Contemplating One’s Nagel

This critical notice of Nagel’s The View from Nowhere argues that Nagel runs two distinct conceptions of objectivity together, in a way that unsettles many of the main conclusions of his book. The ‘Hegelian conception’ involves stepping back from our view of the world to a new conception about the relation between that view and the world so viewed. The ‘absolute conception’ requires us to eliminate from our view of the world any element which can be seen as a product of one’s own perspective. If one tries to combine these two conceptions, the result is likely to be unstable.