Mortal Questions

A collection of fourteen essays, most first published in journals in the 1970s, on the meaning, nature and value of human life. It opens with 'Death', which asks whether death is bad for the person who dies and why we do not mourn the time before our birth, and 'The Absurd', which locates absurdity in the clash between the seriousness with which we live and our ability to step back and see it as arbitrary. 'Moral Luck' examines how much of what we are blamed for depends on factors outside our control. Further essays cover sexual perversion, the ethics of war in 'War and Massacre', dirty hands in public life, affirmative action, equality and the fragmentation of value. The final group turns to the mind: 'Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness', 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', which argues that physicalism cannot yet explain the subjective character of experience, 'Panpsychism' and 'Subjective and Objective'.

It contains some of the most widely read essays in modern philosophy, each short and clearly argued, on topics that matter in ordinary life.