PHILOSOPHY 1100: THE MEANING OF LIFE Lectures
Notes: Thomas Nagel: "The Absurd" 4162751146
1. Bad Reasons for taking life to be absurd:
According to Thomas Nagel (1932-), "In ordinary life a situation
is absurd when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between
pretension or aspiration and reality" (p.1). Typically the sort of
'local' absurdity we deal with in everyday life can be repaired by
closing the gap between aspiration and reality by changing either
our aspirations or reality. It may be absurd for a 60 year old man to
dress is a way appropriate for a teenager, but this absurdity can be
remedied by the man changing the way he dresses. However, the
philosophical problem of absurdity relates to the worry that life
itself is absurd, not just some avoidable choices we make within it.
So why should we think that life is absurd in this way?
Nagel first considers three unsuccessful arguments for the
absurdity of life.
1.1 The Regress of Justification
The first of these relates to the fact that we can never seem to be
able to fully justify any of our actions. We may explain wanting to
do one thing in virtue or wanting another, but our justification for
wanting that other thing can be challenged as well. I can explain
why I go to a club in terms of wanting to meet a friend, and then
explain why I want to meet the friend in term so of my having
promised to do so, and my wanting to keep my promises in terms
of a general desire to keep to my word, and so on, but it will
always be possible to challenge any justification I give with a
request for further justification. The idea that we typically justify
one thing in terms of another thing, so I can justify going to the
store cause I have to buy food, justify buying food because I have
to make dinner and justify making dinner beacuase I am hugry
though being hungry might not have any justification, you will
eventually get to that root where there is no justification and
recognizing that this foundation cannot be justified can cuase a
kind of vertigo.
Even if someone wished to supply a further justification for
pursuing all the things in life that are commonly regarded as self-
justifying, that justification would have to end somewhere too. If
nothing can justify unless it is justified in terms of something
outside itself, which is also justified, then an infinite regress
results, and no chain of justification can be complete. Moreover, if
a finite chain of reasons cannot justify anything, what could be
accomplished by an infinite chain, each link of which must be
justified by something outside itself? (p.1)
However, the best response to this fact about the open ended
character of requests for justification may be not that nothing is
justified, but rather that things can be justified even if we, at some
point, don't go on with the processes of justifying it. As it is
commonly put, justification must eventually come to an end. If this
is the case, there is no reason to think that it may come to an end at
a point that leaves our everyday projects justified. In short, "Since
justifications must come to an end somewhere, nothing is gained
by denying that they end where they appear to, within life – or by
trying to subsume the multiple, often trivial ordinary justifications
of action under a single, controlling life scheme" (p.1). its not
some special feature of our life that will eventually rekind intrying
to justify something, the fact about justification not about life, that
anytime you give justification for something you can always
legitimately ask what justifies that justifying, the fact about the
game of reasons, any given reason can be challenged. The fact that
justification for our own projects comes to an end is not a special
criticism of our own projects, doesn’t make them absurd just
shows something about justification not our life.
1.2. Nothing matters in the long run
Another argument for life's absurdity that Nagel does not accept
relates to the fact that, in a million years, it won't matter whether I
get a job, get married, have kids, write a novel, or anything at all.
Nobody will remember me in 1,002,006 C.E., and there is a good
chance that humanity will have died out completely by then. The
long, long, long, term future will be pretty much the same no
matter what I do, so it can seem as if nothing I do 'really' matters.
However, this sort of argument presupposes that for something to
'really' matter, it needs to matter a million years from now, but it is
far from clear that that should be the case. As Nagel puts it:
It is often remarked that nothing we do now will matter in a million
years. But if that is true, then by the same token, nothing that will
be the case in a million years matters now. In particular it does not
matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will
matter...Whether what we do now will matter in a million years
could make the crucial difference only if its mattering in a million
years depended on its mattering, period. (p.1) the fact that in a
million years nothing we do not matters, itself doesn‟t matter. If
nothing now matters, in the future nothing will matter shouldn‟t
matter either. The fact that nobody is going to be poplar in a
billion years from now doesn‟t change the fact that they ARE
popular now. If something doesn‟t matter in a million years, doesnt
mean it shouldn‟t matter now. Maybe the mattering now and then
are independent of each other. If mattering is more objective than
just caring than it could matter even if nobody is around, Hitler
started 2nd
world war, it matters now and mayb it will matter in a
million years when nobody is around. The idea that it is not going
to matter in a billion years is probably arguable.
Reflection on what things will be like in a million years may thus
cause us to feel that our lives are absurd, but they don't justify such
a feeling.
1.3. Our „insignificance‟
A third argument that may seem to cause rather than justify a sense
of absurdity involves reflecting on what an 'insignificant' part of
the universe we are. Our lives, human history, or even the duration
of the planet earth are infinitesimal blips on the cosmic time scales
of space and time, and if anyone could survey space and time in
their entirety, or place in it would be so small that it would be
effectively invisible. However, while this sense of proportion may
induce a type of vertigo in some, its hard to see how it could be
what makes life absurd, since it also suggests that our lives would
somehow be more meaningful if we were bigger or lived longer.
The fact that a human history is a tiny sliver in the human history
in the planet and the planet history a tiny sliver in the galaxy.As
Nagel puts it:
For suppose we lived for ever; would not a life that is absurd if it
lasts seventy years be infinitely absurd if it lasted through eternity?
And if our lives are absurd given our present size, why would they
be any less absurd if we filled the universe? (p.1) if the problem or
source of absurbidity was just that we’re here for a small period of
time then our lives would not be absurd if we lived for ever, but it
might seem that an absurd if extended forevr is still absurd. It wont
become any more meaningful if you keep living the same way
forever, it might feel even more absurd if there was no closure. If
our lives are absurd because of our size, if I were a trillion times
bigger why would that make my life any less absurd. Those cant be
the problems causing absurbidity cause if you eliminate those
problems making yourselves really big or continue living, our lives
would still be absurd.
This last argument is worth giving some thought, since while most
people don't think that their life could become meaningful if they
were much bigger, many do seem to think that life would be
meaningful if they lived forever. In particular, many people
assume that their life on earth would be meaningless if there were
no afterlife, but if there is an afterlife (and its quality depends upon
how well we act in this life), then this life becomes significant.
This is true enough, but the significance involved is not the sort
that really deals with the philosophical problem of absurdity. For
instance, one could claim that your lives as college students are
significant because there is this life you will have after college, and
the quality of that life will be largely affected by how you do in
school. Our life in college is significant in relative to our employed
life after college, our employed life can be viewed as significant
relative to our life as a retiree, and so on. Still, the quest for a
meaning to our life is for a non-relative significance. The worry is
that our college life isn't meaningful in virtue of its impact on our
working life because our working life isn't itself meaningful.
Saying that our school life is important because it affects what job
we get just passes the buck, if it turns out that getting a job isn't
itself important, then the importance of our school life vanishes.
Now focusing on the afterlife has just the 'buck passing' character.
It makes our life on earth significant relative to our life in the
beyond, but unless our life in the beyond is meaningful in itself it
no more makes life meaningful than your eventual need to get a
job makes your life in school meaningful now. Either relative
meaningfulness is all we need, in which case we can understand
what makes our lives meaningful in terms of our earthly concerns,
or we need some sort of absolute meaningfulness, in which case
the fact that how we live here affects what we will experience in
the beyond does not necessarily make this life any more
meaningful. One reason people have to believe there is a life after
death because if all there is a brief period then life has no meaning
as if somehow life would become meaningful if it had a much
longer period but if this life is not meaningful why do I expect a
life in heaven be meaningful? Whats the point of eternity of life
chilling in heaven? Gives a point to this life..retired person has no
answer to whats the point of having a very pleasant retirement.
The Source of Absurdity the gap between what things aspire
to and what they really are is what makes things absurd, its not
absurd for me to train a bit and say that m running for a 10 k
race but if I say my plan is to win the gold medal that’s absurd.
Can train my whole life but wont even qualify in the Olympics
team let alone win a gold medal in the Olympics. That’s just
absurd to think that I can do that. Something where the gap is
too conspicuous creates absurdity. Fairly old people dressing
like young people, looks absurd. 16 year old dress like a escort
and smoke a pipe, seems absurd but can always be corrected in
some cases changing the reality or the aspiration. Change the
way they dress. Wants to be in Olympics can give up that
ambition. Most people have an aspiration that’s totally out of
line with whats ever gonna happen so all of us this exhibit this
kind of local absurbidity to some extent but the real issue when
people worry about life being absurd. Its not just I have got
this contingent conditon which I could fix if I had to think
different but the worry about life being absurd is that human
life in its essence in some un changeable way is abusrd for all of
us. It’s not a feature true for some and not others.
In spite of his criticisms of what he takes to be the standard
arguments for life's absurdity, Nagel does think that there is
something to the intuition that life is absurd, and he diagnoses it in
the following way.
When a person finds himself in an absurd situation, he will usually
attempt to change it, by modifying his aspirations, or by trying to
bring reality into better accord with them, or by removing himself
from the situation entirely. We are not always willing or able to
extricate ourselves from a position whose absurdity has become
clear to us. Nevertheless, it is usually possible to imagine some
change that would remove the absurdity – whether or not we can
or will implement it. The sense that life as a whole is absurd arises
when we perceive, perhaps dimly, an inflated pretension or
aspiration which is inseparable from the continuation of human
life and which makes its absurdity inescapable, short of escape
from life itself.
Many people's lives are absurd, temporarily or permanently, for
conventional reasons having to do with their particular ambitions,
circumstances, and personal relations. If there is a philosophical
sense of absurdity, however, it must arise from the perception of
something universal – some respect in which pretension and reality
inevitably clash for us all. This condition is supplied, I shall argue,
by the collision between the seriousness with which we take our
lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about
which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt. (p.2) nagel
thins we can think of human life as shwping some kind of
discrepancy between aspiration and reality, if oyu think of how
there are 2 perpectives one can take on ones lfie. A sort of
subjective one, the perspective that you live very much in the
moment, what seems important is imp. A more objective
perpective is where we can recognize that our point of view is not
just the way the world is but infact a take on the world and the
world is diff from our point of view, and our point of view of what
we believe to be imp is diff, there is a gap between our point of
view and the worlds point of view. Sometimes taking an objective
perspective is good, shows us our strong desire is not a good one,
desire to buy a Ferrari, step back and think why do I want a Ferrari.
An increasingly objective perspective where everything you take to
be imp might seem contingent, recognize your values are function
of the way we are brought up. Just recognizing that had I been born
in the 15th
century id probably thin kthat slavery was fine, even if
that’s true doesn’t make me any less inclined to think that slavery
is an awful thing and so there are lots of awful prejudices I would
have had if I were born 200 years ago and those prejudices still
seem awful even if I had them myself. From the objective
perspective we can recognize the contingency of what we take to
be subjectively imp but that doesn’t make us come out of our
preferences, doesn’t stop us from taking those preferences. This
tension is ongoing. Disengage by taking an objective view,
recognize our preferences are arbitrary but still feel the full of
wanting those things makes life absurd.
We get to this position because there are two perspective we can
take on our own lives, the subjective perspective, where we focus
on how things seem to us and take our valuations at face value, and
the objective perspective, where we try to focus on the world as it
is in itself independent of what we may believe or feel about it.
There is some value in taking a comparatively objective
perspective, in that we want at least some distance from our
particular desires, and this perspective can take us from what we
do desire to what we should desire, but if taken too far, it can seem
to lead us to a point where nothing has any value at all.
This collision between the seriousness with which we take our
lives and the arbitrariness of what we take so seriously could be
eliminated if we were less serious about our everyday concerns
(which seems to be the advice we get from, say, Schopenhauer and
the Stoics), but Nagel argues that we don't really have control over
our point of view in this way, and can't help but take our concerns
seriously even after we have recognized their arbitrary nature. We
can't help be see our lives as absurd because we can't help but take
a 'subjective' and 'objective' view of our own lives. People brought
in north America think beating your children wrong but brought up
in England might not think so. As Nagel puts it:
We see ourselves from outside, and all the contingency and
specificity of our aims and pursuits become clear. Yet when we
take this view and recognize what we do as arbitrary, it does not
disengage us from life, and there lies our absurdity: not in the fact
that such an external view can be taken of us, but in the fact that
we ourselves can take it, without ceasing to be the persons whose
ultimate concerns are so coolly regarded. (p.3)
Lecture Notes, Nagel, “The Absurd”, p.3
We cannot live human lives without... making choices which show
that we take some things more seriously than others. Yet we have
always available a point of view outside the particular form of our
lives, from which the seriousness appears gratuitous. These two
inescapable viewpoints collide in us, and that is what makes life
absurd. (p.2)
3. Living with Absurdity
3.1. Inadequate responses
Absurdity can thus seem to be a real problem for our lives, and if
Nagel is right, it may be an inescapable one. He considers a
number of ways of escaping such absurdity, but finds none of them
adequate. One response might be to think that if there was
something absurd about taking our own lives seriously, we could
escape absurdity by identifying with something 'bigger' than
ourselves ('humanity', 'science', 'the Church', etc.), but this merely
obscures rather than eliminates the underlying absurdity of our
lives. It may be harder to see, but the same questions that
undermined the serious of our own lives can undermine the
seriousness of these as well. He think we cant overcome that
absurdity and that there is no way of getting around with it and so
there are certain inadequate responses that try to sort of escape
absurdity of life. The first is to recognize that mayb our life is
absurd but maybe we can identify with something bigger that I will
tie my life to my nation, humanity, God or the church, some bigger
cuase that gives my life meaning but it turns out the sorf ot
objectifying view that we can take towards our own life we can
take towards there bigger causes as well, from the objective
perspective tis going to be that the interest of humanity, church,
god are going to be no more serious than the concerns that we have
ourselves.
If we can step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt
their point, we can step back also from the progress of human
history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom,
power, and glory of God, and put all these things into question in
the same way. (p.3)
A possibly more successful way of eliminating absurdity would be
to stop reflecting on our lives and act more impulsively, say, the
way an animal does. An animal doesn't have an absurd life
because, while its condition is not meaningful, it doesn't aspire to
be anything more than what it is, it doesn't take its projects
'seriously' the way we do. If we could get back to this more animal
state, we could eliminate the absurdity from our lives, but this
would not be by making our lives somehow meaningful. Rather, it
would be by taking away any pretensions of meaningfulness that
our lives might have had. As Nagel puts it:
if someone simply allowed his individual, animal nature to drift
and respond to impulse, without making the pursuit of its needs a
central conscious aim, then he might ... achieve a life that was less
absurd than most. It would not be a meaningful life either, of
course; but it would not involve the engagement of a transcendent
awareness in the assiduous pursuit of mundane goals. And that is
the main condition of absurdity. (p.6)
A final way to try to escape absurdity would be to choose to
commit suicide, but Nagel takes such a response to be an
overreaction to our absurd condition, since if nothing matters, the
fact that our lives are absurd is itself not such a big deal
3.2. Humility and Irony
Still, if we can't eliminate absurdity from our lives, we should at
least reconcile ourselves with it, and, in the end, Nagel
recommends that we allow reflections on the absurdity of our
situation to lead us towards an 'ironic' approach to our own projects
and values: recognize that you cannot escape absurdity and try to
lvie with it if not embrace it. We cant help but take our preferences
seriously and take them as fairly robust but there can be something
good about that ability to step back and recognize the contingency,
take an ironic stance in some things you take seriously.
Philosophical skepticism does not cause us to abandon our
ordinary beliefs, but it lends them a peculiar flavor. After
acknowledging that their truth is incompatible with possibilities
that we have no grounds for believing do not obtain - apart from
grounds in those very beliefs which we have called into question –
we return to our
familiar convictions with a certain irony and resignation. Unable
to abandon the natural responses on which they depend, we take
them back, like a spouse who has run off with someone else and
then decided to return; but we regard them differently... The same
situation obtains after we have put in question the seriousness with
which we take our lives and human life in general and have looked
at ourselves without presuppositions. We then return to our lives,
as we must, but our seriousness is laced with irony. Not that irony
enables us to escape the absurd. It is useless to mutter: 'Life is
meaningless; life is meaningless...' as an accompaniment to
everything we do. In continuing to live and work and strive, we
take ourselves seriously in action no matter what we say. (p.5) we
recognize the contingency of our preferences and realize that
somebody who has a slightly different preference isn‟t necessarily
mistaken for being so. Don‟t want to be too dogmatic about things
you take seriously. People who think everyone should take
seriously what they take seriously are really good people so
recognition of absurdity is a good thing in that way.
While one might wonder whether we can take such an ironic
approach to all of our values (it is much easier to be ironic towards
one's taste in clothing than it is about one's religious beliefs), Nagel
thinks that this sort of irony can lead to a type of 'humility' on our
part (in that we come to recognize that what we take to be
important is ultimately a fact about us not about what the universe
as a whole takes to be important), which is generally a very
desirable characteristic.
Indeed, when all is said and done, Nagel is fairly positive about the
absurd. In particular, absurdity is an inevitable consequence of our
ability to see things objectively, and since this capacity for
objectivity is one of our most admirable features, we should be
willing to accept the absurdity that comes with it. In other words:
absurdity is one of the most human things about us; a
manifestation of our most advanced and interesting
characteristics. Like skepticism in epistemology, it is possible only
because we possess a certain kind of insight – the capacity to
transcend ourselves in thought. (p.6) our life is absurd not because
its not meaningful, it aspires towards a kind of meaning that
nothing has. Mites, ants are not absurd don‟t have meaningful
lives. Knowing my perspective of the world is separate from the
world itself.