Mortal Questions

1. Introduction

Mortal Questions is a collection of analytic essays by Thomas Nagel that investigates a cluster of fundamental problems arising from the human condition. Rather than offering a single continuous argument, the volume assembles distinct but thematically related papers on death, absurdity, consciousness, free will, moral responsibility, luck, and value.

Nagel’s central intellectual strategy is to juxtapose the subjective standpoint—how life feels and appears from within—with increasingly objective standpoints that abstract from any particular person’s perspective. Many of the “mortal questions” in the volume emerge, as Nagel presents them, from tensions between these standpoints: we are finite, embodied creatures who can nonetheless reflect on ourselves and the world from a detached, almost impersonal point of view.

Several essays from the collection have become canonical in contemporary philosophy. “Death” poses the problem of how death can be bad for the one who dies. “The Absurd” articulates a distinctive diagnosis of why life can seem meaningless. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” challenges reductive accounts of consciousness by emphasizing the subjective character of experience. “Moral Luck” highlights the pervasive influence of luck on moral judgment and responsibility.

The volume situates existential concerns—about mortality, meaning, and agency—within the tools and methods of analytic philosophy, aiming for clarity and argumentative precision while acknowledging that some questions may resist definitive resolution. Subsequent sections of this entry examine the historical setting of the work, Nagel’s authorship and composition process, and the specific arguments and debates generated by the individual essays.

2. Historical and Intellectual Context

Mortal Questions emerged from debates in post-war analytic philosophy, especially in Anglo-American contexts from the 1960s to the late 1970s. During this period, philosophers increasingly moved beyond mid-century logical positivism toward broader topics: mind and consciousness, ethics and responsibility, and the meaning of life.

Place within Analytic Philosophy

Nagel’s essays draw on, and react against, several developments:

Engagement with Existential and Continental Currents

Although written in a distinctively analytic style, Mortal Questions intersects with existentialist themes associated with Sartre, Camus, and Heidegger, especially regarding:

• the absurdity or possible meaninglessness of human life
• anxiety about death and finitude
• the search for authentic agency in a determined or indifferent world

Nagel’s treatment, however, typically brackets historical and social analysis, focusing instead on conceptual tensions that arise from reflection.

Broader Intellectual Climate

The essays were composed against the backdrop of:

• rapid advances in neuroscience and cognitive science, which encouraged physicalist accounts of mind
• Cold War anxieties and changing attitudes toward religion and authority, which raised questions about the foundations of meaning and morality
• a growing interest within philosophy in topics such as moral luck, practical reason, and the nature of value

Within this environment, Mortal Questions contributed to a shift in analytic philosophy toward taking existential concerns seriously while maintaining a rigorous, argument-driven approach.

3. Author and Composition

Thomas Nagel (b. 1937) is an American philosopher whose work spans moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of mind. At the time the essays in Mortal Questions were written, he had studied at Cornell, Oxford (under J. L. Austin, among others), and Harvard, and held academic positions that placed him in close contact with leading analytic philosophers.

Composition Timeline and Circumstances

The essays in Mortal Questions were composed primarily between the late 1960s and mid-1970s. Many first appeared in leading journals before being collected and lightly revised for the 1979 volume.

Nagel’s academic environment—first at Princeton and later at New York University—provided sustained interaction with figures working on mind, ethics, and political theory, which informed both the topics he selected and the analytical rigor of his approach.

Authorial Aims

Nagel has described his broader philosophical project as an attempt to reconcile the internal, personal standpoint with an increasingly impersonal, objective standpoint characteristic of science and morality. The essays in Mortal Questions can be seen as early explorations of this project, later developed systematically in The View from Nowhere (1986).

Some scholars interpret the composition of the volume as Nagel’s effort to bring existential concerns—about death, absurdity, and agency—into mainstream analytic philosophy without abandoning its standards of clarity and argument. Others emphasize its role in articulating a distinctive form of anti-reductionism, especially about mind and value, that would shape Nagel’s subsequent work.

4. Publication and Textual History

Mortal Questions was published by Cambridge University Press in 1979, drawing together essays that had appeared in various journals, along with some revisions and contextualization. The volume has since been reprinted many times and translated into multiple languages.

Initial Publication and Sources

The essays originated in venues such as The Philosophical Review, Noûs, and other leading journals. Nagel’s decision to collect them reflected both their thematic connections and their emerging influence.

Revisions and Editorial Changes

For the 1979 volume, Nagel made what commentators usually describe as minor revisions:

• standardizing terminology (for example, consistent usage of “subjective” and “objective”)
• clarifying transitions or formulations
• sometimes updating references or responding implicitly to early criticisms

There is no widely noted substantive rewriting of arguments between journal and book versions, though specialists occasionally track small textual changes when discussing interpretive details.

Translations and Subsequent Editions

The work has been translated into several major languages.

Later English printings have generally retained the original text, with no major authorial updates. As a result, scholars typically treat the 1979 Cambridge edition as the standard reference for citation and textual analysis.

5. Structure and Organization of the Essays

Although Mortal Questions is not divided into formal parts, its essays cluster around several thematic areas, and many readers discern an implicit structure.

Thematic Groupings

Commentators often organize the essays into roughly four overlapping groups:

Different editions and secondary sources list the essays in slightly varying orders, but the standard Cambridge edition proceeds in a sequence that many see as moving from individual mortality through mind and agency to increasingly general questions about objectivity and value.

Internal Coherence and Cross-References

While each essay stands alone, Nagel frequently:

• uses similar examples (such as everyday moral conflicts) across essays
• refers back to earlier discussions of subjectivity, objectivity, or death
• develops more abstract treatments (for example, in “Subjective and Objective”) that shed light on earlier, more concrete problems

This loose but deliberate pattern produces what some interpreters call a “network” rather than a linear system of arguments.

Relation to Later Work

The organization of topics anticipates Nagel’s later book The View from Nowhere, in which he systematically elaborates the subjective–objective contrast already present across the essays. For this reason, Mortal Questions is often read as a preparatory collection, with its internal structure reflecting stages in an evolving philosophical project rather than a finished, architectonic theory.

6. Central Arguments on Death and the Human Condition

The essay “Death” is the main locus for Nagel’s treatment of mortality in Mortal Questions. It addresses whether, and how, death is bad for the person who dies, and what this implies about the human condition.

The Deprivation Account

Nagel defends what has come to be called the deprivation account of death. On this view:

• Death is bad for a person not because of any negative experience of being dead.
• Instead, it is bad insofar as it deprives the person of the goods of life they would otherwise have enjoyed.

He contrasts this with Epicurean arguments that death cannot be bad for us because, when it occurs, we no longer exist to experience harm. Nagel contends that many goods and bads do not require simultaneous awareness by their subject; for example, being deceived can be bad even if one never discovers the deception.

Asymmetry of Pre-natal and Post-mortem Nonexistence

A puzzle arises from our apparent asymmetry in attitudes:

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We do not typically regard our pre-natal nonexistence as a misfortune, yet we see our death as a loss.

Nagel argues that this asymmetry may be explained by the way we conceive our lives temporally—projecting forward more readily than backward—though he acknowledges that this issue is philosophically contested.

Death, Identity, and the Human Condition

The essay situates death within a broader reflection on the human condition:

• Human lives contain goods—projects, relationships, experiences—that seem to give us reasons to prolong life.
• Yet these same capacities for value and reflection make us acutely aware of our finitude and of the arbitrary limits imposed by death.

Some interpreters see Nagel as highlighting a tension: our capacity to value an open future clashes with the inevitability of a boundary beyond which no further goods are possible. Others read him as primarily clarifying the logic of our attitudes toward death without endorsing any particular existential response (such as despair, defiance, or acceptance), leaving such responses to be explored in connection with other essays like “The Absurd.”

7. The Absurd and the Meaning of Life

In the essay “The Absurd”, Nagel analyzes why human life often appears absurd and what, if anything, this implies about its meaning.

Nagel’s Diagnosis of the Absurd

Nagel argues that absurdity arises from a clash between two standpoints:

• From within life, we take our projects, commitments, and values very seriously.
• Yet we can also step back and view ourselves from a more detached, objective perspective, questioning the grounds of every commitment.

This capacity for radical self-questioning undermines any final justification for our activities:

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Any reasons we give for taking life seriously are themselves open to further challenge, in principle without end.

On Nagel’s account, absurdity is not primarily due to:

• the shortness of life
• the smallness of human beings in a vast universe
• or the lack of a divine or cosmic plan

Instead, it stems from an internal tension within our reflective nature.

Responses to the Absurd

Nagel surveys and distances himself from various reactions traditionally proposed:

Nagel suggests, instead, that recognizing absurdity need not undermine ordinary life. According to his essay, we may live with a form of ironic distance: continuing our pursuits while acknowledging the inescapable gap between seriousness and radical doubt. Some interpreters regard this stance as a modest “reconciliation” with absurdity; others see it as merely descriptive, leaving open whether irony is psychologically or ethically satisfactory.

Relation to Meaning in Life

While Nagel does not offer a positive theory of meaning in life, his analysis has framed later debates by:

• separating subjective engagement from objective justification
• raising the possibility that meaning can persist even when ultimate justifications are unavailable

Subsequent philosophers have developed constructive accounts of meaning partly in response to this framing, either by accepting Nagel’s diagnosis of absurdity or by challenging its starting assumptions.

8. Consciousness and the Bat Argument

The essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” is Nagel’s most influential contribution to the philosophy of mind in Mortal Questions. It addresses the nature of consciousness and the limits of reductive physicalism.

The Notion of “What It Is Like”

Nagel introduces the idea that a mental state is conscious if and only if there is something it is like to be in that state—its subjective character of experience. Conscious beings have a distinctive first-person perspective that, in his view, cannot be captured by purely objective, third-person descriptions.

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To understand consciousness, one must ask what it is like for the organism itself.

The Bat Example

Bats are chosen because they are mammals with complex lives but possess sensory modalities (especially echolocation) very different from human ones. Nagel argues:

• Even with complete objective knowledge of a bat’s neurophysiology and behavior, humans cannot know what it is like for the bat to experience the world.
• This suggests an explanatory gap between objective physical facts and subjective experience.

The bat case functions as a thought experiment illustrating that the subjective aspect of consciousness may resist any translation into objective terms.

Implications for Physicalism and Reductionism

Nagel does not deny that mental states are in some sense physically realized. However, he contends that current forms of reductionism may be incomplete:

The essay thus raises the possibility that objective science, as currently understood, might be structurally unable to accommodate all aspects of consciousness. Some readers interpret Nagel as calling for a future, expanded conception of objectivity that could incorporate subjective points of view; others see him as suggesting enduring limits to physicalist explanation.

The “bat argument” has since become a central reference point in debates about qualia, phenomenal consciousness, and the feasibility of mind–brain identity theories.

9. Subjective and Objective Standpoints

Several essays in Mortal Questions, particularly “Subjective and Objective” and “The Limits of Objectivity,” analyze the contrast between subjective and objective perspectives and its philosophical consequences.

The Gradual Move Toward Objectivity

Nagel describes objectivity as a progressive abstraction from one’s particular point of view:

• At the most subjective level, we see the world in terms of personal desires, feelings, and interests.
• By taking up a more objective standpoint, we attempt to describe things independently of these idiosyncratic features.
• In the limit, we aim for a “view from nowhere”, a stance that abstracts from every particular perspective.

He emphasizes that this movement toward objectivity has powered the success of science and underpins certain moral and political ideals (such as impartiality).

The Irreducibility of Subjectivity

Nagel also argues that some aspects of our lives—particularly conscious experience and certain forms of value—cannot be fully captured from an impersonal perspective. Even as we ascend toward greater objectivity, the first-person standpoint retains a kind of residual authority:

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The subjective perspective is not merely an illusion to be discarded; it contains features that any adequate account of the world must respect.

Tensions Between Standpoints

The essays highlight several tensions:

Nagel does not propose a definitive resolution. Instead, he suggests that many philosophical problems arise from efforts either to collapse the subjective into the objective (radical reductionism) or to privilege the subjective in ways that ignore legitimate demands of objectivity. The result, as he portrays it, is an ongoing dual allegiance: we are both individuals located within the world and aspirants to a detached, universal standpoint.

These analyses provide the conceptual backdrop for other essays in the volume, which each explore how this tension manifests in particular areas such as death, absurdity, and moral responsibility.

10. Moral Luck and Responsibility

The essay “Moral Luck” examines how factors beyond an agent’s control seem to influence moral judgment and responsibility, challenging the common view that people should be morally assessed only for what lies within their control.

The Control Principle and Its Challenges

Nagel starts from a widely shared intuition:

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People cannot be morally assessed for what is due to factors beyond their control.

He argues that this control principle is difficult to reconcile with actual moral practice, where luck appears to play a pervasive role.

Types of Moral Luck

Nagel distinguishes several forms of moral luck:

These varieties show, according to Nagel, that factors beyond our control systematically affect not only what we do but how we are morally judged.

Threat to Responsibility

Taken seriously, moral luck appears to undermine the very idea of moral responsibility:

• If we try to purge responsibility of all luck, little remains that is genuinely under the agent’s control.
• Yet it is difficult to abandon ordinary practices of praise, blame, guilt, and admiration, which presuppose some notion of responsibility.

Nagel presents this as a philosophical tension rather than resolving it. Some interpreters see him as moving toward a kind of skepticism about full-blooded moral responsibility; others read him as clarifying the conceptual conflict without endorsing radical revision of moral practice.

The essay also connects with debates on free will, determinism, and legal responsibility, although Nagel’s primary focus is on the conceptual relationship between luck and moral evaluation rather than on specific legal or policy implications.

11. Nagel’s Treatment of Value and Its Fragmentation

In essays such as “The Fragmentation of Value” and “The Limits of Objectivity,” Nagel explores the nature of value and suggests that it may be irreducibly plural and fragmented.

Plural Kinds of Value

Nagel identifies different types of value or reasons, which include:

• Agent-neutral values: considerations that apply to anyone, regardless of personal standpoint (e.g., minimizing suffering).
• Agent-relative or personal values: considerations that depend on one’s particular relationships or projects (e.g., special obligations to friends or family).
• Self-interested values: reasons grounded in one’s own good.

He argues that these categories of value are not easily reducible to a single master value or principle.

Fragmentation and Incommensurability

The fragmentation of value refers to the idea that:

• Distinct kinds of value may sometimes conflict without any higher, unifying standard that can always determine which should prevail.
• Moral and practical reasoning often involves navigating among incommensurable values rather than applying a fully integrated system.

Nagel contrasts this with more monistic theories of value, such as some forms of utilitarianism, which aim to reduce all reasons to a single dimension (for example, overall welfare).

Objectivity and Partiality

Nagel relates fragmentation to the tension between subjective and objective standpoints:

• Objectivity tends to privilege agent-neutral values, which can be endorsed from a universal perspective.
• Subjective life is structured by personal attachments, commitments, and projects that generate agent-relative reasons.

According to the essays, both types of value have legitimate claims on us, and neither can be simply eliminated. Some interpreters therefore view Nagel as a proponent of value pluralism, while others see him as highlighting instability and conflict in our evaluative outlook without offering a definitive pluralist theory.

12. Philosophical Method and Style in Mortal Questions

Nagel’s philosophical method and literary style in Mortal Questions are distinctive features of the work and have influenced its reception.

Methodological Features

Several methodological traits recur across the essays:

• Use of thought experiments: Examples such as the bat, negligent drivers, or imagined life extensions illustrate abstract points.
• Attention to ordinary intuitions: Nagel often starts from widely shared judgments (for example, that death seems bad, or that outcome luck affects blame) and then explores tensions among them.
• Analytic clarity: Concepts are carefully distinguished—such as different forms of luck or varieties of objectivity—reflecting the norms of analytic philosophy.
• Limited system-building: Rather than offering a comprehensive theory, Nagel frequently identifies conflicts or paradoxes and leaves them partly unresolved.

Some commentators describe his method as diagnostic: it aims to reveal why certain philosophical problems feel intractable, rather than to provide final solutions.

Stylistic Characteristics

Nagel’s prose in Mortal Questions is noted for:

• Conciseness and accessibility: Technical terms are minimized, and arguments are presented in relatively short, readable essays.
• Wry, ironic tone: Particularly in “The Absurd,” Nagel uses gentle irony to undercut melodramatic or overly solemn reactions to philosophical problems.
• Integration of existential and analytic concerns: He discusses issues like the meaning of life or the fear of death in a style more typical of journal articles than literary essays.

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The combination of serious existential topics with a restrained, often dry style contributes to the work’s distinctive voice.

Relation to Broader Analytic Practice

Compared with some contemporaries, Nagel is less focused on formal logic or semantic analysis and more on conceptual tensions arising from reflection on everyday life. This approach has been described as a bridge between Anglo-American analytic philosophy and themes more often found in Continental or existential traditions, while maintaining the argumentative rigor characteristic of the former.

13. Famous Passages and Their Influence

Several passages from Mortal Questions have become widely quoted and influential, shaping discussions well beyond Nagel’s own work.

“What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”

The opening of this essay introduces the key question:

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“An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.”

— Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions

This formulation has become a standard way of defining phenomenal consciousness. It has influenced debates on qualia, inspired subsequent arguments such as Frank Jackson’s “knowledge argument,” and is frequently anthologized in philosophy of mind collections.

The Stance toward the Absurd

In “The Absurd,” Nagel’s closing remarks about our response to absurdity are often cited:

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We should not deny the absurdity of our existence, nor attempt to escape it. Instead, we can approach it with irony rather than heroism or despair.

This passage has shaped discussions in the meaning-of-life literature by proposing a distinctive attitude—ironic acceptance—that differs from both existentialist defiance and nihilistic resignation.

Deprivation and the Badness of Death

In “Death,” Nagel’s articulation of the deprivation view is frequently quoted, especially his insistence that death can be bad even without being experienced:

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The evil of death lies in the loss of life, rather than in any positive features of the state of being dead.

This has become a central reference point in contemporary philosophy of death, motivating extensive debate over whether harms can be ascribed to nonexisting subjects.

Moral Luck Typology

Nagel’s classification of moral luck—resultant, circumstantial, constitutive, and causal—has been widely adopted in ethical theory. Later authors often repeat or adapt his taxonomy when discussing responsibility under uncertainty or in conditions shaped by luck.

These and other passages have migrated into textbooks, popular introductions to philosophy, and interdisciplinary discussions (for example, in law, neuroscience, and psychology), contributing significantly to the broader cultural presence of Mortal Questions.

14. Criticisms and Debates

Mortal Questions has generated extensive critical discussion across multiple areas of philosophy. Debates typically focus on the plausibility of Nagel’s arguments and the implications of his broader outlook.

Critiques of “Death”

Some philosophers question the deprivation account:

• Existential critics argue that if a person no longer exists after death, it is unclear how death can be a harm to that person.
• Others raise the timing problem: when, exactly, does the harm of death occur? Before death, the individual is still alive; afterward, they no longer exist.
• Alternative accounts propose that death is not bad at all (Epicureanism), or that its badness is primarily relational (for survivors) rather than prudential (for the deceased).

Debates on Absurdity

Nagel’s analysis of the absurd has been both influential and contested:

• Some existential and Continental thinkers claim it is overly intellectualized, neglecting historical, social, or emotional sources of meaninglessness.
• Others argue that he understates the possibility of genuine meaning, contending that values rooted in love, creativity, or moral commitment can withstand radical doubt.
• Supporters see his account as clarifying a distinctive, reflection-driven form of absurdity, even if it does not capture all experiences of alienation.

Responses to the Bat Argument

Physicalist philosophers such as Daniel Dennett and others have challenged the implications of “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”:

• Some maintain that the difficulty of imagining bat experience reflects our cognitive limits, not an in-principle barrier to physical explanation.
• Others develop functional or representational theories of consciousness that aim to explain subjective character in objective terms.
• Defenders of Nagel use his essay to support non-reductive physicalism, property dualism, or other positions that insist on the autonomy of the phenomenal.

Moral Luck Controversies

“Moral Luck” has sparked ongoing debate:

• Some theorists argue that accepting pervasive moral luck leads to skepticism about responsibility, which they find unacceptable.
• Others challenge Nagel’s starting control principle, suggesting that responsibility does not require the absence of all luck.
• Alternative accounts propose that moral practice can be preserved by reinterpreting blame and praise in ways compatible with luck.

Skepticism about Subjective–Objective Dichotomy

Critics also question Nagel’s central contrast between subjective and objective standpoints:

• Some contend that the dichotomy is too sharp and neglects socially embedded or intersubjective perspectives.
• Others argue that Nagel’s emphasis on objectivity risks marginalizing practical reasoning, emotions, and context-sensitive forms of understanding.

These debates have not produced consensus, but they have ensured that Mortal Questions remains a focal point for discussions on death, meaning, mind, and morality.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

Mortal Questions has had a lasting impact on analytic philosophy and on broader intellectual discussions of human existence.

Influence within Philosophy

The collection helped cement several research programs:

• In the philosophy of death, Nagel’s deprivation view became a standard reference, shaping work by authors such as Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson.
• In the philosophy of mind, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” became a canonical challenge to reductive physicalism, influencing debates on qualia, phenomenal consciousness, and the “hard problem” of consciousness.
• In ethics, “Moral Luck” initiated a systematic exploration of luck’s role in responsibility, spurring subsequent work by Bernard Williams, Duncan Pritchard, and many others.
• In value theory and metaethics, Nagel’s discussions of fragmentation and objectivity prefigured later work on value pluralism and the view from nowhere.

Role in Shaping Analytic Approaches to Existential Questions

Historically, Mortal Questions contributed to a shift in analytic philosophy toward taking existential questions—about death, meaning, and the human condition—seriously, while preserving analytic standards of clarity and argument. It also served as a bridge between technical philosophical debates and issues of wider human concern, making it a frequent choice for undergraduate and introductory courses.

Broader Cultural and Interdisciplinary Impact

The volume’s key ideas have reached beyond philosophy:

• In law and public policy, discussions of moral luck inform debates about responsibility, punishment, and risk.
• In cognitive science and neuroscience, the bat argument is often cited when reflecting on the limits of objective models of consciousness.
• In literature and popular culture, themes from “The Absurd” and “Death” appear in essays and discussions on the meaning of life and the fear of mortality.

Continuation in Nagel’s Later Work

Mortal Questions also laid the groundwork for Nagel’s later writings, especially The View from Nowhere (1986), which develops in more systematic form the tension between subjective and objective standpoints already prominent in the essays. Many scholars therefore regard Mortal Questions as both a landmark in its own right and a key stage in the evolution of Nagel’s philosophical outlook.

The collection’s continued citation, teaching use, and presence in anthologies testify to its enduring historical significance in shaping late-20th- and early-21st-century philosophy.