This volume presents two closely related essays by Thomas Nagel: "Gut Feelings and Moral Knowledge," discusses the value of intuitions in understanding human rights and argues against subjectivist and reductionist accounts of morality of the kind offered by evolutionary psychology or based on brain scans. The second essay, "Moral Reality and Moral Progress," proposes an account of the historical development of moral truth, according to which it does not share the timelessness of scientific truth. This is because moral truth must be based on reasons that are accessible to the individuals to whom they apply, and such accessibility depends on historical developments. The result is that only some advances in moral knowledge are discoveries of what has been true all along.
Biografie
Thomas Nagel wurde am 4. Juli 1937 in Belgrad geboren, kam aber bereits 1939 in die Vereinigten Staaten und wuchs in New York auf: 1958 schloss er seine Studien an der Cornell University ab, studierte in Oxford und in Harvard und nahm später Lehrtätigkeiten u. a. in Berkeley und in Princeton auf. Gegenwärtig lehrt er an der New York University School of Law.
