Death and the Absurd

Death

If death is the permanent end of existence, is it bad to die? Views differ, with some fearing it and others accepting it as long as it's not premature or painful.

I will use 'death' to mean permanent death without conscious survival, to explore whether death is inherently evil.

If death is evil, it's because of what it deprives us of, not its positive features. Life's goods, like perception and thought, are generally considered benefits, even alongside misery. Life is worth living due to experience itself.

I will focus on the value of life for the individual, not its value to others. Organic survival isn't the sole criterion; the value of life increases with time, even if discontinuous.

Mortal Questions

Desirable aspects of life are states, conditions, or activities. If death is evil, it's the loss of life. Death is not an evil suffered gradually like aging.

We don't object to temporary life suspension, and pre-birth nonexistence isn't considered a misfortune. The fear of death isn't just about imagining being dead.

Death is bad because it deprives us of the good of life. There are difficulties in assigning this misfortune to a subject, especially since a person either exists or is dead. Another difficulty lies in the asymmetry between attitudes toward pre-birth and post-death nonexistence.

Denying betrayal as a misfortune assumes drastic restrictions on good and evil. Goods and evils aren't always temporally assignable states; history matters. For example, discovering betrayal makes us unhappy because betrayal is inherently bad.

Good and ill fortune apply to a person defined by their history and possibilities. Consider someone reduced to an infantile state due to brain injury; it's a misfortune because of the contrast with their former and potential states.

It's limiting to restrict goods and evils to nonrelational properties at specific times. A man's life extends beyond his body and mind. Mental degeneration is an evil based on the contrast between reality and potential. The subject experiences good and evil through hopes and possibilities. If death is evil, it's due to the impossibility of locating it within life.

When someone dies, the loss of life is the misfortune. While the person existed in time and space, quantifying the loss is difficult. Not being born isn't a misfortune because there's no loss of potential life.

The time after death deprives a person of life they would have had otherwise. The time before birth isn't a loss because a person couldn't have been born substantially earlier. The direction of time is key in assigning possibilities.

Keats's death at 24 is tragic, while Tolstoy's at 82 is less so, because Keats lost more potential life. The question remains whether mortality itself is a misfortune.

Life makes us appreciate the goods death deprives us of. Human existence defines an open-ended possible future. Death cancels these extensive possible goods, so death could be a widespread tragedy.

The Absurd

Many feel life is absurd, but common reasons are inadequate. For example, the fact that nothing we do now will matter in a million years doesn't explain absurdity.

Facts about our minuteness in space and time don't inherently make life absurd. Living forever wouldn't make an absurd life less so.

The argument that death makes all justifications meaningless doesn't hold. Justifications end within life, and an infinite regress is impossible. Demanding complete reasons is a vacuous pursuit.

Standard arguments for absurdity fail, but they express a valid sentiment.

In ordinary life, absurdity arises from a discrepancy between pretension and reality. We try to resolve absurd situations. The philosophical sense of absurdity arises from the clash between our seriousness and the possibility of doubting everything.

We take our lives seriously, but can always step back and see our seriousness as gratuitous. This collision makes life absurd because we ignore unsettled doubts and continue with seriousness.

We take ourselves seriously, pursuing various aims and devoting effort to our lives. However, we can step back and view our lives with detached amazement, recognizing the contingency of our aims.

The crucial step is recognizing that our system of justification rests on unquestioned habits. We see ourselves from outside, recognizing the arbitrariness of our aims. Absurdity lies in taking this view without ceasing to be the person with those concerns.

Ultimate concerns can't be stepped back from. Seeking meaning in service to society or a higher power doesn't solve the problem unless that enterprise is significant. Ultimately, justifications end when we are content.

Fundamental doubt makes any larger purpose questionable. Absurdity arises not from a collision with the world, but from a collision within ourselves.

The standpoint for feeling these doubts does exist. We simply recognize that our standards are based on our constitution.

Philosophical perception of the absurd is similar to epistemological skepticism. Both involve our limitations and the capacity to transcend them in thought.

Skepticism begins when we include ourselves in the world about which we claim knowledge. We take our world for granted, and our claims to knowledge depend on not excluding certain alternatives.

We continue to take life for granted while seeing that our decisions depend on what we don't bother to rule out. Both skepticism and absurdity can be reached through doubts within accepted systems.

Philosophical skepticism doesn't cause us to abandon ordinary beliefs but gives them a peculiar flavor. We return to our convictions with irony and resignation.

We return to our lives with seriousness laced with irony. Sustaining ourselves involves something more basic than reason. If we tried to rely entirely on reason, we would collapse.

In viewing ourselves from a broader perspective, we become spectators of our own lives. We continue to lead them, but view them as a curiosity.

The sense of absurdity finds its expression in bad arguments. Small size and short lifespan are metaphors for the backward step that allows us to see ourselves without presuppositions.

To avoid absurdity, one would have to be unaware of their transcendental state, like a mouse. Avoiding self-consciousness would require never attaining it or forgetting it.

Destruction of one's earthly life in order to assume a trivial and arbitrary state can diminish absurdity. However, a fully achieved avoidance of engagement diminishes a meaningful life.

Suicide is an option; however, one should consider carefully if the absurdity presents a problem to be solved. Camus rejects suicide and recommends defiance or scorn.

Absurdity is one of the most human things about us. Like skepticism, it results from the ability to understand our human limitations. Knowing it brings a sense of cosmic unimportance, allowing us to approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.