Many of us recall from childhood – or from reading to our own children – E. B. White's story of the spider Charlotte and her campaign to save Wilbur, a barnyard pig. Charlotte wove webs above Wilbur's sty proclaiming the pig's virtues in words – “terrific,” “radiant,” and “humble” – she copied from newspaper advertisements salvaged by a rat named Templeton. Wilbur, Charlotte wrote in her web, was “some pig.” He won a prize at the fair. Moved by these events, Zuckerman, the farmer who owned Wilbur, did not slaughter the pig for Christmas dinner. Charlotte saved Wilbur's life.

“Why did you do all this for me?” the pig asks at the end of Charlotte's Web. “I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.”

“You have been my friend,” Charlotte replied. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, what with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a little. Heaven knows, anyone's life can stand a little of that.”

Three Kinds of Judgments

In the following chapters, I want to call attention to a distinction between three kinds of judgments. First, we make judgments as individuals about what is good for or benefits us.