The Absurd
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"The Absurd" (1971) is an essay by Thomas Nagel first published in Journal of Philosophy, collected in Mortal Questions.
Excerpts:
Yet humans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed... Without developing the illusion that they are able to escape from their highly specific and idiosyncratic position, they can view it sub specie aeternitatis—and the view is at once sobering and comical.
If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.
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