See the axis · The meaning of life

ObjectionAttacks the position

Why revolt?

If nothing really has value, the rebel's lucidity and pride have none either: to make them the 'right' answer is already to reintroduce a meaning.

Objects to

Nagel · The Absurd · 1971

  1. The absurd arises, we are told, from the world's silence before our thirst for meaning; and the right response would be lucid revolt, without hope or resignation.
  2. But why 'revolt' rather than indifference, or renunciation? If nothing really has value, the rebel's lucidity and pride have no more of it: to set them up as the right response is already to hold something better, and so to reintroduce a meaning.
  3. The absurdist is thus caught between two terms: either these values hold, and the world is not the desert of meaning he claimed; or they do not, and his revolt is as futile as what it claims to defy.

Therefore So absurdism contradicts itself: it proclaims the absence of meaning while making revolt a meaning. One must either recognize values, and leave the absurd, or renounce even revolt itself.

Possible resolutions of the objection

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