Mortal Questions
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"When racial and sexual injustice have been reduced, we shall still be left with the great injustice of the smart and the dumb, who are so differently rewarded for comparable effort. […] Perhaps someone will discover a way to reduce the socially produced inequalities (especially the economic ones) between the intelligent and the unintelligent, the talented and the untalented, or even the beautiful and the ugly."--"The Policy of Preference" by Thomas Nagel in Mortal Questions (1979) by Thomas Nagel |
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Mortal Questions (1979) is a collection of essays by Thomas Nagel.
From the publisher
Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions explores some fundamental issues concerning the meaning, nature and value of human life. Questions about our attitudes to death, sexual behaviour, social inequality, war and political power are shown to lead to more obviously philosophical problems about personal identity, consciousness, freedom, and value. This original and illuminating book aims at a form of understanding that is both theoretical and personal in its lively engagement with what are literally issues of life and death.
Death
The Absurd
Moral luck
Sexual perversion
Incipit:
THERE is something to be learned about sex from the fact that we possess a concept of sexual perversion. I wish to examine the concept, defending it against the charge of unintelligibility and trying to say exactly what about human sexuality qualifies it to admit of perversions. Let me make some preliminary comments about the problem before embarking on its solution.
War and massacre
Ruthlessness in public life
The policy of preference
Equality
The fragmentation of value
Ethics without biology
Brain bisection and the unity of consciousness
What is it like to be a bat?
Panpsychism
Subjective and objective
