Philosopher · Contemporary
Thomas Nagel
b. 1937 · Analytic philosophy; anti-reductionist naturalism
An atheist who confessed in The Last Word that he wants there to be no God, yet whose Mind and Cosmos argued that materialist Darwinism cannot explain consciousness, reason or value, and was welcomed by Catholic philosophers.
Nagel's “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974) argued that the subjective character of experience cannot be captured by any objective physical account, and The View from Nowhere (1986) made the tension between the subjective and the objective standpoints the central problem of philosophy, with chapters on free will, the absurd and the meaning of life. The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and Equality and Partiality (1991) defended objective moral reasons and an egalitarian liberalism, and “War and Massacre” defended absolute limits in war against utilitarian calculation. The Last Word (1997) argued that reason cannot be explained away by evolution or culture without self-refutation, and Mind and Cosmos (2012) proposed that mind is a basic feature of nature requiring teleological laws, an atheist's rejection of materialist reductionism.
Why he matters: He is the most respected living atheist to say that materialism is false, that reason and value are objective, and that the “cosmic question” the religious ask is a real one; Edward Feser, First Things and the Thomist revival have taken Mind and Cosmos as an opening, and his candor about the “fear of religion” is a text for any Catholic apologist. His moral absolutism in war stands close to the doctrine of intrinsically evil acts.
Where to be careful
He denies God and the arguments for Him (Dei Filius ch. 2), rejects the immortal soul while rejecting materialism, and locates teleology within nature rather than in a Creator's providence (CCC 302–314); his sexual and political liberalism diverge from the Church's moral teaching. What remains is large: objective truth and reason, the irreducibility of the person, moral realism, deontological limits and the admission that nature points beyond what physics can say.
Reading
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Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly FalseThomas Nagel · The anti-reductionist case, short and provocative.
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The View from NowhereThomas Nagel · Subjective and objective standpoints; the chapters on free will and the meaning of life.
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Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological ScienceEdward Feser · A Thomist takes up Nagel's teleology and carries it where he would not go.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.