جزییات کتاب
Nagel can always be counted on for clarity and lucidity, and this collection of articles and reviews is no exception. This is mainly a collection of book reviews. Two articles have been reprinted elsewhere.Part One: Private and Public. Ch 1: Nagel discusses topics that one can also find in Sam Scheffler's (Cal) excellent book, Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford UP) on privacy and public life. Nagel delves into sex, secrecy, deception, mendacity and politeness, taboo, adultery/Lewinsky case, scandal/Clarence Thomas, and the language of cocktail parties. I laughed out loud when I read Nagel's footnote on Paul Grice (implicature): "Let's have lunch" means "I never want to see you again in my life." Excellent. Ch 2: Loss of Public Privacy. More on C. Thomas, Lewinsky, Clinton, and conventions of civility. Ch 3: Personal Rights and Public Space. N. discusses normative ethics and the 'paradox of rights'--intrinsic vs. instrumental, highlighting the work of the late R. Nozick, Thomson, S. Scheffler, Kamm, and the late W. Quinn. Ch. 4: Chastity. On Wendy Shalit's Return to Modesty. 2 pps. Ch. 5: Nussbaum on Sexual Injustice. Ch. 6: On Ray Monk's biography of Bertrand Russell, which talks about Russell's views on rationality and sexual freedom. N. notes that Monk's bio. is not an intellectual bio--doesn't engage R's philosophy, per se.Part II: Ch 7: On Rawls--a summary of some of Rawls's views, part iv and v is on T of J, and part vi is briefly on Law of the Peoples. Ch 8: Rawls on Liberalism: on inequality of the classes, egalitarianism, taxation; part ii and iii is on R's Political Liberalism; part v is on T of J. Ch 9: On G.A. Cohen's book, "If You're an Egalitarian..." Ch 10: Justice and Nature. N. discusses deontology and inequity--part ii and iii is on rawls. Ch 11: Raz on Liberty and Law Ch 12: On Waldron's Dignity of Legislation Ch 13: On Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other--on contractualism and utilitarianism, in part discusses scanlon's 'relativism.' Ch 14: On Rorty's Truth and Progress. Ch 15: On Sokal's Fashionable Nonsense. Ch 16: "Davidson's New Cogito," which is reprinted in the Hahn/Schlipp papers--Living Philosophers Series (open court). Ch 17: Review of Barry Stroud's Quest for Reality (which is an excellent book) Ch 18: "Psychophysical Nexus," which is reprinted in Boghossian and Peacocke: New Essays on the Apriori (Oxford UP). This is an excellent article on the mind-body problem since Kripke's functionalism (NN).I am more interested in the last couple of articles in the book; however, Rawls and political philosophy enthusiasts would find more interest in the previous sections.
درباره نویسنده
تامس نِیگل (به انگلیسی: Thomas Nagel) زاده ۱۹۳۷ فیلسوف آمریکایی که در حال حاضر استاد فلسفه و حقوق در دانشگاه نیویورک است.