As I’ve struggled to find a film to write about, I thought I’d write about a feature of Covid that is particularly philosophically relevant: you can be infected but be asymptomatic. So you must make decisions under uncertainty, not knowing whether you are sick or contagious—victim or vector.

Shazam!, the latest in the DC comics superhero series, may be viewed as a delightful feel-good movie. But some of what its audience might take away from the movie are bad messages about justice that mirror the problems with John Rawls' idealized theory of justice.

Most of us hold the deep moral commitment that we are all equal in some basic way. All humans are worthy of equal (moral) concern, respect, and dignity. But is a commitment to basic equality enough to ground meaningful principles of justice?

Is it ever morally okay to punish people? To punish someone is to hurt them because of a wrong they’ve already committed—whether or not any future benefit will come of that hurt. How could it be okay to deliberately hurt someone?

Suppose we were to ask for each country on Earth how many people would willingly choose to live in it, given complete freedom of choice, but under a modified version of the veil of ignorance. Which country would you choose?