---
product_id: 19847969
title: "The Last Word"
brand: "thomas nagel"
price: "1072 DH"
currency: MAD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.ma/products/19847969-the-last-word
store_origin: MA
region: Morocco
---

# The Last Word

**Brand:** thomas nagel
**Price:** 1072 DH
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- **What is this?** The Last Word by thomas nagel
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The Last Word

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Extreme Subjectivism/Relativism Defeated
  

*by D***K on Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2006*

Ostensibly, Nagel's work is an assault on extreme relativism/subjectivism. On another level, it complements Nozick's "Nature of Rationality" (while rightly attacking Nozick's misuse of evolutionary principles). If extreme relativism/subjectivism were the sole objective, Nagel could have defeated it with a single statement: "All truth/logic/science/ethics is relative/subjective," is self-refuting (which Nagel cites).But the rationalist Nagel really has a stronger objective. He rightly wants to insist that constructivist/subjectivist/relativist (he uses "perceptivist") claims against reason, logic, science, and ethics are embedded in the very criteria they want to deny, and worse, their efforts to use external criteria "to get outside" to challenge these claims is (1) impossible (because they use the very tools they criticize), or (2) untenable, because they use irreducible principles in one category to assault irreducible principles in another, or Ryle's "category mistake (misuse)," (3) implausible, because they substitute less plausible hypotheses to assault rationally and empirically more plausible hypotheses, or (4) two or more of the preceding three. Except for ethics, his observations are valid.The chapter on ethics is more elusive and certainly inconclusive. He begins with ethics as a species of practical reason, itself a feature of decision-theory, which is distinctly non-instrumental (a controversial claim, he concedes), that requires "reasons" (i.e., justifications). Except for the "non-instrumental" claim, there is nothing controversial thus far. Everything that follows, however, seems lost. He begins denying Hume's "pleasure/pain" motivation of ethics, raises the empathy factor (Hume, Smith), admits emotions (typically non-rational) are often involved (Hume, Smith), as are other "background" information (Mill, Bentham), that "impartiality" is one of its features (all but virtue theory), as is the "universifiability" of the action (deontological, consequentialist), then gives a concrete consequentialist example, followed by a concrete deontological example, of "reason," then concedes he isn't sure where all this leads. I assume this exercise was meant to instantiate that agents act for "reason(s)," but the "reasons" are intended to satisfy individual integrity for having acted.The final chapter is a series of ruminations, something about naturalism not becoming a religion,  Nozick's (mis)use of Darwinism as an escape hatch, and a reminder that the natural world and our use of it also necessarily includes us in it (a dominant theme throughout).Nagel reinforces Nozick's point about rationality being inherently circular, but according to Nagel that is simply necessary and unavoidable (not an objection). The principal idea is the individual's inability to escape his embeddedness, much less his ability to approach his perspectives "outside" them is both impossible and undesirable, and why these facts repudiate extreme subjectivism/relativism. Most philosophy students already know this. Most in postmodernism and the humanities don't, and they will most benefit from this book.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Saving the Enlightenment
  

*by R***Z on Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2016*

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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Thomas Nagel shows why only realism can be consistent and intelligible
  

*by C***L on Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2013*

This has to be one of the best books I've read on the debate between realism vs relativism.Nagel who is also a rationalist takes the side of realism and argues on the relevant topics such as science, language, ethics and logic.  In fact the chapter on logic was my favorite, he devotes a good amount of time towards Rene'Descartes with criticisms and aspects that he is in agreement with.  In the end Thomas Nagel actually holds to the 'cogito' and rightly so.  Of course you'll see the names of other prominent philosophers from the past and present pop up such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Saul Kripke, Immanuel Kant and Hilary Putnam.One of his finest quotes in the book shows why cases of objectivism in certain circumstances are basically inescapable."The general aim for such reasoning is the to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves and of how it appears to us and others.  We proceed by generating, comparing, and ranking possible versions, and it is these comparisons that are the substance of the process. But we begin from the idea that there is some way the world is, and this, I believe, is an idea to which there is no intellible alternative and which cannot be subordinated to or derived from anything else.  My aim is to argue that even a subjectivist cannot escape from or rise above this idea".Indeed it appears that objectivism seems to have 'The Last word" on matters.This book is more towards an intermediate reader of philosophy, though I can see a beginner grasping the 'gist' of this book as well.I highly recommend this

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