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In part #11, my final blog on this topic, we have to conclude that none of the strategies so far have resolved the paradox they are all absurd. If so then it seems that all striving towards our goals, our ends, is utterly meaningless. So perhaps we should just embrace the absurd. But will it resolve the problem? Can we find meaning?
#11 Embracing the absurd
While it might be argued that we want to avoid the problems associated with the paradox of the end, must we also dispense with the idea that life is, ultimately, absurd as do the strategies outlined in in blogs #1/10. There seems little to commend them once the consequences of pursuance are revealed. Thomas Nagel’s strategy is to embrace the absurd, and this does seem to have something to commend it. Under his conception the absurdity of life arises when pretensions and reality clash. The conditions for this conflict are supplied by a collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives, and the perceptual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt. This, Nagel holds, amounts to a collision within us, as opposed to a collision between our expectations and the world which would give rise to the paradox.
If we accept Nagel’s argument that the process of justification which gives rise to the paradox fail as an argument (fail because they lead to the paradox, and fail because he believes we are more easily satisfied than that ), then we need only to reconsider the conditions which give rise to the feeling that life is absurd. The difference is that while the internal and external conditions which give rise to the paradox only enable us to approach the absurd with heroism or despair, depending upon your reading of Sisyphus, his reformulation of the purely internal conditions avoids the paradox enabling us to approach our absurd lives with irony. The former we might want to avoid, but not necessarily the latter. But can we make a case for embracing the absurd?
Nagel’s reformulations of the conditions which give rise to the absurd seem to be imbedded in the preoccupations of Western societies. Living in an increasingly technological and affluent society, where the bare essentials of existence (food, water, and shelter) are largely catered for, concern for meaning becomes an increasing preoccupation. If our days were occupied with procuring the wherewithal to survive then the opportunity to raise our thoughts beyond the here and now would probably not arise - a full stomach and a warm bed invite transcendence. Our capacity, and the opportunity, for transcendence make us both aware of our condition, and furnish us with the capacity to see ourselves as spectators of our own lives. Moreover, both seem worthy of celebration.
Given also that we seem unable to reconcile our objective standpoint and our subjective striving for meaning and significance we should perhaps embrace both our capacity and the opportunity rather than adopt a strategy that has little to commend it. To do otherwise would seem to be an attempt to deny essentially who and what we are, and such a denial would result in a life diminished in profundity. While embracing the objective and the subjective entails acceptance of the absurdity of life it need not lead to alienation and the infinite regress pursuit of ever greater meaning brings. Embracing the objective and subjective on the one hand enables us to recognise the boundary of individual value, but on the other, acknowledge the importance of those passions from which meaning and significance are derived. Moreover, such harmony does not result in existential paralysis.
And there I must end this series.
If you got this far thanks for reading - much appreciated guys!