Volume 28, Number 3 · March 5, 1981
Stands to Reason
By P.F. Strawson
Mortal Questions
by Thomas Nagel
Cambridge University Press, 213 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Thomas Nagel's book of essays might almost have been designed as an answer to the not uncommon complaint that our academic philosophers, frivolously abdicating their responsibilities, busy or amuse themselves with abstruse arguments and technical problems and offer no guidance on the matters which engage and trouble perplexed humanity: war, sex, and death; the claims of equality and the proper use of political power; human life in general and its meaning or lack of meaning. Mortal Questions is addressed to these vital matters, though not to these alone; discussion of them sits, and sits naturally, alongside discussions of professionally more familiar themes: free will and responsibility; the nature of personal identity; the relation of mind and body.
Review, 3133 words
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