Camus and Curren$y: Why I Preach Indie

At the end of his book What Does It All Mean? philosopher Thomas Nagel wonders if the “Meaning-capital-M” question comes from too great a sense of our own importance.1 He proposes that since “the grave is [life’s only] goal, perhaps it’s ridiculous to take ourselves so seriously.” It should be enough to simply take life as it comes and enjoy it as

But, Camus tells us, ‘one day the “why” arises’ and with it ‘the absurd’, the sudden recognition that this routine, this life, is leading nowhere, and that perhaps all of human life is without meaning or purpose.28

It was called existentialism. It argued—put roughly—that life’s only meaning is the one we bring to it, that its purpose is for us to determine, each for ourselves. And most importantly, it argued that in this absurd universe without purpose, meaning, or objective morality, in a world where nothing matters, the only principled alternative to suicid