Thomas Nagel and Absurdity

In Thomas Nagel’s “The Absurd”, the author offers his own insight into the perennial question of what makes human life so “absurd”, or more specifically in what ways do humans rationalize the assumption that our lives are effectively pointless. He begins by outlining and rejecting the classical arguments for why and how human life is traditionally seen as absurd, such as the idea that all human action is meaningless and irrelevant in the future and that all human life inevitably ends. Rejecting this argument, Nagel instead believes that human life is not inherently meaningless merely because of the limitation of its longevity or the minuscule impact it has on the cosmic order. From here, Nagel moves on to argue that the aforementioned arguments hint at an underlying truth and notes that the fundamental truth put forth by these arguments is found in the tension between the arbitrariness and absurdity of our lives in contrast to the seriousness and importance we place on our own lives. In essence, the absurdity of human life is a result of the interplay between the serious value we as individuals place on our lives, and the simultaneous capability of mankind to be able to adopt an objective, external view of our lives and see how arbitrary and subjective human existence truly is. In his conclusion, Nagel argues that the absurdity we see in our lives is not a concept that has any particular relevance or offers any sort of problem to be solved—it merely exists, and perhaps the best thing that can be done is to keep on living while acknowledging the strangeness of the human condition. 

Nagel begins his argument by outlining and rejecting certain classic concepts that attempt to justify the idea that human life is absurd. His first example is one where individuals often remark that “nothing we do now will matter in a million years” (Nagel 716). Human life, then, must be absurd and pointless as it has no actual impact on the universe in the future. Nagel, however, quickly rejects this, arguing that events in the far future are just as irrelevant to existence in the present. In other words, “it does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter” (Nagel 716). Thus, the idea that what we do now does not matter in the future holds no weight, as whatever happens now matters to human existence and there is no way of knowing whether what matters now will not matter in the far and distant future. 

The second argument put forth and rejected by Nagel is the argument based on the tiny scope and scale of human existence, that life is tiny and irrelevant and ends quickly for everyone. Yet, as Nagel points out, “none of these evident facts can be what makes life absurd” (Nagel 717). He goes on to justify this by asking if nothing humans do or say matters now, why would it matter if humans lived for eternity, or if we were perhaps many times larger on the cosmic scale. These are arguments that hint at the “sense that life is meaningless”, yet fail to provide a clear and easily understandable argument to prove the point that human life is absurd (Nagel 717). The author then rejects the idea that the absurdity of human life must originate from the fact that all humans will inevitably die. The argument pushes the idea, in essence, that human life is absurd because all of human existence is merely an “elaborate journey leading nowhere” (Nagel 717). With the inevitably end approaching, all human life is nothing more than passing the time with trivial concerns until the ultimate death of the individual. Nagel rejects this by arguing that these individual “chains of justification” are natural and occur repeatedly throughout the life of a person and that these chains do not require an external validation or a greater sense of purpose than what they immediately achieve. The author uses the example of taking pain medication for a headache—this could be seen as a pointless and absurd act, given that all human life will end, but this is untrue simply because “no larger context or further purpose is needed to prevent these acts from being pointless” (Nagel 717). Therefore, not all justifications of actions need to be linked to something greater than themselves; rather, some chains of action and consequence validate themselves through their own existence and purpose and do not require further justification to prevent them from being seen as absurd. 

The core of Nagel’s argument is that the classical reasons for why human life is an absurd hint at a fundamental idea. Absurdity occurs “when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension or aspiration and reality” (Nagel 718). Moreover, true absurdity results when there are a connection and tension between the ways in which mankind places very serious and significant importance on our own actions and the capacity of humans to step back and realize the arbitrary nature of our psyche and reality. Nagel argues that “humans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves and the lives to which they are committed, with that detached amazement which comes from watching an ant struggle up a heap of sand” (720). Here, we see that humans alone have the capacity to understand and appreciate the absurdity of our own condition, and it is through that absurdity that humans retain their ability to gauge the arbitrariness of our existence. 

In Section IV, Nagel rejects and responds to the criticism that humans are incapable of adopting this external and objective viewpoint. The criticisms argue, in effect, that if the onlooker takes this step back away from the mundane, he or she will not be able to make sense of the world, “as those questions can mean nothing to us, since there is no longer any content to the idea of what matters, and hence no content to the idea that does” (Nagel 722). Yet, Nagel rejects this by pointing out that the purpose of the backward step is simply to allow humans the ability to look at our actions in something of an external sense—not a vacuum but observe them working and interacting with the world around us. Furthermore, Nagel argues that “we cannot shed our ordinary responses” or reactions to the backward step from our own reality and that, even if we could become totally objective, it would “leave us with no means of conceiving a reality of any kind” (723). Human life, therefore, is able to take this backward step yet cannot free itself of the preconceived notions and influences of our daily lives; moreover, to be able to remove ourselves that much from our actions would leave us with no context on which to judge or appreciate the actions being undertaken. 

The outcome of Nagel’s argument is to show the reader that the absurdity of mankind’s is something not to be regretted or escaped, or even to be seen as a problem. In Section VI, Nagel states that “in viewing ourselves from a perspective broader than we can occupy in the flesh, we become spectators of our own lives” (725).  For Nagel, we can see that absurdity is a defining human characteristic and trait, that is it an actualization of the human capacity to observe ourselves as sentient creatures. This is possible because “we possess a certain kind of insight—the capacity to transcend ourselves in thought” (Nagel 727). Thus, we see that the true absurdity of the human situation is a revelatory act not meant to be viewed as a problem or something that needs a solution; it is not a terrible dilemma that daily life must answer to make life meaningful. Instead, Nagel does well to ensure that human life is wholly independent of the need to prove our lives as either absurd or not and humans can “approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair” (727). Therefore, absurdity is just another realization of the human ability to gauge our own place in the cosmic scale, and that place is thus independent of any external validation from chains of justification. 

Throughout the piece, Thomas Nagel proposes and rejects various ideas regarding the absurdity of the human condition and the ways in which humans justify their positions regarding the concept. In the end, absurdity results from an internal tension between the seriousness of our own lives and the capacity that humans maintain that enable them to see the actual arbitrary nature of daily life. In the end, Nagel offers a compelling and fascinating argument in favor of human life that accepts its absurdity and views it as a manifestation of what makes us human. 

Work Cited

Nagel, Thomas. "The Absurd." Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, no. 20, 1971, pp. 716-727.