Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.
Thomas NagelRead
If I thought that everything I did was determined by my circumstancse and my psychological condition, I woudl feel trapped.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the struggle between free will and determinism, suggesting that belief in being controlled by external factors can lead to a sense of entrapment.
In this quote, Thomas Nagel expresses a philosophical concern about the implications of believing that our actions are entirely determined by external circumstances and our psychological state. He implies that if we accept that we lack control over our decisions and are merely products of our environment and mental condition, we risk feeling powerless and confined in our lives. This raises important questions about the nature of free will and personal agency in human existence.
Themes
Free WillDeterminismPhilosophyAgencyCircumstances
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophy class discussing free will, this quote highlights the debate about determinism.
More from Thomas Nagel
All quotes βTo look for a single general theory of how to decide the right thing to do is like looking for a single theory of how to decide what to believe.
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It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naΓ―ve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.
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There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality.
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Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.
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Once we see an aspect of what we or someone else does as something that happens, we lose our grip on the idea that it has been done and that we can judge the doer and not just the happening.
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