How to Live When Everything is Bad?
Answered by a Contemporary American Philosopher
Thomas Nagel/Wikimedia commons
Life is worth living even when the bad elements of experience are plentiful, and the good ones are too meager to outweigh the bad ones alone. The additional positive weight is supplied by experience itself rather than by any of its consequences.
Thomas Nagel (b. 1937) is one of the leading living philosophers in America. He focuses on issues of consciousness and ethics and is the author of the famous scholarly article "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974).