Absurdity, Angst, and the Meaning of Life

Abstract

In his seminal paper, ‘The Absurd’, Thomas Nagel sets out his conception of the problem of the meaning of life. In particular, he takes this problem to concern the potential absurdity of life, and he offers a persuasive account of what such absurdity might consist in. It is argued that Nagel confuses the epistemological problem of how one could gain a subjective guarantee that one’s life is meaningful with the metaphysical problem of whether one’s life is meaningful. It is thus concluded that the considerations that Nagel offers for thinking that one’s life is absurd establish, at best, merely the weaker conclusion that one necessarily lacks a subjective guarantee that one’s life is not absurd. Still, this conclusion is nonetheless philosophically important, since it suffices to ensure that a degree of angst regarding the meaningfulness of our lives is unavoidable. 0. In his seminal paper, ‘The Absurd’, Thomas Nagel (1970) offers a key insight into the problem of the meaning of life. In particular, he sets out a certain conception of the absurd and then argues that there are good grounds for thinking that such absurdity applies to our own lives, thereby rendering them devoid of meaning. We will call the view that our lives are necessarily absurd, and hence meaningless, absurdism. I will be arguing that the conception of the absurd that Nagel sets out is indeed key to the problem of the meaning of life, and thus that an adequate resolution to the problem of the meaning of life must be able to demonstrate that absurdism is false. Nevertheless, I will not be following him in arguing that there are good grounds for absurdism. Instead, I will be suggesting that Nagel’s arguments in fact support a much weaker epistemological claim. Even so, the truth of this epistemological thesis ensures that a degree of angst regarding whether our lives are meaningful is unavoidable.