I believe that the general form of moral reasoning is to put yourself in other people's shoes. This leads to an impersonal concern for them corresponding to the impersonal concern for yourself that is needed to avoid a radical incongruity between your attitudes from the personal and impersonal standpoints, i.e. from inside and outside your life. Some considerable disparity remains, because your personal concern remains in relation to yourself and your life: they are not to be replaced or absorbed by the impersonal ones that correspond to them. (One is also typically concerned in a personal way for the interests of certain others to whom one is close.) But we derive moral reasons by forming in addition a parallel impersonal concern corresponding to the interests of all other individuals. It will be as strong or as weak, as comprehensive or as restricted, as the impersonal concern we are constrained by the pressures of congruency to feel about ourselves. In a sense, the requirement is that you love your neighbor as yourself; but only as much as you love yourself when you look at yourself from outside, with fair detachment.

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About Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel was a contemporary American philosopher. Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 until his retirement in 2016. Read more on Wikipedia →

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