The View From Nowhere

Book excerpt: Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached way, but at the same time each of us is a particular person in a particular place, each with his own "personal" view of the world. Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and skepticism, thought and reality, free will, ethics, the relation between moral and other values, the meaning of life, and death.