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Philosophy

Mortal Questions by Thomas Nagel
Buy now

Mortal Questions

by Thomas Nagel

Recommendations from our site

“If you think philosophy might be interesting then you need a good introduction – this is the best one.” Read more...

The best books on Navigating the Future: a reading list for young adults

Chris Kutarna, Political Scientist

“This is a wonderful book…a series of chapters on different themes to do with life and death. He has a wonderful essay on equality, a great essay on war, and essays on consciousness as well, which is what makes living things different from dead things. What I love about Nagel is his ability to identify what really matters about a subject, and to write about it without getting caught in too much nitty-gritty detail.” Read more...

The best books on Ethical Problems

David Edmonds, Broadcaster

“There are some classic papers in here. The one in which he asks what it’s like to be a bat is an amazing canonical paper about the subjective nature of experience and how forms of reductionism can’t deal with it. That’s still very much a live issue. His essay on sexual perversion is brilliant and has been very influential. ‘Moral Luck’ and ‘The Fragmentation of Value’ raise fundamental questions in ethics. The nice thing about this book, particularly for teenagers, is that you can pick it up in any order, just read ten pages of a chapter, and then you’re done. The essays are short and accessible, and you can take them in bite-sized chunks.” Read more...

The best books on Philosophy for Teens

Andrew Brower Latz (Manchester Grammar School),

Other books by Thomas Nagel

What Does It All Mean? by Thomas Nagel

What Does It All Mean?
by Thomas Nagel

Our most recommended books

  • Plato's Republic

    Republic
    by Plato

  • Dialogues and Natural History of Religion
    by David Hume

  • Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries
    by Mengzi

  • Critique of Pure Reason
    by Immanuel Kant

  • The Nicomachean Ethics
    by Aristotle

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