good for the greatest number. For Cavell, moral perfectionism is an outlook or register of thought, a way of thinking about morality expressed thematically in certain works of philosophy, literature and film. As William Rothman summarizes Cavell's idea, "takes it to be our primary task as human beings—at once our deepest wish, whether or not we know this about ourselves, and our moral obligation—to become more fully human, to realize our humanity in our lives in the world, which always requires the simultaneous acknowledgment of the humanity of others (our acknowledgment of them, and theirs of us)." Cities of Words pairs chapters on major philosophers in the Western tradition, such as Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Stuart Mill, Sigmund Freud and John Rawls, endorsing Cavell's understanding of moral perfectionism and such artists as William Shakespeare, Henry James, Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, with chapters on a film, all but one (A Tale of Winter (1992) by Eric Rohmer) a member of the classical Hollywood genres; what he called "the comedy of remarriage" and "the melodrama of the unknown woman". Cavell's argument is that these films are illustrative of moral perfectionism (and, more specifically, Emersonian perfectionism).The moral questions couples in remarriage comedies like It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth and The Philadelphia Story address in their witty give- and-take, for example, are, as Cavell puts it, "formulated less well by questions concerning what they ought to do, what it would be best or right for them to do, than by the question how they shall live their lives, what kind of persons they aspire to be."7 Happiness Perfection means more than—or something different from—happiness or pleasure, and perfectionism is distinct from utilitarianism in all its forms. A society devoted to perfectionist principles may not produce happy citizens—far from it. Kant regarded such a society as government paternalism, which he denied for the sake of a "patriotic" state (imperium non paternale, sed patrioticum). While the individual is responsible for living a virtuous life, the state should be limited to the regulation of human coexistence. Alfred Naquet was of the view that there are no universal parameters of perfection. Individuals and cultures choose those values that, for them, represent the ideal of perfection. For example, one individual may view education as leading perfection, while to another beauty is the highest ideal. He wrote in this regard: