Thomas Nagel : The Meaning Of Life

It is inevitable that we will all die it is a fact that everyone must come to terms with. There comes a time in everyone’s life that they must face death; a friend’s tragic accident, a family member’s passing or their own battles with diseases. When faced with the idea of death people will act in different ways some may find it therapeutic to apologize for the negative they have done, some may want to spend time with loved ones to ease the future pain, and others may decide that their life was not what they believed. The story Death Constant Beyond Love tells us about a man named Senator Sanchez who is living a happy life with his wife and five kids. That is until he is told by doctors that he only has a short time to live. Death is

Thomas Nagel states that human beings have a “natural expression” for the sense that life is absurd (Nagel 29). In his essay, simply titled “The Absurd”, Nagel argues that this natural presumption is true, but not for the reasons commonly given: the smallness and brevity of our lives. Instead, our lives are absurd because they feature an inevitable conflict between our feeling that life lacks justification and our inability to disengage with life despite this feeling. I argue that Nagel mistakenly includes awareness in his philosophical definition of absurdity. Nonetheless, his essay is an insightful read about the nature of human life.

In Susan Wolf’s, “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life” Susan writes what makes a meaningful life, her belief is as followed “Active engagement in objective worthwhile activities.” Wolf believe this is the solution to a happy life instead of a depressing and sad one. Wolf said that both Active engagement and objective worthwhile activities need to be present to have a meaningful life. Thought the page, we will see how Wolf arguments requires both parts to accomplish meaningful life then we will make an objection to the arguments which I will then respond to argue against showing why the objection is false.

Susan R. Wolf (born 1952) is a moral philosopher who works extensively on the meaning of human life and is the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wolf addresses the questions of the meaning of life in hope to distinguish the characteristics and reasoning that gives meaning to life. According to Susan Wolf view about the meaning in life, “I would say that meaningful life are lives of active engagement in projects of worth… two key phrases, ‘active engagement’ and ‘projects of worth’” (Wolf, 205). However, I believe that her proposal leaves out our basic motives and reasoning that’s

Wolf argues that since meaningfulness in one’s life is a factor in well-being, we should try to increase the amount of chances people can have meaningful lives. To understand why meaningfulness is important in our well-being, we must understand what Wolf believes a meaningful life is. Wolf describes a meaningful life as one that is participating in a project that that is bringing positive value. Also, the project has to be successful and completed to be meaningful. If the project is not completed the life will be considered a meaningless one. Wolf also argues that we should want a meaningful life, that is occupied with a project that brings a positive

She, on the contrary, argues that meaningfulness is the predominant reason of a meaningful life. The Fulfillment view and the Larger -than -Oneself view act as a positive catalyst for constructing her own theory of meaningfulness. She continues, ‘According to the conception of meaningfulness I wish to propose, meaning arises from loving objects worthy of love and engaging with them in a positive way. …One might paraphrase this by saying that, according to my conception, meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness, and one is able to do something good or positive about it’ [2010:8-9]. The former view provides the subjective side of the meaningfulness and the latter view provides the objective side of the meaningfulness. Wolf has argued that all meaningful lives have two sides; a ‘subjective’ and an ‘objective’. These can be categorize into three elements ;(i) subjective attraction, (ii) active engagement, and (iii) objective worthiness. The aforementioned two sides have formed together the meaning of life. She names her concept The Fitting Fulfillment view that requires for experience meaning a person should relate to the object of his passion to the objective value of that object. Only good or positive passion can be act as a

87 Thomas Nagel starts his gathering of articles with a most interesting discussion about death. Death being a standout amongst the most clearly imperative subjects of consideration, Nagel takes an intriguing approach as he tries to define the truth as to whether death is or is not a damage for that single person. He starts by taking a gander at the very common perspectives of death that are held by a great many people in the world, and lets us know that he will talk of death as the "Unequivocal and permanent end to our existence" and looks at the actual nature of death itself. The first view that Nagel chooses to talk about is the perspective that death is awful for us on the grounds that it denies us of more life.Nagel gives an example of death and being in a coma before dying. Looking now at what is not good about death rather than what is great about life, Nagel shows a few evident thoughts in regards to this point. So death is awful in light of the fact that it denies us of these encounters, not on account of the genuine condition of death is terrible for us. The second issue is that which needs to do with who the subject of mischief brought on by death is, and when

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.

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 book Mortal Questions, Thomas Nagel explains the evilness and goodness of death. Thomas Nagel explains death, and whether it is evil or good, he ends the chapter by showing that if it were possible to live longer than the average human does, than death may be a tragedy. Nagel shows how being dead is bad for someone that was alive before being dead, however being nonexistent before someone was born is neither bad nor good because they were not deprived of something before their birth. He also shows why people wouldn’t pity those that are suspended in a non-animate state of being and eventually will come back in an animate state of being. In addition he shows why people pity others who have been reduced to lower state of consciousness. Moreover, he shows

Thomas Nagel covers the issues of the purpose of humanity in his piece, “Free Will”. There are several topics that Nagel covers as he starts out hopeful of the idea of free will itself. Free will defined by Merriam Webster as freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention. All our lives we are taught that we do things on our own accord and that we have the right to choose the things that happen to us. He gives the example of choosing between a peach and some cake. This, actually, is not a real example of free will, but rather personal preference that has been predetermined from our upbringing, the environment we are placed in and even and even genetics. I could choose the peach because I know that my predetermined genes will eventually make me into a diabetic so I want to stay as healthy as I can. That in itself does not give me a very wide scope of choices, but more or less narrows it. As he goes on, he explains that we all want to think that we have “free will”. We want to think that we have our own choices and the ability to drive our own lives at our own expense. Yet, when it comes down to it, that is not the case at all. According to his take on it, nothing would be able to be predicted about the future if there was such a thing as free will. A simpler way to look at it is the discussion we had towards the very beginning of the course. We discussed how everything seems to come from something, so how can something come

In “The Meaning of Lives,” Wolf asserts that the question “What is the Meaning of Life?” is inherently unintelligible because it is uncertain what the question is asking. In other words it is too general because it has no specified context. Wolf then acknowledges, however, that there is value in examining the meaningfulness of a life. This is because she observes people wanting meaning as an unchangeable fact. While there is no grand reason for meaning, she suggests that we can create value through what we do in our life. In her work, Wolf constructs a framework on how to obtain meaning in one’s life. I will examine her view, then critically discuss the positive attributes and the shortcomings. Wolf does a sufficient job to outline a possible way to achieve meaning. However, I will argue that a definition for the meaningful life that does not include morality and happiness is not sufficient. Lastly, I will express the subjective and objective tension that weakens her stance.

In the Journal of Philosophy, a captivating article called, “The absurd,” by Thomas Nagel (1971), challenges the notion of how life is viewed among diverse interpretation. He starts off by brilliantly asking why people sometimes denote life as absurd. Here Nagel begins to start the cycle of doubt, and attempts to make the readers question their assertions. This can be seen in part I of the article, where Thomas tackles on assertion. The assertion that “that nothing we do will matter in a million years.” Nagel objectifies the claim by reversing the focus instead of what matters, to the aspect of time, as he writes, “In particular, it does not matter now that in a million years matters now.” What he means is that it isn’t the world of matter,

Life is a complicated twist of suffering, laughing, and learning all merging to tell a great story - or great many stories. Based on this view, "it is not the end goal or outcome of life that gives life meaning but rather the quality of the story, the quality with which one lives out and develops his or her role."

Life as we know it could vanish within seconds. The next day is not promised to anyone that walks on this earth. As we live our everyday lives peacefully, we tend not to think what our mission or purpose in life is. Instead, we think what we must do for that to be a “successful” person. Despite this way of thinking, just think for a second. What makes life meaningful? What is life anyway? These questions dive right into the heart of the philosophical, psychological, and the biological aspects of life and what the true meaning of life is. This is a very arguable topic due to every person’s different perspective on life and what it means to them. In summary, I personally think that life is simply what you make of it and each person’s accomplishments has its own merit