Understanding the Similarities between Nagel and Nietzche

Running head: PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PHILOSOPHY
1. Understanding the Similarities between Nagel and Nietzche
“The Will to Power” by Friedrich Nietzsche, which is a collection of crucial passages on
a wide range of subjects that have been derived from the notebooks penned down by
Nietzsche, contain interesting remarks or comments on the matter of consciousness, on
sensory qualities and on a number of other related topics. This piece of work contains
thoughts and ideas which are considered to be largely similar to the thoughts and perspectives
of the well known philosopher Thomas Nagel (Bielkis, 2017). There are certain ways by
which Nietzsche is seen to both anticipate as well as agree with many of the points that are
made by Thomas Nagel, and on a number of other points they appear to disagree with each
other quite radically. For many decades now, it has been emphasized by Nagel that the
human mind and body problem appears to be nothing but an artifact of the manner by which
modern day science is seen to characterize by what is physical, and what it perceives as
physical phenomena (Bielkis, 2017). The mind independent and objective world in the view
of Nagel is one that is characterized very strictly in quantitative terms, and what cannot be
described in quantitative terms is regarded to be nothing other than the projection of the mind
(Nagel, 2016). Qualitative aspects of daily living, such as taste, smell, sound and sight are
those that are seen to exist only in the very conscious experiences of a knowing subject,
something that Nagel has mentioned very explicitly in his famous work, Mind and Cosmos.
What is physical and what is mental have been described by Nagel in such a manner that the
latter can never really be explained with the help of terms that are related to the former, since
the former happens to be quantitative and the latter happens to be qualitative (Church, 2018).
A lot of what Nietzsche has to say in his work The Will for Power is in many ways similar to
what Nagel has to say. Nietzche writes that, physical explanation is something that stands as
symbolization of the world by means of thought and sensation, and that this is something that
can never ever account for the origins of sensation and thought. He further writes that the

2PHILOSOPHY
subject of physics is one that needs to construe the world of feelings as something that lacks
aims and feelings quite consistently, from the lowest being to the highest being and that
teleology is something that serves only as a history of different types of purposes, it can never
be regarded as anything which is physical in its texture or form (Bielkis, 2017). What
Nietzsche is not as confident about, unlike Nagel is the fact that the conscious experience of
human beings reveals anything that is ultimately of any metaphysical significance. The
subject of experience or the Cartesian ego is something that is thought of by Friedrich
Nietzsche for instance, to be something of an illusion (Church, 2018).
2. Nietzsche’s Views on Camus’ Solutions to the Problems of the Absurd
Just like Camus, Nietzsche often viewed life to be something that was devoid of any
intrinsic meaning. However, he did think that life could be given some meaning by
embracing a thing such as illusion. In the view of Nietzsche, this is something that can be
learnt well enough from artists (Gower, 2000). Nietzsche believed that artists were always
coming up with new or novel ways of imagining and perceiving things such as new artifices
and new inventions that all of the things that make life as beautiful as it is regarded to be by
mankind, even when life is not as beautiful as it is envisaged to be. According to Nietzche
through the application of this to our very own lives, it is possible for us to go ahead and
actually become poets of our lives, and this could be a solution, a possible solution in the
view of Nietzsche to the absurdity that life is otherwise seen to offer or what it is otherwise
seen to be characterized by (Gower, 2000). Camus arrives at a solution to this absurdity of
life, which is far different from the approach that is taken by Nietzsche to the problem, and
which is regarded as a more honest approach as well. The absurd hero is not a man who seeks
shelter or solace in the illusion of religion or in the illusion of art. This is also a person who is
not seen to despair in any way when he is actually faced with the absurdities that life has to
offer. Instead of going ahead and packing it all in, what Camus manages to do, is embrace