Concealment and Exposure And Other Essays

Part One: Private and Public. Ch 1: Nagel discusses topics that one can also find in Sam Scheffler's (Cal) excellent book, Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford UP) on privacy and public life. Nagel delves into sex, secrecy, deception, mendacity and politeness, taboo, adultery/Lewinsky case, scandal/Clarence Thomas, and the language of cocktail parties. I laughed out loud when I read Nagel's footnote on Paul Grice (implicature): "Let's have lunch" means "I never want to see you again in my life." Excellent. Ch 2: Loss of Public Privacy. More on C. Thomas, Lewinsky, Clinton, and conventions of civility. Ch 3: Personal Rights and Public Space. N. discusses normative ethics and the 'paradox of rights'--intrinsic vs. instrumental, highlighting the work of the late R. Nozick, Thomson, S. Scheffler, Kamm, and the late W. Quinn. Ch. 4: Chastity. On Wendy Shalit's Return to Modesty. 2 pps. Ch. 5: Nussbaum on Sexual Injustice. Ch. 6: On Ray Monk's biography of Bertrand Russell, which talks about Russell's views on rationality and sexual freedom. N. notes that Monk's bio. is not an intellectual bio--doesn't engage R's philosophy, per se.

Part II: Ch 7: On Rawls--a summary of some of Rawls's views, part iv and v is on T of J, and part vi is briefly on Law of the Peoples. Ch 8: Rawls on Liberalism: on inequality of the classes, egalitarianism, taxation; part ii and iii is on R's Political Liberalism; part v is on T of J. Ch 9: On G.A. Cohen's book, "If You're an Egalitarian..." Ch 10: Justice and Nature. N. discusses deontology and inequity--part ii and iii is on rawls. Ch 11: Raz on Liberty and Law Ch 12: On Waldron's Dignity of Legislation Ch 13: On Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other--on contractualism and utilitarianism, in part discusses scanlon's 'relativism.' Ch 14: On Ror