Thomas Nagel’s: The Absurdity of Life

Life is not something that can be defined by any single person. Everyone sees life as having a different purpose.

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.

Values mean different things to different people as they have differing beliefs and values. After this book was published, people’s values may have changed as they realized they have had the wrong values and priorities, and needed a change.

In her essay "Value/Evaluation," Barbara Herrnstein Smith reflects upon the shifting nature of the evaluation process, and what exactly the meaning of "value" is. She begins by pointing out that the dispute on the value of something occurs whenever any social activity becomes the focal point of a discussion. However, Smith points out, the perspective on value and evaluation has changed dramatically, and is still a topic of debate. These new perspectives indicate that value judgments are made by entire societies, not necessarily individuals; they also give rise to skepticism and question traditional ideas about how evaluations are made.

He also focuses on value as being a measure of usefulness. “A thing I cannot use or make useful, perhaps by trading, has no value however rare or fine it may be” (Eighner,

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,

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

This view was also seen by Aristotle, who says “what makes these things intrinsically valuable is that they express our nature as rational and social beings” (Findler, PowerPoint). Aristotle believes that to be human you actually need to express ourselves within reality, rather than being stuck within the Experience machine/Pleasure machine in which you will not be able to express your true self to others. By doing so you are blocking out your natural human instincts of socializing with others. By being stuck in machine you are denying your natural human

The play Everyman may have been written many years ago, but its lessons are still relevant today. Generally, the facts of death are very traumatizing and in fact unthinkable. This leads the modern day Everyman to ignore its significance, dying without acknowledging or reflecting on their lives here on earth. It is based on this fact that this paper aims to show the position of the author of the play “Everyman” regarding death.

I’ve had several instances through out my life where I think I’m living in a dream and can’t seem to wake up. It’s actually one of the scariest thoughts I’ve ever had. This thought gives my body chills and accelerates my heartbeat the feeling is just alarming. Every time this thought comes up I try and erase it from my memory. Now I’m coming across it again in Nagel’s book “What does it all mean?”. Thomas Nagel writes about many interesting ideas in this novel but some of the more controversial topics deal with the idea how do we know anything?, Freewill, and what is the meaning of life. Some of his ideas in this book I can completely relate to and other ideas are completely irrational and are very hard for me to believe.

Becker’s use of anaphora displays emphasis on the centralized idea that life is valuable and important. By doing so Becker appeals to accomplishing extraordinary goals in life. Furthermore, the repetition of “our life” demonstrates a greater importance on how people need to view life further than what they own or think. Adding to the idea that life is limited to the little amount of time we have on earth and shouldn’t be wasted on materialistic items that will only bring happiness for a small portion of time whereas the happiness that is sought after is permanent. Time shouldn’t be wasted but used

Throughout the chapter, Moore continuously discusses human nature. Specifically, he notes that if man was alone from society, there would be no need for privacy. But that idea is thrown away after acknowledging that humans are social animals, and that we need connection to survive. Moore argues that privacy is to humans, a core value, but then he questions why humans value things more than others. In his words, humans value certain things because “they are desired. We desire these things; and so we feel that when we acquire them value has been brought into the world” (Moore, The Value of Privacy). Moore goes on to note that values are relational, and so if there is any human value, it is only in relation to other people. He also states that there are objectionable values, which can exist independently.

Investigations and observations - Home - Resolving the paradox of value. Retrieved September 26, 2014.

The abstract idea of life cannot be explained by such simple ideas as being animated, breathing, or speaking. Ordinary machines in this century can perform all of these basic functions. The quandary with defining death is not as abstract and elusive as that of life. The problem of defining life and death has plagued philosophers and the religious bodies for thousands of years for one reason; each philosophy or religion has tried to define the meaning of life and death from only their certain perspective. The seemingly appropriate approach to this problem would be to understand the ideas presented in various philosophies and religions and through this knowledge create a new definition for each idea of life

In this respect, we can think of our values as providing us with the background of our world, insofar as this is morally connoted. In other words, our values are the framework that allows us to organize and see our world in terms of ethical issues and assessments – that is, along ethical lines. Subsequently, I argue we understand our ideals as embodiments of our values, which are located in our moral space insofar as they are ethical assessments concerning the best sort of life in relationship to different pretenses3. In this sense, we find our ideals "halfway through" our values and ourselves. Insofar as our ideals are representations of some modes of human excellence, each of them embodies something we value – for instance, the ideal of