PHIL 2010 Lecture 14: Phil-Notes14
Document Summary
Life is filled with things we want to experience and things that we want to do. There are elements which, if added to one"s experience, make life better; there are other elements which, if added to one"s experience, make life worse. But what remains when these are set aside is not merely neutral: it is emphatically positive (nagel 2). That is what is meant, i think, by the allegation that it is good simply to be alive, even if one is undergoing terrible experience (nagel 2). Nagel"s point that life itself is good, goes against schopenhauer"s point of view on death. When we die, we lose something that is good or beneficial to us. Instead of living out our lives successfully, we are dead and not able to do so. Objections to nagel"s thesis: how can something you are unaware of be bad for you, basically, the question is saying, what you do not know cannot hurt you.