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This book collects Thomas Nagel's recent philosophical reflections on topics of fundamental interest: ethics, moral psychology, science and religion, death, the holocaust, and the metaphysics of mind. The essays are all addressed to a general audience and should appeal not only to philosophers but to anyone interested in current attempts to understand human life, human values, and how we fit into the world. Among the figures discussed are Peter Singer, Alvin Plantinga, Christine Korsgaard, Tony Judt, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, T. M. Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, Joshua Greene, and Daniel Dennett. An accessible overview of some of the significant philosophy of our time.
List of contents
- 1. Analytic Philosophy and Human Life
- Life and Death
- 2. Tony Judt, Life and Memory
- 3. After We've Gone
- 4. Can We Survive?
- 5. Assistance in Dying
- 6. Theresienstadt
- Ethics
- 7. Peter Singer and You
- 8. Effective Altruism
- 9. Korsgaard, Kant, and Our Fellow Creatures
- 10. Regret and Its Limits
- 11. Four Women
- 12. Law, Morality, and Truth
- 13. The Illusion of Tax Fairness
- Moral Psychology
- 14. Scanlon on the Reality of Reasons
- 15. Kahneman's Thinking
- 16. The Cortex and the Trolley Problem
- 17. Modular Morality
- 18. Fictions and Ideals
- Reality
- 19. The Core of Mind and Cosmos
- 20. Plantinga on Science and Religion
- 21. Is Metaphysics Possible?
- 22. Creators of the Modern Mind
- 23. Dennett's Illusions
- Tributes
- 24. Betsy Dworkin 1933-2000
- 25. Robert Nozick 1938-2002
- 26. John Rawls 2021-2002
- 27. Bernard Williams 1929-2003
- 28. Donald Davidson 1917-2003
- 29. Peter Strawson 1919-2006
- 30. Ronald Dworkin 2006
- 31. John Searle 2009
- 32. Ronald Dworkin 1931-2013
- 33. Barry Stroud 1935-2019
About the author
Thomas Nagel is University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at NYU. His extensive writings deal with ethics, political theory, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the meaning of life. Among his books are The View from Nowhere and Mind and Cosmos.
Summary
This book collects Thomas Nagel's recent philosophical reflections on topics of fundamental interest: ethics, moral psychology, science and religion, death, the holocaust, and the metaphysics of mind. Among the figures discussed are Peter Singer, Alvin Plantinga, Christine Korsgaard, Tony Judt, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, T. M. Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin, Samuel Scheffler, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, Joshua Greene, and Daniel Dennett. Nagel consistently defends a realist interpretation of moral truth and resists reductive attempts to subsume ethics to psychology and evolutionary theory. He also defends a pluralistic conception of the content of morality as opposed to utilitarianism, one that includes deontological elements such as rights and special responsibilities. A realist outlook also informs his discussion of metaphysical and epistemological questions.
The book closes with tributes to a number of people Nagel has known over the course of his career. The essays are all addressed to a general audience, and should appeal not only to philosophers but to anyone interested in current attempts to understand human life, human values, and how we fit into the world.
Additional text
Most striking is the humanity that seeps through Nagel's writing and, especially, through his eulogistic essays. Analytic philosophy has a reputation for being complex and occasionally inscrutable, but all of the essays in this collection are addressed to nonspecialists and the result is an approachable foray into contemporary analytic epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faulty; general readers.
