Abstract
The meaning of life poses a good philosophical question. Answering it calls for understanding basic features of human existence. In concluding that human life—or all life—is globally absurd, Albert CamusAlbert Camus, Richard TaylorRichard Taylor, and Thomas Nagel make false moves, splitting mind and world. For Camus, absurdity arises in the collision between human desires and the indifferent universe. What we long for—a home, knowledge, certainty—lies perpetually beyond reach. Sisyphus is Camus’s hero because he spites the gods who consign him to absurdity. Taylor takes the monotony of Sisyphus’s senseless stone-rolling to epitomize absurdity. Pointless repetition of lives from glowworms to humans is absurd. Unreflective absorption in life spares most humans from distress. For Nagel, like Camus, absurdity is a human fate. Absurdity arises from the collision within persons between the subjective point of view and the objective “view from nowhere,” which exposes the groundlessness of our cares.