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.
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
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.
Reviews for Analytic Philosophy and Human Life
There is much to be savoured in this entertaining and fascinating compendium of views that have done so much to shape the philosophical landscape over the past half century and for which [Nagel] is justly renowned. * A.W. Moore, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
