Look at the great tradition of Western political philosophy. Those people were all immersed in revolutionary movements. Most weren't career academics - often, they were too radical to be accepted in the academy. Rousseau's books were banned. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill couldn't hold academic positions because they were atheists.

At Chicago I offer a course on Emotion, Reason and the Law that law students just love. But I am not there as a lawyer, my job is to teach philosophy.

All of us, whether we are ignorant of philosophy or professors of philosophy, find it easier to follow dogma than to think.

My high school did not offer courses in philosophy, so the books that initially stimulated philosophical reflection in me were novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It's funny because, growing up, I found inspiration from watching Steffi Graf and Amanda Coetzer, a South African who was in the top 10 for many years. Oh, and then there's someone I've gotten to know over the last few years: Martina Navratilova.

I'm very shocked when I look at television and I see such an aggressive youth and image obsession in the representation of women on our screens.

A lot of television shows, when you see births, the baby is coming out, and the wife is freaking, 'You did this to me!' but she is still super beautiful. There's none of the realism that we just went through.

Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game.