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.