Posted by zeugma on March 6, 2006, at 16:41:19
In reply to Re: Alex's block » Dr. Bob, posted by 838 on March 6, 2006, at 5:05:04
I found a link before and I was trying to find it again. T Nagel (on some accounts the best moral philosopher in the world - an American currently employed at NYU) was talking about one of his books. In his book he critiqued American foreign policy. He was going to publish it and then... September 11. He said in the interview that he held off publishing it for a year because the tendancy was to take criticism of American foreign policy personally. Like it was condoning September 11 or something. And he worried about offending people and getting them off side so they would be more likely to write him off as a complete crank. He has some fairly radical views that there is no ownership pre-taxation and that redistributive justice is a fairer system (I think it is okay to say that). I guess my point is that... I'm not used to people taking critique of government policy personally (even when I refer to the government shorthand as 'peoples'). It is alien to my way of thinking. That people are so emotionally involved like that.>>
thomas Nagel... It is fair to say that there is no such thing as a view from nowhere, and that I would have thought a priori that the author of the portentously titled "Mortal Questions" would not be so cagey about disseminating his views. On the cover of the edition I have is a very beautiful painting by some Florentine master depicting a woman looking at a skull by candlelight. So odd, that a man who had written such a book would be so sensitive to public opinion.
Not all Americans are so sensitive to public opinion. I just wish his book had lived up to his cover.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:607029
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060225/msgs/616740.html