Other minds: Critical essays, 1969-1994
Oxford, 1995
Abstract
Other Minds gathers Nagel’s most important critical essays and reviews on the philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. The pieces here discuss philosophers from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, as well as contemporary legal and political theorists like Robert Nozick and Ronald Dworkin. Also included are essays tracing Nagel’s ongoing participation in debates surrounding the mind-body problem - lucid, opinionated responses to Daniel Dennett, John Searle, and others. Running through Other Minds is Nagel’s overriding conviction that the most compelling intellectual issues of our day - from the scientific foundations of Freudian theory to the vicissitudes of judicial interpretation - are essentially philosophical problems. Vital, accessible, and controversial, these writings represent the best of one of our leading thinkers.
Quotes from this work
A crucial determinant of the character of analytic philosophy—and a piece of luck as far as I am concerned—is the unimportance, in the English-speaking world, of the intellectual as a public figure. Fame doesn’t matter, and offering an opinion about practically everything is not part of the job. It is unnecessary for writers of philosophy to be more “of their time” than they want to be; they don’t have to write for the world but can pursue questions inside the subject, at whatever level of difficulty the questions demand. If the work is of high quality, they will receive the support of a large and dedicated academy that is generally independent of popular opinion. This is an enviably luxurious position to be in, by comparison to writers who depend for their status and income on the reaction of a broader public. Of course, there are plenty of silly fashions and blind spots inside the academic community, but in philosophy, at least, their effect has not been as bad as the need to compete for wider literary fame would be. I think arid technicalities are preferable to the blend of oversimplification and fake profundity that is too often the form taken by popular philosophy. A strong academy provides priceless shelter for the difficult and often very specialized work that must be done to advance the subject.