Thomas Nagel as Philosopher-Priest and New Mysterian (Part One)

Thomas Nagel on Transcendence and Ineffability

“There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”

- Ludwig Wittgenstein (from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)

[This essay was written quite some time ago. The style is somewhat rhetorical, literary and (as it were) psychologistic. That said, I still agree with much of its philosophical content. However, if I were to write it today, the style would be a little different. Indeed most analytic philosophers would probably regard this essay as one long ad hominem against the American philosopher Thomas Nagel (1937-). Sure; there is an element of the ad hominem in the following. Yet hopefully it will be shown that there’s more to the essay than that.

(In fact I chose to write in a rhetorical style partly in response to the clear and prevalent rhetoric and “psychologising” I found in Thomas Nagel’s own book, The Last Word.]

In addition, the prefix “new” in “new mysterian” is a little dated (i.e., new mysterianism is no longer new) because the term was first coined in 1991 by the American philosopher Owen Flanagan…