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Summary of Paul Edwards’ “The Meaning and Value in Life”

In “The Meaning and Value of Life” (1967) Paul Edwards to whom we have already been introduced, notes that many religious thinkers argue that life cannot have meaning unless our lives are part of a divine plan and at least some humans achieve eternal bliss. Non-believers are divided, some maintaining that life can have meaning without these religious provisos and others that it cannot. Edwards refers to these latter individuals as pessimists but wonders “whether pessimistic conclusions are justified if belief in God and immortality are rejected.”

Schopenhauer’s Arguments – Edwards begins by examining Schopenhauer’s claims that life is a mistake, that non-existence is preferable to existence, that happiness is fleeting and unobtainable, and that death is a final destruction: “nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts, and struggles…All good things are vanity, the world in all its ends bankrupt, and life a business which does not cover its expenses.” Schopenhauer reinforces these conclusions by emphasizing the ephemeral and fleeting nature of pleasures and joys: “which disappear in our hands, and we afterwards ask astonished where they have gone … that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.” Edwards thinks that this pessimism mostly reflects that Schopenhauer was a lonely, bitter, and miserable man. Still, persons of more cheerful dispositions have reached similar conclusions so we should not dismiss Schopenhauer’s too quickly.

The Pointlessness of It All – Next Edwards briefly considers the famous trial attorney Clarence Darrow’s pessimism:

This weary old world goes on, begetting, with birth and with living and with death … and all of it is blind from the beginning to the end … Life is like a ship on the sea, tossed by every wave and every wind; a ship headed for no port and no harbor, with no rudder, no compass, no pilot; simply floating for a time, then lost in the waves…

Not only is life purposeless but there is death: “I love my friends … but they all must come to a tragic end.”  For Darrow attachment to life makes death all the more tragic.

Next he considers the case of Tolstoy. Perhaps no one wrote so movingly of the overwhelming fact of death and its victory over us all as Tolstoy. “Today or tomorrow … sickness and death will come to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?” Tolstoy if you remember compared our situation to that of a man hanging on the side of a well holding on to a twig. A dragon waits below, a beast above, and mice are eating the stem of the twig. Would a small bit of honey on the twig really provide comfort? Tolstoy thinks not. Refusing to be comforted by life’s little pleasures as long as there were no answers to life’s ultimate questions, he saw but four possible answers to his condition: 1) remain ignorant; 2) admit life’s hopelessness but partake of its pleasures; 3) commit suicide; or 4) weakness, seeing the truth but clinging to life anyway. Tolstoy argues that the first solution is not available to the conscious person; the second he rejects because there is so little pleasures and to enjoy pleasures while others lack them would require “moral dullness;” he admires the third solution which is chosen by strong persons when they recognize life is no longer worth living; and the fourth solution is for those who lack the strength and rationality to end their lives. Tolstoy thought himself such a person.

Edwards wonders if those who share the pessimists’ rejection of religion might nonetheless avoid their depressing conclusions. He admits that there is much truth to the claims of the pessimists—that happiness is difficult to achieve and fleeting, that life is capricious, that death ruins our plans, that all these things cast a shadow over our lives—and we should consider these arguments well-founded. But does meaninglessness follow as Darrow and Tolstoy suggested?

Comparative Value Judgments About Life and Death – Edwards begins to answer by pointing to inconsistencies in the pessimist’s arguments. For instance pessimists often argue that death is bad because it puts an end to life, but this amounts to saying that life does have value or else its termination would not be bad. In other words if life had no value—say one was in state of persistent, unending pain—then death would be good. One might say that life has value until the realization of death becomes clear, but this argument too is flawed—such a fixation on death is obsessive. Furthermore, claims that death is better than life or that it would have been better had we not been born appear incongruous. One can make comparisons between known things—that A is a better scientist or pianist than B—but if there is no afterlife as the pessimists contend, then death cannot be experienced and comparisons with life are meaningless.

The Irrelevance of the Distant Future – Edwards also attacks the claims of those who appeal to a “distant future” in which to find life’s meaning. He does not find it obvious that eternally long lives would be more meaningful than finite ones, for what is the meaning of everlasting bliss? And if future bliss needs no justification then why should bliss in this life need any?

The issue of the distant future also comes up regarding value judgments. Edwards argues that it makes sense to ask if something is valuable if we do not regard it as intrinsically valuable, or it is being compared to some other good. But it does not make sense to ask this of something that we do consider intrinsically valuable and which is not in conflict with attaining some other good. We may meaningfully ask if the pain we experienced at the dentist is worthwhile, since that is not the kind of thing we ordinarily do for fun, but we should not ask such questions about being happy or in love because we think such experiences intrinsically valuable. In addition Edwards finds concerns about the distant future irrelevant to most human concerns—we are typically concerned with the present or near future. Even if you and the dentist are both dead in a hundred years that does not mean that your efforts now are worthless.

The Vanished Past – Some claim that life’s worthlessness derives from the fact that the past is gone forever, which implies that the past is as if it had never been. Others claim that the present’s trivialities are more important than the past’s most important events. To the first claim Edwards replies that if only the present matters then past sorrows, as well as past pleasures, do not matter. To the second claim he points out that this is simply a value judgment about which he and others differ. While the pessimist might lament the passing years and the non-existence of the past, the optimist may take pride in realities actualized as opposed to potentialities unfulfilled. Still, Edwards admits that there is a sense in which the past does seem less valuable than the present, as evidenced by how little consolation to the sick or aged would be the fact that they used to be healthy. Thus the issue of the relative value of past and present is debatable.

To recap Edwards’ main points: 1) comparative judgments about life versus death are unintelligible; 2) the experience of a distant future will not necessarily make life worthwhile; 3) it makes no sense to ask if intrinsically valuable things are really valuable; and 4) the vanished past does not say much about life’s meaning. In sum, the pessimists have not established their arguments convincingly.

The Meanings of the “Meaning of Life” – If the pessimistic conclusions do not necessarily follow from the rejection of gods and immortality is there reason for optimism? Can there be meaning without gods or immortality? To answer these questions Edwards appeals to Baier’s distinction between: 1) whether we have a role in a great drama or whether there is objective meaning to the whole thing—what Edwards calls meaning in the cosmic sense; and  2) whether or not our lives have meaning from within or subjectively—what Edwards calls the terrestrial sense. It is easy to claim that someone’s life has meaning for them, but harder to defend the claim that life has meaning in the cosmic sense. It is important to note that to say one’s life has meaning in the terrestrial sense does not imply that such a life was good. A person might achieve the goals of their life, to be a good murderer, but it is easy to see that such a life is not good.

While it is easy enough to reject cosmic meaning—the pessimists view—it does not follow that rejection of cosmic meaning eliminates terrestrial meaning. It is perfectly coherent to proclaim that there is no cosmic plan but that one nevertheless finds their terrestrial life meaningful. Many individuals have achieved such meaning without supernatural beliefs. Moreover, the existence of cosmic meaning hardly guarantees meaning in the terrestrial sense. Even if there is an ultimate plan for my life I would need to know it, believe in it, and work toward its realization.

Is Human Life Ever Worthwhile? – Turning to the question of whether life is ever worthwhile, Edwards wonders what makes individuals ask this question and why they might answer it negatively. To say that life is worthwhile for a person implies that they have some goals and the possibility of attaining them. While this account is similar to the notion of meaning in the terrestrial sense, it differs because worthiness implies value whereas terrestrial meaning does not. In other words terrestrial meaning implies only subjective value, whereas the notion of a worthwhile life implies the existence of objective values. In the latter case we have goals, the possibility of their attainment, and the notion that those goals are really valuable. But Edwards claims that he doesn’t need objective values to determine the worthiness of a life, inasmuch as even the subjectivist will allow some distinction between good and bad conduct. He bases his argument on the agreement of “rational and sympathetic human beings.”

Still, the pessimists are dissatisfied. They grant that person’s lives may have meaning in the subjective sense but claim this is not enough “because our lives are not followed by eternal bliss.” Edwards counters that pessimists have unrealistic standards of meaning that go beyond those of ordinary persons—who are content with subjective meaning. According to the standards of pessimists life is not worthwhile because it is not followed by eternal bliss, but this does not imply that it is not worthwhile by other less demanding standards. And why should we accept the special standards of the pessimist? In fact Edwards notes that ordinary standards of living such as achieving our goals do something that the pessimists’ standards do not—they guide our lives.

Moreover, there are a number of questions we might ask the pessimist. Why does eternal bliss bestow meaning on life, while bliss in this life does not? Why should we abandon our ordinary standards of meaning for the special standards of the pessimists? This latter question is particularly difficult for the pessimist to answer—after all nothing is of value to the pessimist. Still, pessimists usually do not commit suicide, suggesting that they believe there is some reason for living. And they often have principles and make value judgments as if something does matter. Thus there is something disingenuous about their position.

Is the Universe Better with Human Life Than Without It? – All of this leads to the ultimate question: is the universe better with or without human life in it? Edwards thinks that without an affirmative response to this question, no affirmative response can be given to the meaning of life question. He quotes the German phenomenologist, Hans Reiner, in this regard: “Our search for the meaning of our lives … is identical with the search for a logically compelling reason why it is better for us to exist than not to exist. … whether it is better that mankind should exist than that there should be a world without any human life.” A possible answer to this question appeals to the intrinsic meaning of the morally good a pre-condition of which demands the existence of moral agents and a universe. In that case it is better that the universe and humans exist so that moral good can exist. Of course this claim is open to the objection that a universe and moral agents introduce physical and moral evil which counterbalances the good. In that case whether it is better that the universe exists or not would depend on whether more good than evil exists.

Why the Pessimist Cannot be Answered – The upshot of all this is that one cannot satisfactorily answer the pessimist. Why? Because questions such as whether life is better than death or whether the universe would be better if it had not existed have no clear meaning. Is it better for humans and the universe to exist than not to? Philosophers have answered the question variously: Schopenhauer answered in the negative, Spinoza in the positive. But Edwards concludes that there are no knock-down arguments either way. It is simply impossible to prove that “coffee with cream is better than black coffee,” or “that love is better than hate.” 

Summary – Human life can have subjective, terrestrial meaning and some lives are worthwhile as long as standards of meaning are not set too high. But pessimists ultimately cannot be answered if we need to show them that human existence is better than non-existence. We cannot know if, all things considered, it is better if there is life than not.

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Edwards, “The Meaning and Value of Life,” 133.

Summary of Kurt Baier’s “The Meaning of Life:”

Kurt Baier (1917 – 2010) was an Austrian moral philosopher who received his DPhil at Oxford in 1952. He spent most of his career at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the influential, The Moral Point of View, and was one of the most important moral philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century.

In his 1957 lecture, “The Meaning of Life,” Baier claims that Tolstoy’s crisis of meaning would have been incomprehensible to medieval Christians who thought themselves the center of the cosmic drama, and for whom the meaning of life was to gain eternal bliss. However, the modern scientific worldview conflicts with this medieval view. The earth and humans are not at the center of the solar system and the cosmos is billions of years old, not a mere six thousand. But the conflict runs much deeper. In the Christian view god is “a kind of superman… [who] acts as a sort of playwright-cum-legislator-cum-judge-cum-executioner.” This god writes the play, makes the rules, and punishes misbehavers. According to this view all is for the best even if it appears otherwise, and humans ought to worship, venerate, praise, and obey the creator. But with the rise of science the universe is explained better and more reliably without gods, leading many educated persons to reject the Christian view and conclude that individuals and the universe are without meaning.

Explaining the Universe – In response to this apparent conflict between science and religion one might argue that the two are in fact complimentary. Science, it might be said, gives precise explanations of small parts of the universe; religion gives vague explanations for the whole universe. The devoid-of-meaning conclusion comes about only because one is confusing the two explanations. Scientific explanations tell us how things are but not why they are. The ultimate explanation is that which explains the purpose or the why of something. While both types of explanations are needed and work well in their own domain, if we are looking for answers to the ultimate why questions we need religious answers.

Baier argues instead that both scientific and religious explanations involve an infinite regress—they are both equally incomplete. Saying that gods caused the universe merely raises the question of what caused the gods; saying the gods are the reason there is something rather than nothing just raises the question of why the gods exist. Thus scientific explanations lack nothing that religious explanations possess; neither type of explanation explains completely. Scientific explanations differ from religious ones by being precise, capable of falsification, and amenable to slow improvement. These considerations lead Baier to the main conclusion of the first section:“that scientific explanations render their explicanda as intelligible as pre-scientific explanations; they differ from the latter only in that, having testable implications and being more precisely formulated, their truth or falsity can be determined with a high degree of probability.”

The Purpose of Existence – Despite the conclusion reached above—that scientific explanations are better than religious ones—it might still be argued that scientific explanations lead to the conclusion that life is meaningless. After all humans and their planet are not at the center of creation, the universe appears doomed, humans were not specially created, and the entire universe is a hostile place. In such conditions humans try to seize a few moments of joy until their lives end in death. Science explains such a world but what meaning does it find in it? Whereas the medieval worldview provided purpose, the scientific worldview does not. Or so it seems.

Baier responds by distinguishing between two different senses of purposes. 1) Purposes that persons and their behavior have (to build factories to make cars) and 2) purposes that things have (the purpose of a car is to provide transportation.) People do many things without purpose or meaning, pointless labor for example, but the scientific worldview does not force us to regard our lives in this way. Instead it provides better ways of achieving our purposes. As for the other kind of purpose—the purpose of things—to be used this way is degrading and implied by the Christian worldview, viewing a human as a divine artifact here to serve the purpose of its maker. Moreover,  those who reject the scientific worldview because they think it renders life pointless from the outside, forget that life can still be meaningful from the inside. They “mistakenly conclude that there can be no purpose in life because there is no purpose of life.”

Baier notes that many long for the medieval worldview where a gentle father watches over and cares for them, but he stresses that rejecting this view does not render life meaningless. Rather one can find meaning for oneself; one can become an adult and stand on their own feet. The Christian replies that being part of a god’s plan assures that life is meaningful, that life is moving toward an end that transcends the individual. What then is this noble plan or end for which the gods have created the world? Two problems immediately confront us: 1) how can the purpose be grand enough to justify all the suffering in the world? And 2) the story of how the plan is brought to fruition involves morally objectionable concepts. The whole story of a taboo on the fruit of a tree, punishment given for violating said taboo, blood sacrifice, sacraments and priests to administer them, judgment day, and eternal hellfire are all grossly objectionable. Baier concludes “that god’s purpose cannot meaningfully be stated.” And even if they could be stated coherently they require humans to be totally dependent on the gods, which Baier finds inconsistent with humans as independent, free, and responsible individuals.

The Meaning of Life – But how can life have meaning if all ends in death, if there is no paradise? In the Christian worldview life has meaning because, though it is filled with the suffering that follows from the curse the gods sent after the fall, it is followed by a paradise after we die. However, if we accept that life is filled with suffering but deny the afterlife, then life appears meaningless. Why endure it all if there is no heaven? According to Baier if we reject the afterlife, then the only way to find meaning is in this life.

Of course we do not normally think life is worthless, a thing to be endured so as to get to heaven. If we did we would kill our friends and ourselves quickly in order to get to heaven, but the gods forbid such acts so we must accept the pain and suffering that accompany our lives. As for murder, most of us think that it does deprive persons of something valuable, their lives. And how do we decide if our lives are valuable? Most of us regard our lives as worth living if they are better than the average life, or closer to the best possible life than the worst possible life. By contrast the Christian view compares life to some perfect paradise, promises believers that they can enjoy this paradise, and denigrates the pleasures of this life as vile and sinful. Baier elaborates on the point: “It is now quite clear that death is simply irrelevant. If life can be worthwhile at all, then it can be so even though it be short. And if it is not worthwhile at all, then an eternity of it is simply a nightmare. It may be sad that we have to leave this beautiful world, but it is so only if and because it is beautiful. And it is no less beautiful for coming to an end. I rather suspect that an eternity of it might make us less appreciative, and in the end it would be tedious.”

The upshot of all this is that the scientific worldview helps us see meaning in this life, since the worth of this life need no longer be maligned in comparison with a perfect idealized afterlife.

Conclusion – Baier states that persons who reject a traditional religious view often assume that life is meaningless because they think there are three conditions of meaning that cannot be met given the scientific worldview. Those conditions are: 1) the universe must be intelligible; 2) life must have a purpose; and 3) human hopes must be satisfied.  For Christians these conditions can be met, thus one must either adopt a worldview incompatible with modern science, the Christian view, or accept that life is meaningless. But Baier argues that a meaningful life can be lived even without these three conditions being met. Life does have meaning on the scientific worldview—the meaning we give it—and besides there are multiple reasons for rejecting the Christian worldview.

Summary – Science explains existence better than religion. Religion gives purpose to existence, but does so in morally objectionable ways. Although there is no objective meaning to life, we can give subjective meaning to it. A religious worldview hinders our doing this by its emphasis on an idealized afterlife, thereby belittling the beauty and meaning of this life.

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Baier, “The Meaning of Life,” 109.

Jean Paul Sartre on the Meaning of Life

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary and philosophical existentialism. Sartre was also noted for his long personal relationship with the feminist author and social theorist Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature which he refused.

In his famous public lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” (1946) Sartre set out the basic ideas of his existential philosophy and its relationship to the question of the meaning of life. He begins by noting that the communists have criticized his philosophy as bourgeois; Christians have rejected it as morally relative; and others have described it as sordid, unappreciative of beauty, and subjective. In response Sartre explains that existentialism is based upon the doctrine that existence precedes essence; that our concrete subjective existence comes before whatever essence we develop.

To help us understand this idea Sartre considers an artifact such as a letter opener. In this case its essence—to open letters—precedes its existence. The artisan had this essence in mind before it existed. When we think of God as creator of human beings we are reasoning similarly. God had our essence in mind first, and then created us in accord with that human nature. Sartre’s atheistic existentialism implies the reverse. For human beings our existence precedes our essence, since there is no God to give us an essence, and we freely choose what we will become. Unlike chairs and tables we have to make ourselves, and in so doing we alone are responsible for the essence we create.

Along with this responsibility comes the anguish that accompanies our decisions. We never know which action we should perform, but perform them we must. Furthermore, as there are no gods or objective moral guidelines, we alone must choose, be responsible for our choices, and accept the accompanying anguish that choice brings. We cannot escape our freedom, Sartre says, and we should offer no excuses for them. When deciding between staying with our mother or going off and fighting the Nazis, in Sartre’s example, no theory of human nature or objective moral values help. We must simply exercise our freedom, choose, and accept the responsibility and anguish that follows.

The benefits of an existential view are first, that it begins with individual consciousness, the only certain beginning for any philosophy; and second, it is compatible with human dignity, as it respects humans as subjects rather than making them manipulated objects. Individuals are artists or moral agents who have no a priori rules to guide them in creating art or living moral lives. And we should not judge others for the choices they make, unless they hide behind a doctrine and dogma. To do that is to deny one’s freedom.

In the end to be human means precisely to recognize oneself as sole legislator of values and meaning, which for Sartre is the logical conclusion of his atheistic position. But even if there were gods it would make no difference, human beings would still have to create their own values and meanings for their lives to be valuable and meaningful. 

Summary – Human beings are not artifacts with a pre-existing essence; they are subjects who must freely choose to create their own meaning.

Analysis of W. D. Auden’s, “The Labyrinth”

W. H. Auden (1907 – 1973) was an Anglo-American poet, best known for poems such as “Funeral Blues,” “September 1, 1939,” “The Shield of Achilles,” “The Age of Anxiety,” and “For the Time Being” and “Horae Canonicae.” I have written previously about his poetry in my post, W. H. Auden’s: We Must Love One Another or Die. Recently a reader made me aware of another Auden poem, “The Labyrinth.” Here is this profound poem with some explanation and commentary at the end (so as not to break up the rhythm of the poem:

Anthropos apteros for days

Walked whistling round and round the Maze,

Relying happily upon

His temperment for getting on.

The hundredth time he sighted, though,

A bush he left an hour ago,

He halted where four alleys crossed,

And recognized that he was lost.

“Where am I?” Metaphysics says

No question can be asked unless

It has an answer, so I can

Assume this maze has got a plan.

If theologians are correct,

A Plan implies an Architect:

A God-built maze would be, I’m sure,

The Universe in minature.

Are data from the world of Sense,

In that case, valid evidence?

What in the universe I know

Can give directions how to go?

All Mathematics would suggest

A steady straight line as the best,

But left and right alternately

Is consonant with History.

Aesthetics, though, believes all Art

Intends to gratify the heart:

Rejecting disciplines like these,

Must I, then, go which way I please?

Such reasoning is only true

If we accept the classic view,

Which we have no right to assert,

According to the Introvert.

His absolute pre-supposition

Is – Man creates his own condition:

This maze was not divinely built,

But is secreted by my guilt.

The centre that I cannot find

Is known to my unconscious Mind;

I have no reason to despair

Because I am already there.

My problem is how not to will;

They move most quickly who stand still;

I’m only lost until I see

I’m lost because I want to be.

If this should fail, perhaps I should,

As certain educators would,

Content myself with the conclusion;

In theory there is no solution.

All statements about what I feel,

Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:

My knowledge ends where it began;

A hedge is taller than a man.”

Anthropos apteros, perplexed

To know which turning to take next,

Looked up and wished he were a bird

To whom such doubts must seem absurd.

Stanza 1-2 [Anthopos apteros, literally “wingless man,” describes our earth-bound ignorance—we are lost within the maze of life. In the first stanza wingless man seems happy, but by the second stanza he realizes that he is existentially lost. This begins his philosophical turn.]

Stanza 3-4 [Some philosophers suggest that it all makes sense; theologians seem sure it does.]

Stanza 4-7 [Science provides truth but not values; mathematics gives certainty but life does not; art gratifies but is subjective; so can I create my own answers?]

Stanza 8-9 [It seems that answers elude us; perhaps we are the problem; we are still lost.]

Stanza 10-11 [The answer, that we must accept our uncertainty, was within us all along. By accepting being lost, we find ourselves and we find peace.]

Stanza 12-13 [In the end we are still lost; and we cannot know the truth.]

Stanza 14 [We wish we had wings and could see things from a bird’s-eye view; we wish we knew more and could quell our doubts. Perhaps if we had wings we could.]

Disclaimer – When I took a modern poetry class as an undergraduate I quickly learned that poems are susceptible to interpretation. I learned that to one person, “stopping by the woods on a snowy evening,” was to another a poem about suicide or sex. So I don’t offer the above as a definitive interpretation.

Subjective Meaning in Life

Naturalism and Subjective Meaning

Assuming that none of our previous answers to the question of the meaning of life completely satisfies, we now consider the idea that meaning is not something you stumble upon, find or discover, but something you fashion, invent or create. This is the most prevalent view among contemporary philosophers. On this account life can be meaningful without any supernatural or objective reality if individuals give meaning to their lives. Therefore subjectivists believe that meaning is relative to their desires, attitudes, interests, wants, preferences, etc., and there are no invariant standards of meaning. Something is meaningful to individuals to the extent that they find that thing meaningful, in other words, meaning is constituted by human minds and varies between persons.

Starting tomorrow we’ll look at more than a dozen contemporary thinkers who hold this view. Until then here are a few quotes which hint at the general idea:

The living thing is not the clay molded by the potter, nor the harp played upon by the musician. It is the clay modeling itself. ~ Edward Stuart Russell

There is no golden rule which applies to everyone: every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved. ~ Sigmund Freud

I do not know to what great end Destiny leads us, nor do I care very much. Long before that end, I shall have played my part, spoken my lines, and passed on. How I play that part is all that concerns me. In the knowledge that I am an inalienable part of this great, wonderful, upward movement called life, and that nothing, neither pestilence, nor physical affliction, nor depression, nor prison, can take away from me my part, lies my consolation, my inspiration, and my treasure. ~ Owen C. Middleton (after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1932. 

Commentary on the Varieties of Nihilism

For the past ten days or so I’ve been discussing various views about the meaning of life that I’d classify as nihilistic. I’d now like to briefly summarize my response to nihilism.

I believe that suffering and death count strongly against meaning—they detract from meaning. I also believe that the challenge posed by nihilism is the challenge for contemporary individuals and culture. We have argued that rejecting or denying nihilism, by accepting a religious metaphysics for example, is philosophically problematic, inasmuch as there are good reasons to doubt the truth of these systems. Accepting nihilism is either self-defeating, useless, or both. Finding meaning by affirming nihilism is a brave response but it is not all that different than accepting nihilism in the end. So questions remain. Why give up so easily? What do we gain by embracing nihilism?

Camus’ Sisyphus supposedly found happiness in his revolt, but one has to wonder whether that suggestion is mere romanticism. And neither Nagel’s nor Feinberg’s irony provides solace; they merely counsel passive acceptance. Maybe we should simply reject meaning and all salvific narratives, reveling in the pleasures and joys of this world, the extraordinary ordinary. But can we really do it? In Our Town Wilder suggests we cannot, it is too hard to appreciate life while you live it. When responding to Emily’s query as to whether human beings can appreciate life every minute while they live it, the narrator tells her: “No—saints and poets maybe—they do some.”80 But even if we could affirm nihilism would this be satisfactory? If we think of Critchley as advocating living lightly, Kundera responds that such a life is unbearable; perhaps even more so than living heavily.

We thus find ourselves at an impasse. Nihilism looms large and none of our responses are completely viable. Rejecting nihilism seems intellectually dishonest, passively accepting it appears fatalistic, actively rejecting it with Camus is futile, embracing it looks pointless, and yet our consciousness of it is unbearable. The only way forward—if we do not want to accept the verdict of nihilism—is to consider other responses. It is to these responses that we now consider over the next few months.

Summary of Milan Kundera’s: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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Should we take life seriously or not? Should we think of it as heavy or light? Perhaps we shouldn’t take it too seriously, enjoy the pleasures it affords, and reject all heavier philosophies of meaning. But is this solution satisfactory? These are the fundamental questions posed Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. (Kundera is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen. His books were banned by the Communists of Czechoslovakia until the downfall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution in 1989.)

Kundera begins his novel by pondering Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence—the notion that everything that has already happened will recur ad infinitum. Although it is hardly Nietzsche’s interpretation, Kundera remarks: “Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.”[i]

For Kundera a life lived only once is light, unimportant, and infinitely trivial; by contrast, if all recurred infinitely, a tremendous heaviness or significance would be imposed on our lives and choices. Kundera contrasts the heaviness and lightness of life as follows: “If the eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.”[ii] But is heaviness bad and lightness splendid? Kundera answers:

the heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But … the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes a man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.[iii]

So both the heaviness and lightness are unsatisfactory. The light life is meaninglessness. If everything happens only once, it might as well not have happened at all; and our best response to this situation is to live for beauty and pleasure. Yet such insignificant lives are unbearable—the unbearable lightness of being. But if our actions eternally recur, if life is heavy, then the heaviness of our actions and choices crushes us under their weight.

Despite these conundrums the main characters in his novel who embrace the heaviness of life and love die happy, while those who live lightly suffer the unbearable lightness of being. This suggests that heaviness is better after all. Still nothing is eternal for Kundera, and if there were eternal things, our lives and choices would be too burdensome. Perhaps the fact that some of his characters find love is enough, but nothing matters ultimately. In the end nihilism is, for conscious beings, both true and unbearable. A heavy life crushes us; a light life is unbearable.

Brief Reflections

As for me, I think we ought to consider life significant, but not too significant; light but not too light. Here it is in simple form.

Nothing matters -> life is unbearable

Everything matters -> life is unbearable

Some things matter but most things don’t -> life is bearable and occasionally meaningful.

Wisdom is, in large part, differentiating what matters from what doesn’t.

Near the end of the movie Unbearable Lightness of Being, the protagonists Tomas and Tereza, despite the meaninglessness of life seem to have found happiness. Here is the penultimate scene.

[i] Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1999), 3.

[ii] Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 5.

[iii] Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 5.

Summary of Simon Critchley’s: Very Little … Almost Nothing

Simon Critchley (1960 – ) was born in England and received his PhD from the University of Essex in 1988. He is series moderator and contributor to “The Stone,” a philosophy column in The New York Times. He is also currently chair and professor of philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York City.

Very Little … Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature

In this recent book, Simon Critchley discusses various responses to nihilism. Responses include those who: a) refuse to see the problem, like the religious fundamentalist who doesn’t understand modernity; b) are indifferent to the problem, which they see as the concern of bourgeoisie intellectuals; c) passively accept nihilism, knowing that nothing they do matters; d) actively revolt against nihilism in the hope that they might mitigate the condition.[i]He rejects all views that try to overcome nihilism—enterprises that find redemption in philosophy, religion, politics or art—in favor of a response that embraces or affirms nihilism. For Critchley the question of meaning is one of finding meaning in human finitude, since all answers to the contrary are empty. This leads him to the surprising idea that “the ultimate meaning of human finitude is that we cannot find meaningful fulfillment for the finite.”[ii]But if one cannot find meaning in finitude, why not just passively accept nihilism?

Critchley replies that we should do more than merely accept nihilism; we must affirm “meaninglessness as an achievement, as a task or quest … as the achievement of the ordinary or everyday without the rose-tinted spectacles of any narrative of redemption.”[iii]In this way we don’t evade the problem of nihilism but truly confront it. As Critchley puts it:

“The world is all too easily stuffed with meaning and we risk suffocating under the combined weight of competing narratives of redemption—whether religious, socio-economic, scientific, technological, political, aesthetic or philosophical—and hence miss the problem of nihilism in our manic desire to overcome it.”[iv]

For models of what he means Critchley turns to playwright Samuel Beckett whose work gives us “a radical de-creation of these salvific narratives, an approach to meaninglessness as the achievement of the ordinary, a redemption from redemption.”[v] Salvation narratives are empty talk which cause trouble; better to be silent as Pascal suggested: “All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.” What then is left after we are saved from the fables of salvation? As his title suggests; very little … almost nothing. But all is not lost; we can know the happiness derived from ordinary things.

Critchley finds a similar insight in what the poet Wallace Stevens called “the plain sense of things.”[vi] In Stevens’ famous poem, “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” the setting is a funeral service. In one room we find merriment and ice cream, in another a corpse. The ice cream represents the appetites, the powerful desire for physical things; the corpse represents death.  The former is better than the latter, and that this is all we can say about life and death. The animal life is the best there is and better than death—the ordinary is the most extraordinary.

For another example Critchley considers Thornton Wilder’s famous play “Our Town” which exalts the living and dying of ordinary people, as well as the wonder of ordinary things. In the play young Emily Gibbs has died in childbirth and is in an afterlife, where she is granted her wish to go back to the world for a day. But when she goes back she cannot stand it; people on earth live unconscious of the beauty which surrounds them. As she leaves she says goodbye to all the ordinary things of the world: “to clocks ticking, to food and coffee, new ironed dresses and hot baths, and to sleeping and waking up.”[vii] It is tragic that while living we miss the beauty of ordinary things. Emily is dismayed but we are enlightened—we ought to appreciate and affirm the extraordinary ordinary. Perhaps that is the best response to nihilism—to be edified by it, to find meaning in meaninglessness, to realize we can find happiness in spite of nihilism.

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[i] Simon Critchley, Very Little … Almost Nothing (New York: Routledge, 2004), 12-13.

[ii] Critchley, Very Little … Almost Nothing, 31.

[iii] Critchley, Very Little … Almost Nothing, 32.

[iv] Critchley, Very Little … Almost Nothing, 32.

[v] Critchley, Very Little … Almost Nothing, 32.

[vi] Critchley, Very Little … Almost Nothing, 118.

[vii] Thornton Wilder, Our Town (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1938), 82.

Summary of Joel Feinberg’s, “Absurd Self-Fulfillment”

Joel Feinberg (1926 -2004) was an American political and social philosopher. He is known for his work in the fields of individual rights and the authority of the state, thereby helping to shape the American legal landscape. He taught at Brown,  Princeton, UCLA, Rockefeller University, and at the University of Arizona, where he retired in 1994.

In “Absurd Self-Fulfillment” (1992) Feinberg begins by considering Richard Taylor’s suggestion that Sisyphus could be compelled or addicted to pushing stones. (We will discuss Taylor in the next chapter.) Let us suppose the gods make this part of his nature like walking or speaking; suppose further that Sisyphus gets self-fulfillment from rock pushing as it expresses something basic to his genetic nature. Now Sisyphus’ work is typically thought absurd because it is pointless labor that comes to nothing. Philosophers have had differing responses to these issues. Pessimists regard all lives as absurd and respond with scorn, despair, cynicism, etc. Optimists think lives can be partly or wholly fulfilled and therefore good; they respond with hope, satisfaction, positive acceptance, etc. While absurdity and self-fulfillment are different, Taylor suggests that lives can be both absurd and self-fulfilling, like Sisyphus’ rock pushing. So Feinberg asks: what is the relationship between absurdity and self-fulfillment? Can they go together?

Absurdity in individual lives for Feinberg is characterized by: 1) extreme irrationality, as in obviously false beliefs; or the disharmony or incongruity between two things such as means and ends, premises and conclusions, or pretentions and reality; 2) Nagel’s account, the clash between the subjective and objective view of our lives. Nagel’s absurdity is not relevant to Sisyphus, but if added to the story it would add to the absurdity of his situation; 3) pointlessness—activities with no point or meaning; 4) futility—activities with a point but incapable of achieving their goal; and 5) triviality—activities that produce some trivial advantage but are not worth the cost of their labor. So the absurd elements in life fall into one of five categories: 1) pointless, 2) trivial, 3) futile, 4) Nagel’s absurdity, and 5) incongruous or irrational. As for the alleged absurdity of human life in general, Feinberg considers the sense of the absurd in Taylor, Camus, and Nagel.

For Taylor life is absurd (pointless, meaningless) because our repetitive activity ultimately comes to nothing. And even if we do achieve something, say build a cathedral, this does not cancel out the absurdity since in the end they all come to nothing; all our achievements ultimately vanish. But what would a non-absurd existence be like? This is important because unless we know what non-absurdity is like, we have nothing to contrast an absurd situation with. Initially Taylor suggests this would entail Sisyphus building an enduring and beautiful temple. But from a distance of a million years all lives seem pointless and all achievements are temporary—they do not overcome meaninglessness. So the building of the temple does not seem to remove absurdity. Suppose then, Taylor argues, that the gods allow Sisyphus to finish his temple and admire it? Taylor argues that then Sisyphus would be eternally bored, so again this would be absurd. Feinberg suggests that Sisyphus could enjoy his achievement and then die, thus not having to endure the boredom; or even better the gods could preserve him and his temple forever. But then Taylor could respond that Sisyphus would still be bored since he would have nothing left to do. Either nothing we do lasts or, if it does, we are bored when we have finished. In the end any conceivable life would be absurd for Taylor.

For Camus humans want a cosmic order, significance for their labor, and an intelligible life. But life has no order, destroys our work, and is alien to us. In short the things we want—a caring universe with which one is connected and in which we are immortal—are precisely the things we cannot have. What we get is death. This confrontation between the things one needs—most notably immortality—and the thing one gets—death—is the birthplace of the absurd. There is also the absurdity of the cycle of working for money to buy food so that one can work for money and round and round. You could say that these activities are intrinsically valuable, but Camus argues that we are simply driven to do all these things. And then there is the absurdity of so much animal life—they reproduce and then die. Their lives seem to have no other reason than to perpetuate their species. Are not human lives similar? What these examples show is that “life is pointless because justification for any of its parts or phases is indefinitely postponed…” We do A for the sake of B, and B for the sake of C, etc. Camus’s response to absurdity is to rebel, revolt, and live the best one can, since there will always be a divide between what our nature wants—intelligibility and immortality—and the little we can get. For Camus, self-fulfillment may be construed as being “intensely and continuously conscious of my absurdity…” We fulfill ourselves by recognizing the absurdity of our situation.

For Nagel the absurd derives from the incongruity between our serious view of ourselves and our apparent triviality from the universal perspective. As Feinberg points out, following Nagel, the life of a mouse might not seem absurd to the mouse but it is absurd from our point of view. According to Nagel our lives are like that too, seeming to matter from the inside but absurd from the outside. Feinberg captures this idea with a distinction between absurd persons—who have a flawed assessment of their importance—and absurd situations—which are a property of one’s situation. However, whatever the difference in the details between the three authors for all of them life is absurd: for Taylor because achievements do not last and effort and outcome are in tension; for Camus because the universe is indifferent to our needs; and for Nagel because of the clash between our pretensions and reality.

Feinberg now introduces a new kind of absurdity—when the situation one is in differs from the situation one thinks they are in. For example, if Sisyphus thought his rock pushing was important he would be woefully mistaken about the true nature of his predicament. We are all in the situation of being much less important than we think we are. Thus we should not take ourselves too seriously. Still, Feinberg concludes that while some elements of life are absurd, the arguments that all life is absurd are not convincing. Within life some things seem absurd and some things do not.

Turning to self-fulfillment, there are at least four models of self-fulfillment in the ordinary sense: 1) satisfying one’s hopes or desires; 2) achieving one’s goals; 3) bringing closure to things; and 4) doing the natural or realizing potential. It is this last conception that philosophers have focused upon primarily—so much so that to not fulfill one’s nature indicates a wasted life whereas a fulfilling life is often defined as using one’s natural talents. Feinberg now explores how Sisyphus might be wired to fulfill his nature by rock pushing. He might have: 1) an appetite for it; 2) a peculiar talent for it; 3) an instinct for it; 4) a general drive to do it; or 5) a compulsive impulse to do it as Taylor suggests. Feinberg argues that no matter how the gods wired Sisyphus his life does not seem capable of being fulfilled, precisely because the gods fixed his life, not allowing him discretion in living his life. As Feinberg says, “If he can fulfill his nature without these discretionary activities, then he has really assumed the nature of a different species.” However, if the gods told him to do it in his own way, to exercise discretion in how to push his rocks, then he could be fulfilled, although his life would still be pointless. Thus life can be absurd and fulfilling at the same time.

Feinberg now asks whether it would matter if one found fulfillment in something that from the outside appeared trivial. Suppose one enjoys playing ping-pong and socializing with others who like to play. If that tendency follows from one’s nature, then one will probably be fulfilled by playing. Now suppose that someone does not succeed in finding playing partners or others interested in ping-pong and instead goes to philosophy discussion groups weekly, something one finds boring. Now their lives seem unfulfilled. While this may not be bad from an objective point of view—philosophy may be more important than ping-pong—for them it is really bad; they do not like philosophy, they like ping pong! Even if it is objectively absurd to like to hit ping pong balls all day, they naturally enjoy doing it; it is good for them to fulfill their nature in this way precisely because the desire is natural to them. Moreover, self-fulfillment necessitates that we have self-love. “And the truest expression of self-love is devotion toward one’s own good, which is the fulfillment of one’s’ own (who else’s) nature—absurd as that may be.” Thus, self-fulfillment matters because without it we cannot have self-love as well as the reverse.

We see then that our lives are not absurd from the inside—we have goals and purposes—but may be so from the outside. What attitude should we take toward a fulfilling life that we decide is absurd from the outside, that will come to nothing in the end? These attitudes Feinberg calls “cosmic attitudes,” ones we have toward the entire universe. Feinberg agrees with Nagel that irony is the appropriate attitude; it is “an attitude of detached awareness of incongruity…a state of mind halfway between seriousness and playfulness.” Feinberg argues that one can appreciate this incongruity, like one appreciates humor, and there is a kind of bittersweet pleasure in it. Feinberg says we ought to respond not with tears, anger, or amusement, but with a “tired smile.”  Thus neither pessimism—the view that all lives are worthless—nor optimism—the view that all lives are worthwhile—is warranted. After having a good life and then considering Camus, Taylor, and Nagel, Feinberg sees the cosmic joke and is tickled. “Now he can die not with a whine or a snarl, but with an ironic smile.”

Summary – There is no objective meaning. We can find some subjective meaning by acting in accord with our nature; our lives can be both fulfilling and absurd. All we can do is passively accept this nihilistic state of affairs with an ironic smile. Feinberg goes a bit further than Nagel, nearly embracing nihilism.

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Feinberg, “Absurd Self-Fulfillment,” 181.

Summary of Walter Stace’s, “Man Against Darkness”

Walter Terence Stace (1886 – 1967) was a British civil servant, educator and philosopher who wrote on Hegel and Mysticism. In “Man Against Darkness” (1948), Stace claims that the loss of faith in god and religion is responsible for the bewildering state of the world today. This loss of religious faith is depressing, since it leaves us without a scaffold upon which to build ethics. But he also agrees with Sartre and Russell—there are no gods, there is no source for morality, and we live in a universe that is purposeless and indifferent to our values. Thus the only possible values for human beings are those they create.

The cause of the decline of the influence of religion is modern science, but not a particular discovery of science. Rather it is the spirit and assumptions of science that have undermined religious belief. The world view of science propagated by Galileo and Newton prefigured 18th century skepticism by removing the idea of final causes and purposes from the heavens. In essence western civilization was turning its back on the notion of a cosmic order, plan, and purpose. Henceforth astronomy would be understood in terms of the kind of causes that allow us to predict and control and “the concept of purpose in the world was ignored and frowned upon.” In this context Stace quotes Whitehead who says that nature is “merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly.”

This highlights the fundamental division in Western thought: those before Galileo thought the world had a purpose; many after him did not. This destruction of purpose in the universe is the key event that signaled the end of religion’s preeminence in culture, inasmuch as religion cannot survive in a world where everything is thought futile. Science has left us with no reason for things to be as they are: “Belief in the ultimate irrationality of everything is the quintessence of what is called the modern mind.” Another consequence of the decline of the religious view was the ruin of morality, for if morality could not be anchored beyond humankind then it must be our own invention. But as humans differ in their desires and preferences, inevitably morality would be seen as relative. It was in Hobbes that this moral philosophy first flowered and, despite the attempts of Kant and others, the objective basis for morality has been lost. In short moral relativism follows from the world view first illuminated by Galileo—a cosmos devoid of final causes and thus meaningless.

Another consequence of the scientific world view is the loss of belief in free will. Once the idea of a chain of causation is understood it is but a short leap to seeing human action as predictable as a lunar eclipse, to a fatalistic account of human action. And though the subtle arguments of the philosopher may be able to undermine the determinist’s case, the belief in various sorts of determinism—the belief that human beings are puppets in a vast cosmic drama—has penetrated the modern mind.

In response to the present condition philosophers have advanced subtle arguments that are not understood by laypersons; religious leaders have sought to revive religion but their pleas do not move modern people, accustomed as they are to a vast, uncaring universe. A religious revival calling for a return to a pre-scientific religion will ultimately fall on deaf ears; the world has grown up too much for that. And science will not save us either: “though it [science] can teach us the best means for achieving our ends, it can never tell us what ends to pursue.” The masses must “face the truth that there is, in the universe outside of man, no spirituality, no regard for values, no friend in the sky, no help or comfort for man of any sort.”

While we may have justifiably suppressed this truth before it was known, it is now too late. So we must learn to live without the illusion that the universe is good, moral, and follows a plan. We need to learn to live good and decent moral lives without the illusion of religion and a purposeful universe. “To be genuinely civilized means to be able to walk straightly and to live honorably without the props and crutches of one or another of the childish dreams which have so far supported men.” Such a life will not be completely happy but “it can be lived in quiet content, accepting resignedly what cannot be helped, not expecting the impossible, and being thankful for small mercies,” Humankind must grow up, put away its childish fantasies, and strive “for great ends and noble achievements.”

Summary – There is no objective meaning, but we can be content and noble.

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Stace, “Man Against Darkness,” 93.