Thomas Nagel
1937 CE – Present · Contemporary Era
“There is something that it is like to be a conscious organism.”
Biography
An American philosopher born in Belgrade to a German Jewish family, raised in New York. Educated at Cornell, Oxford (under J.L. Austin and Paul Grice), and Harvard (under John Rawls). Taught at Berkeley and Princeton before joining New York University, where he held a joint appointment in philosophy and law. His 1974 essay 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' is a widely assigned reading in philosophy, and his The View from Nowhere (1986) is considered an ideal introduction to the tensions at the heart of the discipline.
Major Works
Key Arguments
Click “Philosophy 101” to read the full exploration of each argument.
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Even if we knew every physical fact about a bat's brain and sonar system, we would still not know what it is like to experience the world as a bat. Conscious experience has an irreducibly subjective character, a 'what-it-is-likeness', that cannot be captured by any objective, third-person scientific description. The physicalist who claims to explain consciousness entirely in terms of brain states has left out the most important thing: the subjective quality of experience itself.
Why it matters: Crystallized the 'explanatory gap' between physical processes and conscious experience, becoming a highly influential paper in philosophy of mind. Directly inspired David Chalmers's formulation of the 'Hard Problem of consciousness' two decades later. Required reading in virtually every introductory philosophy course.
The View from Nowhere
Human beings occupy a peculiar position: we are simultaneously subjects with a particular perspective on the world and beings capable of stepping back to view ourselves and the world objectively, from what Nagel calls 'the view from nowhere.' The tension between the subjective and objective viewpoints generates the deepest problems in philosophy, consciousness, free will, personal identity, the meaning of life, and the foundations of ethics. Neither viewpoint can be abandoned, yet they resist full integration.
Why it matters: Provided a unifying framework for understanding why philosophy's central problems are so persistent. The subjective-objective tension Nagel describes is not a defect to be overcome but a permanent feature of the human condition.
Moral Luck
We routinely hold people morally responsible for outcomes that were partly a matter of luck, the drunk driver who kills a pedestrian is judged more harshly than the equally drunk driver who arrives home safely. Nagel (alongside Bernard Williams) argued that this reveals a deep tension in our moral thinking: we believe moral judgment should depend only on factors within our control, yet our actual moral assessments are pervaded by luck in circumstances, consequences, temperament, and even the moral challenges we happen to face.
Why it matters: Exposed an instability in ordinary moral reasoning. The problem of moral luck has become a widely discussed topic in ethics, challenging Kantian and utilitarian frameworks alike and forcing a rethinking of responsibility, blame, and desert.
Lasting Influence
Defined the problem of subjective experience for contemporary philosophy of mind. His work on moral luck reshaped ethical theory.
Your Reading Path
The Companion Guide
Seven eras of philosophy in one volume — reading lists, key terms, journal prompts · $19.99