before picasso, art was about beauty. before copernicus, the earth was the center of the universe. before einstein, time was absolute. each of these moments shattered a fundamental assumption—an idea so ingrained in culture that it was invisible until someone broke it. but what if philosophy itself has been trapped inside its own invisible assumption? what if thinking is only capable of grasping what is already thinkable? lee braver, in thoughts on the unthinkable, forces us to confront this paradox: philosophy, in its obsessive questioning, might be unable to question its most fundamental limitation—the fact that it can only think what can be thought.
this isn’t just an academic exercise. it’s a radical provocation. if we can only think in structured concepts, then what happens to things that don’t fit? do they just disappear? or worse, do they exist just beyond the periphery of our comprehension, haunting our minds like a glitch in a computer program—something that doesn’t belong but refuses to go away?
the trap of the thinkable: philosophy’s blind spot
for millennia, philosophy has assumed that what can be thought is what can be. from parmenides to kant, thinkers have reinforced the idea that reality and thought are inseparable: if you can’t conceptualize something, then it doesn’t exist. this assumption, which braver calls the thinkability restriction, has shaped entire traditions of philosophy. but there’s a problem—any attempt to define what can’t be thought already requires thinking about it. just like the liar’s paradox (“this sentence is false”), trying to grasp the unthinkable collapses into contradiction.
kant approached this issue by drawing a hard boundary: we can only know phenomena—the world as it appears to us—not noumena, the world as it really is. but he still assumes that there’s a neat division between what is accessible to us and what isn’t. hegel, on the other hand, argued that kant’s distinction was an illusion—if we talk about the “outside,” then it’s already inside our thought system. the absolute can’t be unknowable if we can describe it at all.
but what if both kant and hegel missed something crucial? what if there are things so radically unthinkable that they never even enter our awareness? what if reality isn’t just bigger than what we think, but fundamentally beyond what thought can capture?
encountering the abyss: can we think what defies thought?
imagine trying to explain the concept of color to someone who has been blind from birth. no matter how detailed your description, no words, metaphors, or scientific explanations can fully convey the experience of red or blue. this is the nature of the unthinkable—it isn’t just unknown; it exists outside the structure of our thought itself.
philosophy has tried to deal with this abyss in different ways. wittgenstein famously said, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” derrida, on the other hand, argued that the unthinkable constantly leaks into thought, disrupting and destabilizing meaning. and kierkegaard? he went a step further—he said true faith is exactly this: embracing something you can’t understand, something that shatters your ethical and rational world.
braver takes this idea and pushes it even further. what if the very structure of thought itself is the problem? what if every philosophy, every rational system, every attempt to grasp the truth is just a sophisticated way of avoiding the fundamental terror of the unknown?
two kinds of unthinkable: the relative and the absolute
not all unthinkable things are created equal. braver distinguishes between two types:
- relatively unthinkable: these are ideas that don’t fit into our current frameworks but could be understood if we changed our conceptual tools. for example, einstein’s relativity was once unthinkable within newtonian physics, but it became comprehensible once we revised our understanding of space and time.
- absolutely unthinkable: these are things that can never be brought into thought, no matter how much we stretch our conceptual boundaries. imagine trying to think about a dimension beyond space and time. no analogy, no mathematical model, no conceptual shift can ever fully capture it. it remains a gap, a blind spot, an absence at the heart of knowledge.
this distinction matters because philosophy has traditionally operated under the assumption that anything can be understood given enough time and intellectual effort. but what if some things are permanently beyond our reach? what if there are entire realms of reality that we will never even suspect exist?
philosophy as transgression: breaking the limits of reason
if philosophy is about pushing boundaries, then its final task might be to break itself. braver suggests that true philosophy isn’t about constructing airtight arguments or building logical systems—it’s about tearing them down. it’s about confronting the limits of reason and recognizing that these limits aren’t just obstacles; they are fundamental conditions of being human.
think of philosophy like extreme sports. some people climb mountains just to see if they can survive the altitude, the thin air, the sheer physical exhaustion. others dive into the ocean’s deepest trenches, knowing full well that the pressure could crush them. philosophy, at its most radical, does the same thing—it pushes thought to the very edge of collapse to see what’s on the other side.
the ethics of the unthinkable: can we act beyond reason?
if there are things beyond thought, does that mean ethics itself is limited? kierkegaard’s fear and trembling explores this with the story of abraham, who is commanded by god to sacrifice his son. rationally, ethically, this act is indefensible. and yet, abraham obeys—not because he understands, but because he submits to something beyond his capacity to understand. this is the “leap of faith,” the moment when thought gives way to something deeper.
modern philosophy resists this idea. kant argued that ethics must always be rational—if an action can’t be justified logically, it’s immoral. but braver suggests that kant’s framework is another form of the thinkability restriction—it assumes that morality must fit within human reasoning. what if true morality sometimes requires stepping beyond reason? what if real ethical dilemmas involve choices that make no sense, choices that tear apart our moral frameworks?
what comes after philosophy?
if philosophy has been bound by the thinkable, then what comes next? braver doesn’t give a final answer—because that would be another form of closure, another attempt to domesticate the abyss. instead, he leaves us with a challenge:
- are we willing to confront the limits of our thought?
- can we recognize the difference between what is currently unthinkable and what will always be unthinkable?
- and most importantly, can we accept that philosophy’s highest calling isn’t just to explain the world, but to make us see how much of it we can never truly know?
somewhere, beyond the edges of reason, something waits. the question is: will we dare to face it?
Wrapping It Up—Thinking the Unthinkable Is the Point
So, philosophy’s not just about what we can think—it’s about what we can’t. It’s Picasso trashing beauty, Kant admitting we’re stuck in our heads, Hegel claiming we own the joint, and Kierkegaard whispering, “Maybe God’s crazier than all of us.” Transgressive Realism ties it together: we’re finite, reality’s real, and sometimes it bitch-slaps us into new ways of seeing.
This isn’t abstract bullshit. It’s why philosophy hooked me as a kid—those moments when a book or idea made the world feel bigger, weirder, scarier. It’s not about answers; it’s about questions that don’t quit. The unthinkable’s where the magic happens, where we grow, where we face the wild shit that makes us human. So next time your brain hits a wall, don’t back off—lean in. That’s where the good stuff lives.
