Mortal Questions By Thomas Nagel

Nagel believes that human life is inherently absurd because all human beings live their lives with seriousness despite inevitable doubts that any of our actions matter. Despite existential suspicion, we have no choice but to continue living as normal. In order to explain this view it is first necessary to define the term “absurd”, as well as what it means to live life seriously, and what it means to doubt life’s importance. Finally, assuming that Nagel is correct in his view that life is absurd, I will explore what implications follow about life’s meaning and value in general.

At some point in time we have all wondered what it means to human, and what we are supposed to do with our lives. Throughout the centuries, there have been gradual changes in what it means to be human. Through Pico della Mirandola we will how man became the measure and took the place of God, through Charles Darwin we will see how nature and science began to take the place of man, and through the art of Friedrich we can visually see all of these changes.

James Rachels claims that morality is absolute. In his article Mortality is Not Relative, he discusses the fallacies of Cultural Relativism as well as the Cultural Differences Argument. Rachels believes that all cultures have some values in common and that there is way less disagreement between them than it seems. He brings up the example of the Eskimo’s and how they choose to kill the infants that they cannot take care of, “The Eskimo’s values are not all that different from our values. It is only that life forces upon them choices that we do not have to make” (Rachels). Another example of this would be how in some cultures it is wrong to eat cows because they believe that the souls of their ancestors and deceased are reincarnated into the cow. In our culture we would not eat our grandparents either, the only difference is we do not believe that they become cows, thus we would have no problem eating cows. “Now do we want to say that their values are different than ours? No, the difference lies elsewhere. The difference is in our belief systems, not in our values” (Rachels).

We are meant to become our truest selves by finding meaning in our lives, which, according to Frankl, can come from three places: work, love, and our attitude in the face of horrific suffering or difficulty. And at the center of this meaning is our responsibility and human right to choose. In Frankl’s theory, we all strive to fulfill a self-chosen goal, from which meaning has the potential to be found. And if no meaning is found, there is meaning yet to be found, or meaning to be drawn from the apparent lack of meaning. Whatever the case, Frankl viewed man’s lack of meaning as the greatest existential crisis, the stress of this meaninglessness giving life and shape to all of our neuroses.

One burning and enduring problem in philosophy to which we have given considerable examination is the question of the existence of God--the superlative being that philosophers have defined and dealt with for centuries. After reading the classic arguments of St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas, the contentious assertions of Ernest Nagel, and the compelling eyewitness accounts of Julian of Norwich, I have been introduced to some of the most revered and referenced arguments for and against God's existence that have been put into text. All of them are well-thought and well-articulated arguments, but they have their holes. The question of God's true existence, therefore, is still not definitively answered and put to rest; the intensity of this

The novel Ordinary Resurrections, written by Jonathan Kozol, focuses on an area in south New York called the Bronx, which is a poor community composed of mainly African-American and Hispanic people. The author, Jonathan Kozol, focuses the novel specifically on the children who live in a section of the South Bronx called Mott Haven, which is America’s “epicenter for the plague of pediatric and maternal AIDS” (Kozol 3) and is “one of the centers of an epidemic of adult and pediatric asthma.” (Kozol 3). The people of Mott Haven do not have sufficient access to healthcare, live in extreme poverty, and are malnourished.

Social change comes from a societies understanding and acceptance of controversial topics, laws that enforce social norms and the politics that play a role in such change. The author Gerald Rosenberg of “The Hollow Hope” believes that the Supreme Court is able to bring about social change. Rosenburg main argument seemed to be questioning if a courts ruling that had once been accepted and had standing for several years were to be over turned, would the environment outside of the courtroom suddenly change and be accepting of their division.

Society tends to live day to day without much question of their own existence. Humans are born into the world and without second thought begin to live their lives, but there comes a time when individuals begin to question the reason for their being. In Richard Taylor’s, “The Meaning of Life”, Taylor explores the thought that our existence, when viewed externally without our prejudices, is fundamentally pointless. A thorough analysis of Taylor’s ideas will be given to understand the reasoning behind his thoughts, his argument will then be defended from counter arguments that state that the meaning behind any entity’s life could have any alternative meaning.

On the topic of the existence of God, Ernest Nagel and Richard Swinburne have construct arguments that challenge one another. In Nagel’s article, “Does God Exist?” he argues that if God is all-powerful, omniscient, and benevolent; he would know when evil occurs and has the power to prevent it. Because evil occurs, God does not exist. This is the problem of evil. Challenging Nagel, the article by Swinburne, “Why God Allows Evil,” argues that God has the right to allow moral and natural evils to occur because those evils reap greater goods that make the lives of human-beings meaningful. He extends his argument to the idea that God seeks to provide human beings with goods such as freewill and responsibility of not only ourselves, but of the world and others. While Nagel utilizes the problem of evil as an objection to the existence of God, Swinburne employs it to show that God allows evil to occur to provide human beings with goods that go beyond moments of pleasure and joys of happiness.

In 1971, Thomas Nagel wrote a paper titled ‘The Absurd.’ He argues that the nous of the absurd arises from two belligerent propensities in us: the first is explained as, ‘we take our lives’, or at slightest the ventures we take on in our lives, and that we cannot circumvent. In addition, the second propensity is that we are capable, upon undermining or reflecting, the explanations for any of our ventures in life. Furthermore, from a radical point of view outside people’s interests nothing can be justified; however we are skilled enough in taking up such a perspective reflection. What more can be said is that this absurdity is an ailment we are predestined to by virtue of our reflective nature. Though in general understanding to the idea,

In the article “Absurd Self-Fulfillment,” Feinberg offers his readers a close up examination of absurdity, self-fulfillment, and tries to show that every human life may contain some degree of each. He discusses how Richard Taylor, Albert Camus, and Thomas Nagel, each portray that there is indeed absurdity in all human beings, through the use of their own special qualifications. Taylor and Camus both conclude that there is no meaning to anything we do, and that the human condition is pointless and meaningless. They believe that absurd humans do whatever makes them happy, but before realizing the absurd, one is a slave of their own future goals. However, Nagel claims that absurdity results from the irresolvable clash between the importance people attach their lives too, and their capability of viewing themselves from a detached and impersonal perspective. Feinberg eventually adopts Nagel’s explanation of absurdity. Feinberg’s concept of self-fulfillment can be understood in the sense of doing what one is genetically inclined to do, which includes both one’s generic

In Richard Taylor’s chapter “Meaning of Life”, he concluded that objectively, life is meaningless. He stressed his opinion by arguing that life tends to be a cycle of goals that cumulate to nothing. These goals require sequences of exhausting work and attempt that will continue throughout the rest of life but will have no meaning. As one goal is reached, the next is sought out for, forgetting the one that was just achieved. I do not support Taylor on his objective meaningless of life. Life has a meaning, even if it is just being alive, we were created by God and he has a plan for us. Goals help us become better people and they are important to us. Taylor explained that we can find meaning in our lives when a will is put behind our actions. This means that meaningfulness can be found within the veins of anyone. I agree with Taylor, that our actions should be of interest to us, yet his account fails to show that they will make our lives have a meaning. There is no validation, that a change of the state of mind will cause our lives to achieve meaning.

(Nagel, The Meaning Of Life 99), what he is trying to say is that for one to stop asking “why” we must learn the answer, but if those questions can’t be answered because of the fact that it can’t be proven, then what are we really supposed to base it off of. The fact that we are told what to believe in and not allowed to question it because as Nagel states “His purposes are offered as the ultimate explanation of the value and meaning of our lives” (Nagel, The Meaning of Life 99) but does that really have any significant meaning to our

Camus explanations of the Myth of Sisyphus, presented the concept of the absurd by outlining the beliefs that an individuals life has worth but only his live in a world that denies such worth to survive. Therefore, the absurdity in the statement, explains the fact of a clash between the orders through which an individuals mind hard for, likewise the lack of order that we as humans find in the world.

In “Death”, Thomas Nagel debates and argues that the nature of death is bad, but not intrinsically bad. He explains one of his hypothesis with death and how it is a bad thing. It is a loss of life that deprives the person that was once alive of future fortunes. “Death is an evil at all, it cannot be because of its positives features, but because of what it deprives us of.” (pg.74)