display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
4 ideas
3257 | Total objectivity can't see value, but it sees many people with values [Nagel] |
Full Idea: A purely objective view has no way of knowing whether anything has any value, but actually its data include the appearance of value to individuals with particular perspectives, including oneself. | |
From: Thomas Nagel (The View from Nowhere [1986], VIII.2) | |
A reaction: I would have thought that a very objective assessment of someone's health is an obvious revelation of value, irrespective of anyone's particular perspective. |
3265 | We don't worry about the time before we were born the way we worry about death [Nagel] |
Full Idea: We do not regard the period before we were born in the same way that we regard the prospect of death. | |
From: Thomas Nagel (The View from Nowhere [1986], XI.3) | |
A reaction: This is a challenge to Epicurus, who said death is no worse than pre-birth. This idea may be true of the situation immediately post-death, but a thousand years from now it is hard to distinguish them. |
3263 | If our own life lacks meaning, devotion to others won't give it meaning [Nagel] |
Full Idea: If no one's life has any meaning in itself, how can it acquire meaning through devotion to the meaningless lives of others? | |
From: Thomas Nagel (The View from Nowhere [1986], XI.2) | |
A reaction: This is one of the paradoxes of compassion. The other is that the virtue requires other people to be in need of help, which can't be a desirable situation. |
9781 | Tolerance and love are strategies to avoid encountering our neighbours [Zizek] |
Full Idea: All this preaching about tolerance, love for one's neighbour and so on, are ultimately strategies to avoid encountering the neighbour. | |
From: Slavoj Zizek (Conversations, with Glyn Daly [2004], §2) | |
A reaction: I have begun to wonder whether some such motivation underlies the modern obsession with raising huge sums for charity. |