class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide .title[ # The absurd and the meaning of life ] .subtitle[ ## Thomas Nagel ] .date[ ### PHIL 2350 The Meaning of Life - FS23 ] --- # Agenda for this week 1. Video Lecture 1: Richard Taylor: The Meaning of Life 2. Video Lecture 2: Thomas Nagel: The Absurd 3. Video Lecture 3: Joel Feinberg: Absurd Self-fulfillment 4. Quiz --- # Questions for this week 1. What do Taylor, Nagel, and Feinberg agree on regarding the question of the meaning of life? 2. According to Taylor, why (and in what sense) is life meaningless (or absurd)? 3. According to Taylor, why (and in what sense) is life meaningful? 4. According to Taylor, is the difference between Sisyphus and Sisyphus* significant enough to make life meaningful? 5. According to Nagel, why is life meaningless? 6. Why does Nagel say that our life is _inescapably_ absurd? 7. According to Nagel, is the life of a _mouse_ absurd? 8. According to Feinberg, why (and in what sense) is life meaningful? 9. According to Feinberg, is life pointless? Explain 10. According to Feinberg, what is self-fulfillment? --- # Nagel: _The Absurd_ Main thesis: Life is inescapably absurd for us because of our perception of the irresolvable discrepancy between the seriousness with which we take our life and the arbitrariness of all that we do. 1. A situation is absurd for a subject when the subject can perceive a clear discrepancy between pretension (aspiration) and reality. 1. A situation is inescapably absurd when its inherent discrepancy cannot possibly be resolved. 1. We take our life seriously (we pretend our life is serious). 1. From a universal, timeless point of view (_sub specie aeternitatis_), we see that the seriousness with which we take our lives is unwarranted. 1. We see this discrepancy and still cannot help but act as if life is serious. 1. Therefore, life is inescapably absurd for us. --- ### Premise 1: A situation is absurd for a subject when the subject can perceive a clear discrepancy between pretension (aspiration) and reality. Examples of absurd situations: - Someone gives a complicated speech in support of a motion that has already been passed. - A notorious criminal is made president of a major philanthropic foundation. - You declare your love over the telephone to a recorded announcement. - As you are being knighted, your pants fall down. --- ### Premise 2: A situation is inescapably absurd when its inherent discrepancy cannot possibly be resolved. In all the previous examples, it is possible to remove the absurdity by making some change to the story: - Modifying aspirations: instead of declaring love, think about the person rehearsing it. - Trying to bring reality into better accord with pretensions: instead of making a criminal president of a philanthropic foundation, making them president of a criminal organization. - Removing a person from the situation: Remove the subject that is being knighted from the stage. We will see later that _we cannot do this_ when it comes to the discrepancy that makes life absurd. --- ### Premise 3: We take our life seriously (we pretend our life is serious). We devote to our lives our best resources: - We think rationally (we don’t act on impulse). - We weigh consequences. - We ask whether what we do is worthwhile. - We make careful decisions (whom to marry, what profession to follow, etc.). > “Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.” (Nagel, 140) --- > Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern. This fact is so obvious that it is hard to find it extraordinary and important. Each of us lives his own life—lives with himself twenty-four hours a day. What else is he supposed to do—live someone else’s life? Yet humans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed, with that detached amazement which comes from watching an ant struggle up a heap of sand. Without developing the illusion that they are able to escape from their highly specific and idiosyncratic position, they can view it sub specie aeternitatis—and the view is at once sobering and comical. (Nagel, 140) --- ### Premise 4: From a universal, timeless point of view (sub specie aeternitatis), we see that the seriousness with which we take our lives is unwarranted. - _Sub specie aeternitatis_: (something) viewed in relation to the eternal; in a universal perspective. - We can adopt this view due to our capacity of _self-reflection_. - We see ourselves from a universal, timeless perspective: - All our efforts will eventually come to nothing. - We strive to survive with no apparent reason. > We step back to find that the whole system of justification and criticism, which controls our choices and supports our claims to rationality, rests on responses and habits that we never question, that we should not know how to defend without circularity, and to which we shall continue to adhere even after they are called into question. (p. 140) --- ### Premise 5: We see this discrepancy, and still cannot help but act as if life is serious. - After appreciating the arbitrariness of what we do, we continue to take life seriously. > 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. 140) --- # Why is the life of a mouse not absurd? > Why is the life of a mouse not absurd? The orbit of the moon is not absurd either, but that involves no strivings or aims at all. A mouse, however, has to work to stay alive. Yet he is not absurd, because he lacks the capacities for self-consciousness and self-transcendence that would enable him to see that he is only a mouse. If that did happen, his life would become absurd, since self-awareness would not make him cease to be a mouse and would not enable him to rise above his mousely strivings. Bringing his new-found self-consciousness with him, he would have to return to his meagre yet frantic life, full of doubts that he was unable to answer, but also full of purposes that he was unable to abandon. (p. 144)