad about anger is the desire for payback. Of course, it is very human to wish for revenge. Your mother has died in the hospital, and the first thought a lot of people have is, I'll sue the doctor. You feel helpless, and you think, I'm less helpless if I'm doing something active that makes someone else pay. And social media make it easy to inflict all kinds of pain on other people. But what good does it do?

The humanities prepare students to be good citizens and help them understand a complicated, interlocking world. The humanities teach us critical thinking, how to analyze arguments, and how to imagine life from the point of view of someone unlike yourself.

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

Today, I think, the state of philosophizing about democracy is very healthy. It bridges political science and philosophy, as it should.

People don't just want to feel satisfied. They actually want to act.

The GDP approach doesn't address many aspects of human life: health, education, political liberty, religious liberty, employment opportunities. And these are not all that well correlated with gross domestic product. We also have to think about equality among groups. And freedom of speech and religion. China always ranks near the top of developing countries these days, but there are lots of things we might see as lacking in China.

As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.