Nagel, The Absurd
Summary
• Many are persuaded that their lives are meaningless or absurd by reflecting on the fact that
nothing they will ever do will matter in a million years. They reason as follows:
P1 Our lives will not matter in a million years.
C Our lives are absurd.
• Nagel argues that, even if true, P1 shouldn’t give us any reason to think that our lives are
absurd. He reasons as follows:
P1 Our lives will not matter in a million years.
P2 If our lives now will not matter in a million years, then (by the
same token) whatever will be the case in a million years does
not matter now.
C1 So, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now.
[from P1 and P2]
C2 So, it does not matter now that our lives will not matter in a
million years. [from P1 and C1]
• Nagel similarly argues against some other reasons for thinking our lives are absurd, including
the fact that we are small specks in a vast universe (if our lives are absurd, would they stop
being absurd if we were bigger?
).
• Nevertheless, Nagel thinks that our lives are absurd. So if the standard reasons people give
for thinking life absurd aren’t any good, then why is life absurd?
– Nagel thinks that our sense that life as a whole is absurd arises from the realization that,
though we take our lives very seriously, it is always possible to call those things about
which we are most serious into doubt, and we are incapable of dispelling those doubts.
– If we are incapable of dispelling these doubts, if we are incapable of non-circularly
justifying our most fundamental commitments, then those commitments cannot be jus-
tified.
– So, our most fundamental commitments are without justification, and therefore, our
lives are meaningless.
– What makes our lives absurd is that, even though we are incapable of dispelling these
doubts, even though we are capable of recognizing, sub species aeternitatis, that our
lives are ultimately without meaning, we continue to take our lives seriously.
1
– “We see ourselves from the outside, and all the contingency and specificity of our aims
and pursuits becomes 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. 636)
• Nagel contends that this explains the reasons why people find the bad arguments (nothing
we do will matter in a million years; we’re tiny specks in a vast universe
) so compelling.
– Regarding ourselves as small and finite allows us to take the objective, third-personal
perspective on ourselves from which our concerns and our values appear arbitrary and
our projects appear ultimately absurd.
• What should we do about the absurdity of our lives? Nagel argues that we could not stop
viewing the world sub species aeternitatis. However, we could try to give up our values and
projects, or else we could just commit suicide. But we should only do that if the absurdity
of our lives presents us with a problem. Nagel denies that it does. He gives the following
reason:
P1 Sub species aeternitatis, nothing matters.
C So, sub species aeternitatis, it does not matter that sub species
aeternitatis
, nothing matters.
2