Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Possibility of Altruism by Thomas Nagel ISBN: 0-691-02002-7 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 March, 1979 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Nagel's early classic
Comment: This is as great a work of moral philosophy (in English) as the twentieth century managed to produce. It can be hard going, but it is a model of precision, flooded with brilliant insights along the way, and structured by an ambitious and illuminating central argument that is important even if (as you may suspect) it fails. An inspiring and brilliant book.
Rating: 4
Summary: On the objective moral requirement of rational altruism.
Comment: Published in 1978, this sturdy little volume by Thomas Nagel is a defense of the claim that there is an objective moral requirement on all rational agents to behave altruistically.
Nagel makes clear that "[b]y altruism I mean not abject self-sacrifice but merely a willingness to act in consideration of the interests of other persons, without the need of ulterior motives." The primary problem to which he devotes his attention is not what sorts of behavior we are thus committed to, but the more fundamental one of how it is possible for such considerations to motivate us _at all_.
I shall not try to summarize his arguments here; this work was published long enough ago that critical evaluations of them are available elsewhere (e.g. in Christine Korsgaard's _The Kingdom of Ends_). Suffice it to say that they involve Nagel's usual tension between the personal and impersonal points of view -- that is, between subjectivity and objectivity -- and the attempt to find some resolution or balance between them (a theme which runs through much of his work and indeed which he seems to have staked out as his own philosophical territory).
At any rate his conclusion is that it is entirely rational for us to be thus motivated and that "rational altruism" is a genuine possibility.
And perhaps most importantly of all, Nagel has stated the _problem_ correctly. I realize this may not be a big deal to some of Nagel's readers. But personally I find it a blessed relief, as I spend a good deal of time reading and criticizing the works of Ayn Rand and her followers; it is a pleasure to read an argument about altruism that gets the issue straight and recognizes that other-regard is simply not reducible to prudence.
Which it isn't, and Nagel's mostly lucid work on this topic has the merit of making this point utterly clear. Readers of David Kelley's _Unrugged Individualism_ and Tibor Machan's _Generosity_ should probably attempt, at some point, to come to terms with the arguments in this volume.
 |
Title: What We Owe to Each Other by T. M. Scanlon ISBN: 067400423X Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The View from Nowhere by Thomas Nagel ISBN: 0195056442 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January, 1989 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
 |
Title: The Sources of Normativity by Christine M. Korsgaard ISBN: 052155960X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 28 June, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
 |
Title: The Last Word by Thomas Nagel ISBN: 0195149831 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong by J. L. Mackie ISBN: 0140135588 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: July, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
