Reviews for Concealment and exposure

The average rating for Concealment and exposure based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-06-01 00:00:00 Alexander Carey In his essay "Concealment and Exposure," Thomas Nagel argues that we have come to include too much in the public sphere, and that it is necessary to return to a notion of more reticence in public (that is, more privacy). Nagel understands concealment or reticence not as deception, but as what is ignored or not brought to the foreground (7). Reticence serves certain social functions, including protection of the self, and the allowance of more intimacy with certain others to build personal relationships (9). According to Nagel, the public/private dichotomy works in two directions: keeping some stuff out of public, and keeping the self free of external gazes (15). Having too much of the private in public causes the problem of there being too much to discuss in public, and issues of real concern to the public cannot receive the attention they deserve, causing the destruction of civility (20). In "Personal Rights and Public Space," Nagel argues that we need to understand rights as status, that is, what is morally attributed to a person as a member of a moral community (33). Having rights makes one inviolable, and we should understand rights as prohibiting what we can do to others (37). Nagel is unconcerned with whether rights are true, but argues that instead that moral arguments are not about what is true, but what is better ' more likely because it makes a better world (39).

Review # 2 was written on 2008-12-20 00:00:00 Richard Desjardins Just Chapter 1 and 18, which Nagel published and provided as an independent essay, accessible through his NYU Philosophy site.