Month: January 2009

I started reading Thomas Nagel’s Equality and Partiality, on the subject of moral and political philosophy. Those familiar with Nagel’s work will note a recurring theme concerning the different, and often apparently irreconcilable, views of ourselves that we’re compelled to take by personal experience and more reflective, impersonal stance. For instance, from my own first-person perspective I think of myself as an agent who freely chooses to do or not do various things. But from an impersonal perspective, especially one informed by modern science, I quickly begin to appear as one object among many in the world, buttressed and determined by forces far outside my control. The problem, Nagel says, is it’s very hard to see how these two perspectives can be reconciled by any “higher” or more inclusive perspective, and yet we can’t rid ourselves of either one.

A similar division of the self appears, he thinks, in our moral and political life. From my own perspective, my needs, desires, and happiness appear to be extremely important. But when I consider things form a more impersonal vantage point I quickly realize that there’s no good reason to suppose that my interests count for any more than anyone else’s. Each person’s life is just as important to him or her as mine is to me; objectively, no person counts for more than any other.

Yet, like in the case of free will, we can’t simply rid ourselves of either perspective. Utilitarians think we should aspire to be benevolent, impartial agents of the greater good, with each person (or sentient being) counting for one and not more than one in our moral calculations. But Nagel argues that it’s psychologically impossible for us (or most of us at any rate) to completely discount our own happiness, interests, and particular attachments for the sake of moral equality. To avoid both utopianism and what he calls “hard-nosed realism,” an adequate moral and political philosophy has to somehow account for and give adequate recognition of both perspectives, without simply resolving the tension in favor of either one.

This strikes me as a potentially fruitful way of posing the problem. Having just read Peter Singer’s One World, I was struck that Singer’s utilitarian view would seem to require us to divest ourselves of most of our particular attachments, as well as the right to pursue our own interests and life projects. On the other hand, though, neither egoism nor tribalism (looking out strictly for our own nation, race, religion, etc.) rise to a truly moral perspective; any such perspective has to have a universalist thrust and aspect, especially one that a Christian could endorse. I’ll be interested to see where Nagel goes with this.