Thomas Nail

Thomas Nail is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Denver.

Biography

Nail became interested in philosophy through his political activism at the University of North Texas, where he received his B.A. in philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, where he studied political philosophy, environmental philosophy, feminist philosophy, phenomenology, post-structuralism, and continued his political activism. In Oregon, Nail wrote his dissertation on the theme of political revolution in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. This research was the foundation of his first book, Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari, and Zapatismo, published in 2012.

In 2009-2010, Nail was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to conduct a year-long participatory research program with the migrant activist movement, No One is Illegal in Toronto, Canada. This was a major source of inspiration for The Figure of the Migrant and Theory of the Border and the beginning of his work on the philosophy of movement.

Philosophy of Movement

Nail defines the philosophy of movement as “the analysis of diverse phenomena across social, aesthetic, scientific, and ontological domains from the primary perspective of motion.” The philosophy of motion is a unique kind of philosophical methodology. It is related to process philosophy but is distinct from Whitehead's discontinuous "occasions" and from Bergson's vitalism. “The difference between simply describing the motion of things, which almost every philosopher and even layperson has done, and the philosophy of movement is the degree to which movement plays an analytically primary role in the description.”

For example, Nail contrasts two methods of describing motion. On the one hand, if we describe a body moving through a space (x, y, z) over a time (t), we are describing motion, but we are not describing motion from the perspective of motion. This is because we have assumed the prior existence of static background spacetime coordinates (x, y, z, t) and the prior existence of a discrete, internally unchanging, “body” that moves through them. On the other hand, if we describe a situation from the perspective of motion there are no pre-given phenomena of space, time, or discrete bodies. There are only emergent features of matter-in-motion. In other words, if we begin from the perspective that movement (not space, time, or force) is primary, then motion is not reducible to spacetime. Matter-in-motion is not in spacetime but rather produces spacetime itself. This conclusion is consistent with, but not identical to, recent physical theories of motion in quantum gravity.

From the perspective of movement, according to Nail, all seemingly discrete bodies are the result of moving flows of matter that continually fold themselves up in various patterns or what he calls “fields of motion.” Nail's philosophy of movement provides a conceptual framework for the study of these patterns of motion through history.

Historical methodology

Nail, however, also claims his philosophy of movement is not a metaphysical theory of reality in itself. Instead, he describes it as a practical and historical methodology oriented by the unprecedented scale and scope of global mobility in the early 21st century. In particular, he names four major historical conditions that situate his thought: mass migration, digital media, quantum physics, and climate change. He therefore describes his philosophy as a “history of the present.”

New materialism

Nail also describes his work as loosely part of the recent philosophical tradition of new materialism. The term “new materialism” has been applied to numerous and divergent philosophies including speculative realists, object-oriented ontologists, and neo-vitalists who all share in common some version of non-anthropocentric realism. However, Nail's work does not fit into any of these camps. His philosophy of movement instead offers a different kind of new materialism insofar as it focuses on the pedetic/indeterministic motion of matter and its various kinetic patterns. His philosophy is also unique among new materialists because of its strongly historical methodology.

Book Series I: The Theory of Motion

Nail's published work is divided into two primary books series. The first series is composed of six “core” books, each written with a similar organization on five major areas of philosophy: ontology, politics, aesthetics, epistemology, and nature. Each book provides a theory, history, and contemporary case study of the kinetic method. The purpose of each book is to redefine its subject area from a kinetic or process materialist perspective.

The Figure of the Migrant (2015) and Theory of the Border (2016) develop a theory and history of what he terms “kinopolitics” based on the study of patterns of social motion. Theory of the Image (2019) develops a “kinesthetics” of moving images in the arts. Theory of the Object (not yet published) develops a “kinemetrics” of moving objects in the sciences. Theory of the Earth (not yet published) develops a “geokinetics” of nature in motion, and Being and Motion (2018) develops an original historical ontology of motion.

Book Series II: Philosophers of Motion

The second series is composed of several books, each written on a major historical precursor to the philosophy motion. This includes Lucretius, Karl Marx, and Virginia Woolf. Each book offers a kinetic interpretation and close reading of one of these figures as philosophers who made motion their fundamental starting point. They include Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion, released in 2018; and Lucretius II: An Ethics of Motion, 2020.