orthogonal
Registered Senior Member
I’ve recently finished re-reading Mortal Questions by the philosopher, Thomas Nagel. His chapter titled, “The Absurd” is especially fascinating inasmuch as he concludes that our life is indeed absurd, but not for the usual reasons given*.
He wastes little time in saying what many of us suspect is true:
”All of it (life) is an elaborate journey leading nowhere.”
It’s commonly said that life is absurd because we’re so small in relation to the universe. Voltaire, in fact, compared us to “...an insect on an atom of mud.”
”...we are tiny specks in the infinite vastness of the universe; our lives are mere instants even on a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one; we will all be dead any minute.”
Nagel counters this complaint by suggesting that your life would be no less absurd even if your body were expanded to equal the dimensions of the universe. Likewise, if a short-lived absurdity were extended through all eternity it would become little more than an eternally absurdity. Meaning is independent of spatial dimensions or temporal longevity.
Short of suicide, perhaps the most common way to deal with the Absurd is to ignore it. Fill your daily life with so many tasks that you haven’t a moment left to wonder what it’s all about. “Lose yourself in your work” and switch on the radio in the car on the way home. When you fall exhausted onto the sofa in the evenings just as quickly switch on the television. The trick here is to avoid, at all costs, the prospect of ever having to sit quietly alone with your thoughts. But isn’t the hope that one might die without once having to come to terms with oneself only a lesser form of suicide?
”Given that the transcendental step is natural to us humans, can we avoid absurdity by refusing to take that step and remaining entirely within our sublunar lives? Well, we cannot refuse consciously, for to do that we would have to be aware of the viewpoint we were refusing to adopt. The only way to avoid the relevant self-consciousness would be never to attain it or to forget it - neither of which can be achieved by the will.”
The traditional attempt to banish absurdity had to do with giving ones life over to something greater than oneself.
”Those seeking to supply their lives with meaning...seek fulfillment in service to society, the state, the revolution, the progress of history, the advance of science, or religion and the glory of God.”
But this could only work if the thing greater than yourself to which you dedicate your life, itself has some ultimate meaning.
”If we can step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back from the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power, and the glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way.”
If we can ask why our own life matters, we can just as easily ask why the existence of God matters. Religionists tell us that we are part of God’s plan; that our aim should be to please God. But what is it about his plan that matters? Of what ultimate import is it that God should feel pleased? Why does it matter that a God exists rather than Nothing? If there were a God, wouldn’t he/she/it also wonder why he/she/it exists? Why would God feel that his/her/its existence is no less absurd than is ours?
”I would argue that 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....There does not appear to be any conceivable world (containing us) about which unsettlable doubts could not arise. Consequently, the absurdity of our situation derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision within ourselves.”
It appears that no possible world could satisfy man’s innate desire for an ultimate, unquestionable external meaning. Still:
”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.”
This is the essence of the Absurd, that what is so precious to us in this life counts for nothing beyond this life. What is precious is the present moment of our life. In his Meditations, the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, noted that death takes from us only the present, for the past has ceased to be and the future is not yet come. Wittgenstein reminds us in his Tractus:
“...eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
Georg Hegel, remarking how we are apt to be at the same time everywhere and nowhere, said:
”...man is not what he is and is what he is not...”
Sartre would say that “man does not coincide with himself.” It’s not an easy thing to live in the present, which is to say that it is not an easy thing to live at all. Even as our hearts are a-beating, the instant of our present is easily misplaced. A life spent in running to catch up with the present, or in waiting for the present to catch up with our dreams is never really lived. To again quote Sartre:
”Reality alone is what counts, dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations.”
When I lose my life I lose both everything and nothing. If my life had some ultimate meaning then my death would rate as a catastrophe of cosmic proportions. This is clearly not the case. The story of my life and death is more apt to be, figuratively speaking, a minor joke (and as jokes go, would lose something with each re-telling) rather than a cosmic catastrophe. Perhaps Jean De La Bruyere had a similar thought in mind when he wrote:
”Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.”
Camus’ Sisyphus, “proletarian of the gods” is only a myth. We have neither been condemned to an eternal something nor an eternal nothing. Of the eternal Nothing, Wittgenstein said:
“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”
We are briefly something, but it will never be the case that we are nothing. In his The Questions of Life, the Spanish philosopher, Fernando Savater wrote:
”If death is not-being we have already defeated it once, on the day we were born....Lucretius...in his philosophical poem On the Nature of the Universe speaks of mors aeterna, the eternal death of that which has never been and never will be. So we may well be mortal, but we have escaped eternal death. We have succeeded in stealing a chunk of time-the days, months, years during which we have been alive, each moment when we are still living-from that enormous death and, happen what may, the time will always be ours, time belonging to those who triumphed against death through being born-it will never belong to death, even if we must in the end die.”
We ought to congratulate each other for already having defeated mors aeterna. Until the end of time it will never be the case that you and I never were. We appeared, we’ll live and love for a time, and then we’ll melt away. I’m reminded that the graves of Roman Legionnaires, from Britain to the Middle-East, were commonly inscribed with the epitaph:
”Non fui, fui; nonsum, non curo.”
“I was not, I was; I am not, I don’t care.”
We would have felt no anguish whatsoever had we never appeared, so the fact that we have this small chance to be something rather than nothing should be a cause for a joyful curiosity rather than a heart-wrenching anguish. Thomas Nagel has written elsewhere:
”The only reason to fear death is if one survives it.”
We have no reason not to enjoy our life and no reason to fear our death. There is no greater task, no greater purpose and no greater meaning than that which I’m able to provide for myself. There is no vale of tears, no stain of original sin, and quite unlike the eternal task of Sisyphus; no rock to push up a mountain. As the Taoists would say:
“Nothing is done, yet nothing is left undone.”
The ultimate absurdity of my life is a welcome liberation from an otherwise certain despair of oppressive meaning.
Michael
* Unless otherwise noted, the quotes appearing in this post are taken from this chapter of Nagel’s book.
He wastes little time in saying what many of us suspect is true:
”All of it (life) is an elaborate journey leading nowhere.”
It’s commonly said that life is absurd because we’re so small in relation to the universe. Voltaire, in fact, compared us to “...an insect on an atom of mud.”
”...we are tiny specks in the infinite vastness of the universe; our lives are mere instants even on a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one; we will all be dead any minute.”
Nagel counters this complaint by suggesting that your life would be no less absurd even if your body were expanded to equal the dimensions of the universe. Likewise, if a short-lived absurdity were extended through all eternity it would become little more than an eternally absurdity. Meaning is independent of spatial dimensions or temporal longevity.
Short of suicide, perhaps the most common way to deal with the Absurd is to ignore it. Fill your daily life with so many tasks that you haven’t a moment left to wonder what it’s all about. “Lose yourself in your work” and switch on the radio in the car on the way home. When you fall exhausted onto the sofa in the evenings just as quickly switch on the television. The trick here is to avoid, at all costs, the prospect of ever having to sit quietly alone with your thoughts. But isn’t the hope that one might die without once having to come to terms with oneself only a lesser form of suicide?
”Given that the transcendental step is natural to us humans, can we avoid absurdity by refusing to take that step and remaining entirely within our sublunar lives? Well, we cannot refuse consciously, for to do that we would have to be aware of the viewpoint we were refusing to adopt. The only way to avoid the relevant self-consciousness would be never to attain it or to forget it - neither of which can be achieved by the will.”
The traditional attempt to banish absurdity had to do with giving ones life over to something greater than oneself.
”Those seeking to supply their lives with meaning...seek fulfillment in service to society, the state, the revolution, the progress of history, the advance of science, or religion and the glory of God.”
But this could only work if the thing greater than yourself to which you dedicate your life, itself has some ultimate meaning.
”If we can step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back from the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power, and the glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way.”
If we can ask why our own life matters, we can just as easily ask why the existence of God matters. Religionists tell us that we are part of God’s plan; that our aim should be to please God. But what is it about his plan that matters? Of what ultimate import is it that God should feel pleased? Why does it matter that a God exists rather than Nothing? If there were a God, wouldn’t he/she/it also wonder why he/she/it exists? Why would God feel that his/her/its existence is no less absurd than is ours?
”I would argue that 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....There does not appear to be any conceivable world (containing us) about which unsettlable doubts could not arise. Consequently, the absurdity of our situation derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision within ourselves.”
It appears that no possible world could satisfy man’s innate desire for an ultimate, unquestionable external meaning. Still:
”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.”
This is the essence of the Absurd, that what is so precious to us in this life counts for nothing beyond this life. What is precious is the present moment of our life. In his Meditations, the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, noted that death takes from us only the present, for the past has ceased to be and the future is not yet come. Wittgenstein reminds us in his Tractus:
“...eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
Georg Hegel, remarking how we are apt to be at the same time everywhere and nowhere, said:
”...man is not what he is and is what he is not...”
Sartre would say that “man does not coincide with himself.” It’s not an easy thing to live in the present, which is to say that it is not an easy thing to live at all. Even as our hearts are a-beating, the instant of our present is easily misplaced. A life spent in running to catch up with the present, or in waiting for the present to catch up with our dreams is never really lived. To again quote Sartre:
”Reality alone is what counts, dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations.”
When I lose my life I lose both everything and nothing. If my life had some ultimate meaning then my death would rate as a catastrophe of cosmic proportions. This is clearly not the case. The story of my life and death is more apt to be, figuratively speaking, a minor joke (and as jokes go, would lose something with each re-telling) rather than a cosmic catastrophe. Perhaps Jean De La Bruyere had a similar thought in mind when he wrote:
”Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.”
Camus’ Sisyphus, “proletarian of the gods” is only a myth. We have neither been condemned to an eternal something nor an eternal nothing. Of the eternal Nothing, Wittgenstein said:
“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”
We are briefly something, but it will never be the case that we are nothing. In his The Questions of Life, the Spanish philosopher, Fernando Savater wrote:
”If death is not-being we have already defeated it once, on the day we were born....Lucretius...in his philosophical poem On the Nature of the Universe speaks of mors aeterna, the eternal death of that which has never been and never will be. So we may well be mortal, but we have escaped eternal death. We have succeeded in stealing a chunk of time-the days, months, years during which we have been alive, each moment when we are still living-from that enormous death and, happen what may, the time will always be ours, time belonging to those who triumphed against death through being born-it will never belong to death, even if we must in the end die.”
We ought to congratulate each other for already having defeated mors aeterna. Until the end of time it will never be the case that you and I never were. We appeared, we’ll live and love for a time, and then we’ll melt away. I’m reminded that the graves of Roman Legionnaires, from Britain to the Middle-East, were commonly inscribed with the epitaph:
”Non fui, fui; nonsum, non curo.”
“I was not, I was; I am not, I don’t care.”
We would have felt no anguish whatsoever had we never appeared, so the fact that we have this small chance to be something rather than nothing should be a cause for a joyful curiosity rather than a heart-wrenching anguish. Thomas Nagel has written elsewhere:
”The only reason to fear death is if one survives it.”
We have no reason not to enjoy our life and no reason to fear our death. There is no greater task, no greater purpose and no greater meaning than that which I’m able to provide for myself. There is no vale of tears, no stain of original sin, and quite unlike the eternal task of Sisyphus; no rock to push up a mountain. As the Taoists would say:
“Nothing is done, yet nothing is left undone.”
The ultimate absurdity of my life is a welcome liberation from an otherwise certain despair of oppressive meaning.
Michael
* Unless otherwise noted, the quotes appearing in this post are taken from this chapter of Nagel’s book.
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