The Last Word

Thomas Nagel’s The Last Word is a defense of reason and objectivity against the claims of subjectivism, so-called perspectivalism and relativism. The postmodernists have made subjectivism and relativism key tools in their attempt to combat the force of the enlightenment. The notion that reason is simply a hegemonic tool used by some to dominate others opens the door to a great number of possibilities and a good deal of mischief. It valorizes ‘feelings’ and reinforces attitudes, arguments and beliefs that are not supportable by reason and logic. It eschews the empirical method, devalues science and furthers the efforts of politicizing the academy. It reassures the young who have many feelings and wish to express them without logical challenge. In today’s academy (at least in the humanities and soft social sciences) it is in the ascendant and any attempt to counter its claims will draw significant fire, as anyone who looks at the responses which Nagel has received will quickly see. Philosophers are very clever and nearly every position taken will find itself vulnerable to criticism of some sort. Still, Nagel’s argument is persuasive. Basically, he argues that we cannot get beyond reason if we seek to challenge it. We must face it on its own terms and within its own boundaries. Hence, anyone seeking to argue against the primacy or viability of reason cannot get ‘outside’ of it to launch his or her claims. Reason’s boundaries (and logic’s, and mathematics’) are inescapable and the insistence of its presence constitutes the objectivity against which the subjectivist seeks to war. Nagel makes the case in 7 chapters in a relatively brief book. He addresses questions of language, logic, science, ethics and evolutionary naturalism. He repeats the core argument on multiple occasions and some might find the chapters repetitive. Since he writes at a relatively high level of abstraction with very few concrete examples, I found the repetition helpful. This is an important book on an important subject.

In this volume, Thomas Nagel mounts his case for rationalism against the onslaught of several varieties of subjectivism and relativism. The kernel of his case is his more-or-less-Kantian claim that there is a "category of thoughts that we cannot get outside of," which in some way provide a basic structure that we have ultimately no choice but to regard as objective. Once we recognize this category of thoughts, he maintains, "the range of examples turns out to be quite wide." He proceeds to demonstrate his point in the areas of language, logic, science, and ethics (to each of which he devotes a chapter). His arguments are intended to show, essentially, that meaning, logical necessity, the demand for order in objective reality, and normativity are not reducible to matters of pure subjectivity, and for the most part they are fairly successful. His closing chapter -- "Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion" -- is remarkable for several reasons, not least of which is its stunning candor. Nagel is an atheist who nevertheless recognizes that his somewhat Platonic commitment to reason, and in particular to a Peircian belief in an objective "order of . . . logical relations among propositions," raises the question "what world picture to associate it with." He cannot avoid the "suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious," and notes that rationalism "has always had a more religious flavor than empiricism." And -- here comes the candor -- he attributes at least some anti-rationalism to a "fear of religion" which he confesses himself to share: "I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that." He finds, though, that he must acknowledge the distinct possibility that "the capacity of the universe to generate organisms with minds capable of understanding the universe is itself somehow a fundamental feature of the universe." He adds at once that this view need not amount to "anything that should count literally as religious belief" -- though, honestly, it is hard to see why not. At any rate, whatever the implications for religion, Nagel's arguments in this volume are delivered with his usual clarity and flair and will be of interest to anyone seeking a philosophical defense of reason. As Nagel himself notes not far from the outset of his book, the knowledge that subjectivism is self-refuting may be as "old as the hills," but it seems that it cannot be too often repeated.

great everything as ordered

The lesson here is not to expect too much from a book this short which plans to defend realist/rationalist positions in language, logic, science and ethics. Or maybe just don't expect much from Nagel. By page 15, we already have the tired line that logical positivism is defeated by the application of its verification principle to itself. I am always saddened that so many analytic philosophers have such a low opinion of their forebears. The likes of Carnap could digest a diagonal argument before breakfast and knew in detail the very necessary technical machinery needed to circumvent them. Yet somehow he was such an incompetent buffoon that he missed the world's most trivial argument from self-refutation? More sad is the chapter on ethics, which decides to concern itself entirely with moral subjectivism, the weakest of the non-realist metaethical stances that is usually only mentioned by way of insult. To fill in for a paucity of real counterarguments, Nagel has to argue repeatedly from incredulity, and invite us to laugh at Richard Rorty quotes. He then lets an unreflective use of choice words like "hierarchy", "dominate", "foundations" and "domains of thought" to do his work for him. These aren't words I have much interest in using (perhaps I've read too much Rorty). Nagel builds a picture of a mystical hierarchy, but has little interest in spelling out details, admitting that such details are always up for revision anyway -- only the rigid topology stands; is that is? It's not clear to me why I shouldn't question that part too. Another reviewer noted that our beliefs about logic have been reviewed and changed quite aggressively, not least with Brouwer's intuitionism, so that I do now find myself wanting to investigate old favourites such as the rule "modus ponens", an example Nagel uses repeatedly. And I might point out that his cute argument for how the mind must transcend the finite is challenged fairly hotly by modern day finitists, who take their cue from David Hilbert, whose own mathematical credentials are not up for debate. The foundations of mathematics have been turned on their head and churned over the centuries, and placing any bets only 100 years after the last crisis seems foolhardy. Ultimately, I find that these rationalist accounts are often, at best, gilding the lily, or, at worst, needlessly constraining our imagination.