Thomas Nagel, Moral Feelings, Moral Reality, and Moral Progress

Excerpt

Nagel takes it to be obvious that humanity (or a portion of it) has made some moral progress. One of his main tasks in the two essays that comprise this beautifully crafted and thought-provoking book is to understand what such progress is and how it happens. An example he gives will undoubtedly be accepted by his readers: “the recent and dramatic change in the status of homosexuality in most Western countries” (p. 38). The main philosophical observation Nagel makes about this bit of progress is that the reasons against the suppression of homosexuality “were in principle widely accessible for a long time, even though most people were blocked from recognizing them by ignorance and social conditioning” (p. 39). It had, in other words, been true for a long time, before this change in Western attitudes, that there is nothing immoral about homosexuality. A moral truth does not depend for its truth on its being believed. Nagel is in this sense a moral realist. …