Exam 10: Epicurus in Waking or in Dream

Nagel says, "Skepticism begins when we include ourselves in the world about which we claim knowledge. We notice that certain types of evidence convince us, that we are content to allow justifications of belief to come to an end at certain points, that we feel we know many things even without knowing or having grounds for believing the denial of others which, if true, would make what we claim to know false." Do you agree with Nagel? Explain your answer.

Schopenhauer says, "Life presents itself chiefly as a task-the task, I mean, of subsisting at all. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won-of warding off __________, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need."

Nagel says, "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn't matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair." Do you agree with Nagel?

Schopenhauer says, "Life presents itself chiefly as a task-the task, I mean, of subsisting at all. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won-of warding off temptation, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need."

Taylor uses the examples of worms, birds, and fish to say "that there is no point to it at all, that it really culminates in nothing, that each of these cycles, so filled with toil, is to be followed only by more of the same. The point of any living thing's life is, evidently, nothing but ..."

Trisel says, "Albert Einstein is often mentioned as someone who led a meaningful life. In judging whether his life was meaningful, no one would ever ask 'Was his existence intended?' Whether or not a person's existence was intended is __________ to whether this person's life is meaningful."

According to Epicurus, "death is nothing to us, because good and evil imply __________, and death is the privation of all __________."

Wolf says that some people have held that if "there is no God, then there can be no meaning, in the sense of a point or purpose to our existence. We are simply a product of physical processes-there are no reasons for our existence, just mysteries."

Explain the meaning of Kierkegaard's extended discussion of the poet and the hero. Can anyone be a poet? Can anyone be a hero?

According to Epicurus, "pleasure" means "losing yourself (your ego) in the invisible fabric of the universe."

Nagel says, "Why is the life of a mouse not absurd? The orbit of the moon is not absurd either, but that involves no strivings or aims at all. A mouse, however, has to work to stay alive. Yet he is not absurd, because he lacks the capacities for __________________ and __________________ that would enable him to see that he is only a mouse."

Explain Taylor's point when he says, "The meaning of life is from within us, it is not bestowed from without, and it far exceeds in both its beauty and permanence any heaven of which men have ever dreamed or yearned for."

Epicurus argues that life should be directed to faith in God, "since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it."

According to Wolf, "For me, the idea of a meaningless life is most clearly and effectively embodied in the image of a person who spends day after day, or night after night, in front of a television set, drinking beer and watching situation comedies."

Explain what Nagel means when he says, "There does not appear to be any conceivable world (containing us) about which unsettlable doubts could not arise. Consequently the absurdity of our situation derives not from a collision between our expectations and the world, but from a collision within ourselves."

Nagel says, "No further justification is needed to make it reasonable to take aspirin for a headache, attend an exhibit of the work of a painter one admires, or stop a child from putting his hand on a hot stove. No larger context or further purpose is needed to prevent these acts from being transcendent."

Nagel says, "In ordinary life a situation is absurd when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension or aspiration and reality: someone gives a complicated speech in support of a motion that has already been passed; a notorious criminal is made president of a major philanthropic foundation; you declare your love over the telephone to a recorded announcement; as you are being knighted, your pants fall down." Do you agree with Nagel's discussion of when something is absurd?

Explain Nagel's point when he says, "It is often remarked that nothing we do now will matter in a million years. But if that is true, then by the same token, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now. In particular, it does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter."

According to Wolf, "Though there may well be many things going on when people ask, 'What is the meaning of life?', the most central among them seems to be a search to find ..."

Explain the meaning of Kierkegaard's claim: "If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all-what then would life be but despair?"