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.

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

Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.

Business leaders love the humanities because they know that to innovate you need more than rote knowledge. You need a trained imagination.

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

The EU might have become a large federal nation. But they would have had to do things differently. Number one, they would've had to make people feel like participants in a common project of autonomous law-giving. Much more political accountability, much more participation. That didn't happen, I think, because the movers and shakers were more concerned with economic union than political union.

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