Absurdists/Nihilists/Existentialists take on as to why there is no intrinsic meaning to life

Question

So, I just got into absurdism (formally-as a "branch" in philosophy, though I had been thinking in similar terms for a longer period now), and currently am reading "The Myth of Sysiphus" by Albert Camus. Also, I am looking into nihilism and existentialism.

Now, it seems to me (or I had not grasped it yet) that philosophers that write about such topics do not elaborate clearly on the question why is there no intrinsic meaning; they just seem to take it as a presumption. I'm interested in learning how did people like Camus arrive at that conclusion. How does one back-up the claim that there is no intrinsic meaning to life? Thanks

Answer 1

You can see :

• Robert Zaretsky, A Life Worth Living : Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning (2013), page 13:

In its pages [The Myth of Sisyphus], Camus pursues the perennial prey of philosophy — the questions of who we are, where and whether we can find meaning, and what we can truly know about ourselves and the world — less with the intention of capturing them than continuing the chase. [...] For Camus, however, this astonishment [at the core of human existence] results from our confrontation with a world that refuses to surrender meaning. It occurs when our need for meaning shatters against the indifference, immovable and absolute, of the world.

Camus refers to Kierkegaard as one of the great explorers of the absurd, but we can see also Pascal:

[Pascal] was famously frightened by “the silence of these infinite spaces,” Kierkegaard was terrified by the prospect of a life lived in the absurd.

See also:

• John Foley, Albert Camus : From the absurd to revolt (2008), page 5:

for Kierkegaard, the absurd refers to that quality of Christian faith that runs counter to all mundane human experience.

[In] The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) Camus claims that the absurd arises out of the “confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world”. Human beings are naturally inclined to want and expect the world to be intelligible “in the full and familiar ways that religious and philosophical systems have portrayed it”. This kind of intelligibility purports to be comprehensive, to explain the world as a whole, and crucially, it purports to explain the world “in terms that human beings care about”, in ways that make sense “with respect to human values”. In Camus’s view, neither human existence nor the world are themselves absurd. Instead the absurd arises because the world is resistant to this kind of intelligibility: “we want the world to make sense, but it does not make sense. To see this conflict is to see the absurd”. “If there is an absurd,” Camus says at one point, “it is in man’s universe”. What normally brings the individual into confrontation with his absurd condition, suggests Camus, is the awareness not of human mortality per se, but of his own personal mortality. In the case of Camus himself, this awareness came with his first attack of tuberculosis, in 1930 or 1931, at the age of seventeen.

Answer 2

From a existentialist perspective, all tastes, all values, norms, all standards, all morality is inherently subjective and arbitrary to a point.

From a existentialist perspective, the only meaning there is to life is the meaning that you as an individual adhere to it. The only morals there are to life, are the subjective and largely arbitrary morals that you as an individual choose to adhere to. The only goals in life are the goals you set for yourself.

It essentially means that life is yours to create!

Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create.

— Robert Solomon, philosophy professor at the University of Texas

Answer 3

The idea of imposed meaning is not reconcilable with free will. However, I believe Camus and the Dadaists were more influenced by the trauma and senselessness of world war.

Imposed meaning, purpose or law, such as "Go forth and multiply", can be analysed and overridden by a conscious free-willed individual. However, one cannot ignore the logic of reason. Morality is not absolute, but the inevitability of reasoning can reveal one moral code to be better or worse than another. In the end, reason provides meaning.

This leads me to repeat a recent quote of Thomas Aquinas:

True peace consists in not separating ourselves from the will of God.

... who, in metaphorical or real sense, just wishes us to be our best selves.

There's meaning. Perhaps the existentialists are rejecting some other meaning. If they are rejecting all meaning then their position is paradoxical, because they are trying to make sense and meaninglessness simultaneously.

Answer 4

I disagree with you that Camus doesn't try to show why there is no (absolute) meaning of life (you can argue about the quality and blind spots in his reasoning though ;-D.)

• First he tries reason (with can be used for anything),
• then he tries his senses (with fail on an atomic level),
• then he tries the philosophers he likes and they all make this leap where they take away the uncertainty and replace it with God.

You could summarize all these arguments and say that Camus argues that there is no meaning in life because there is no ultimate Truth. No Truth means no ultimate meaning to life.

*(This reasoning -- that you have to know the truth to live a good meaningful life -- is called the Socratic command in a Dutch book on nihilism (Goudsblom, 1960)