Criticism of Thomas Nagel's view on the meaning of life

Authors
Nazem Safari Ganharani 1
Mohammad Raayat Jahromi 2
Mohammad Hassan Heidari 2
AliNaqi Baqershahi 3
1 Imam Khomeini International University
2 Department of philosophy, Imam Khomeini International University
3 Department of philosophy, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran
10.61186/mi.5.1.213
Abstract
According to Nagel, from a subjective (internal) point of view, life is unavoidably unquestionable and serious, and from an objective (external) point of view, it is doubtful, unjustifiable, arbitrary, random and non-serious. The futility of life does not mean that life has no value and importance, no role or function is envisioned for it, or it lacks any purpose and goal, but it means that, incidentally, from a mental point of view, life is the most valuable and It is the most important thing there is, but the main issue is that whatever meaning we discover or fabricate for life, that meaning is, from an eternal perspective, arbitrary. Therefore, life is futile, not because, from the perspective of a distant future, it is insignificant or compared to the universe, it is nothing more than a particle and a tail, and it is not related to death, it is destroyed, and it is not eternal. Rather, even if man fills the entire space and time and has eternal life and continues to live eternally next to God as the ultimate goal, the problem remains unsolved, that is, man can Look at your own life and God's life from the perspective of eternity. The present article aims to criticize the key components of Nagel's point of view, i.e., the inevitability of doubt, the inexcusability of life, the irrefutability of the above argument, and the preference of an objective point of view over a subjective point of view
Keywords
Thomas Nagel
futility
inevitability of doubt
unjustifiability of life
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Metaphysical Research
Volume 5, Issue 1 - Serial Number 9
August 2024
Pages 213-231