Size and Significance
Thursday, September 5
Today, a passage from philosopher Thomas Nagel’s article “The Absurd.”
What we say to convey the absurdity of our lives often has to do with space or time: we are tiny specks in the infinite vastness of the universe; our lives are mere instants even on a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one; we will all be dead any minute. But of course none of these evident facts can be what makes life absurd, if it is absurd. For suppose we lived forever; would not a life that is absurd if it lasts seventy years be infinitely absurd if it lasted through eternity? And if our lives are absurd given our present size, why would they be any less absurd if we filled the universe (either because we were larger or because the universe was smaller)? Reflection on our minuteness and brevity appears to be intimately connected with the sense that life is meaningless; but it is not clear what the connection is.
If I was big enough to occupy 2/3 of the observable universe, would my life be any more meaningful? If I lived for 2/3 of the lifespan of the universe, would that grant me any additional meaning?
I think Nagel is right: that the answer to both is “no.” In some sense, this isn’t very reassuring; it still leaves us in an indifferent universe. But at least we no longer have to curse our smallness, knowing it has no bearing on the important questions anyway.
Nagel does offer some reassurance at the end: if indeed life is meaningless, that fact would itself be meaningless, so we’d have no reason to fret:
If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the situation is not absurd until the perception arises), then what reason can we have to resent or escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticism, it results from the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony unless we make it so. Nor need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud. Such dramatics, even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn't matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.