There are great goods desired by all of us, and the lack of them makes for bad lives. One sample of bad African lives involves a loss of 20 million years of living time. The questions raised by these and other facts are to be answered by the Principle of Humanity, about bad lives and rationality. It is superior to morality of relationship and all else, and in a way is undeniable. The principle together with other things issues in six (...) propositions. One gives us a moral responsibility, our politicians at our head, for the terrorism of September 11. To be ordinary is not to be innocent. Another proposition is that the Palestinians have a moral right to their terrorism. The latter proposition can be given still more support than in the book from which this paper derives. (shrink)

This text argues that justice is a virtue which everyone shares - a function of personal character and not just of government or economic planning. It uses examples from Plato to Ivan Boesky, to document how we live and how we feel.

John Locke's subtle and influential defense of religious toleration as argued in his seminal _Letter Concerning Toleration_ appears in this edition as introduced by one of our most distinguished political theorists and historians of political thought.