In his book, The Last Word, Thomas Nagel, an American philosopher and University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, takes a dim view of postmodernism's controversies which include tendencies toward subjectivism, relativism, and irrationalism. He also argues that postmodernism has influenced our culture away from rational discourse and sustained thinking:
The worst of it is that subjectivism is not just an inconsequential intellectual flourish or badge of theoretical chic. It is used to deflect argument, or to belittle the pretensions of the arguments of others. Claims that something is without relativistic qualification true or false, right or wrong, good or bad, risk being derided as expressions of a parochial perspective or form of life --- not as a preliminary to showing that they are mistaken whereas something else is right, but as a way of showing that nothing is right and that instead we are all expressing our personal or cultural points of view. The actual result has been a growth in the already extreme intellectual laziness of contemporary culture and the collapse of serious argument throughout the lower reaches of the humanities and social sciences, together with a refusal to take seriously, as anything other than first-person avowals, the objective arguments of others. (5, 6)
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