DE Weekly: Nagel, the Mind-Body Problem, & What Is It Like to Be A Bat?
Earlier this year, I wrote about American philosopher Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “The Absurd,” a work exploring the absurdity of life so central in Existentialism, arguing that we should take a “backward step” from our own perceptions to view the irony in our human condition.
I mentioned then that, although that essay is definitely interesting, I believe Nagel’s most interesting ideas have to do with consciousness and subjective experience.
DE Weekly: Nagel, Irony, & the Backward Step
“Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually. Yet the reasons usually offered in defense of this conviction are patently inadequate: they could not really explain why life is absurd. Why then do they provide a natural expression for the sense that it is?”
This is the opening paragraph of Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “The Absurd.” Nagel is an American philosopher and University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University. Among many other things, his body of work explores the philosophy of mind.