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First published 1979

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Nagel, Thomas.
Mortal questions.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Life-Addresses, essays, lectures.
2. Ethics-Addresses, essays, lectures. I.
Title. BD431.N32 170 78--58797
ISBN 0 521 22360 1 hard covers
ISBN 0 521 29460 6 paperback
 SOURCES

Chapters 13 and 14 are p u blished here for the firs t time. Original
versions o f chapters 1-12 appeared in the places listed below.
There have been various revisions, i n cluding some changes of
title.

Nous, IV, no. 1 (February, 1970). Reprin ted by permission

o f the Wayne S ta te University Press
2 ]oumal of Philosophy, LXVIII, no. 20 (October 21, 197 1)
3 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , s u p plementary vol. L
(1976) . This was a repl y to B ernard Will i a m s ' paper of the
same name
4 Journal of Philosophy, LXVI, no. 1 Qanuary 16, 1969)
5 Philosophy & Public Affairs , 1, no. 2 (Winter, . 1972), with
replies b y R. B. Brandt and R . M. H are
6 Public and Private Morality , ed. S tu art H a mpshire (Cam
bridge: C a mbridge University Press, 1978)
7 Philosophy & Public Affairs, 11, no. 4 ( S u mm er, 1973)
8 Delivered as the Tanner L e cture at S t a n ford University i n
1977, a n d pu blished in Critica ( 1 978). P ublished by permis
sion o f the Tanner Lecture Trust
9 Knowledge1 Value and Belif, ed. H. Tristra m Engelhardt Jr
and D aniel Callahan (Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. : Institute
of S ociety, Ethics a n d the L i fe sciences, 1 977)
10 Morality as a B iological Phenomenon , ed. G. S . S tent (Berlin :
Dahlem Kon ferenzen, 1978)
11 Synthese, xx (1971)
12 Philosophical Review, LXXXIII (October, 1974)
 1

Death

If death is the u n e q u i voca l and permanent end of our existence,

the q uestio n arises whether it is a bad thing to die.
There is con spicuous disagreement about the matter: some
people thi nk death is d r ea d fu l ; others have no obj ect i o n to death
per se, tho u g h they hope the i r own will be neither prema ture nor
painfu l . Those in t h e former category tend to think those in the
latter are blind to the obvious, while the latter suppose the
fo rm er to be prey to some sort of confusio n . O n the one hand it
can be said that li fe is all we have and the loss of it is the g reatest
loss we can s u s tai n On the other hand it may be objected that
.

death de p rives this supposed loss of its subject, and t h a t if we

r e a l ize that death is not an uni m a g i n a bl e con d i tion of the
persisting person, but a mere blank, we will see that it can have
no val ue whatever, p os itiv e or ne g a ti v e
.

Since I want to leave aside the ques t io n whether we are, or

might be, immortal in some form, I shall simply use the word
'death' and its cognates in thi s discussion to mean permanent
death, unsupplemented by a n y form of conscious su r v ival I .

want to ask whether death is i n itself an evil; and how great an

evil, and of what ki nd it m i ght be. The question should be of
,

interest even to those who believe in some form of immortality,

for on e s attitu d e t o w a r d immo rta li ty must depend in part on
'

one's attitude toward death.

If death is an evil at all, it cannot be because of its positive
features, but o n ly because of what it dep r i ve s us of. I shall try to
deal with the d iffi c ulties surroundin g the n a t u ral view that death
is an evil because it brings to an end all the g oo ds that life
2 Mortal questions

contains . We need not give an acco u n t of these goods here,

except to observe that some of them, like perception, desire,
activity, and thought, are so general as to be constitutive of
h u m a n life. They are widely regarded as for midable benefits in
themselves, despite the fact that they a re conditions of misery as
well as of happiness, and that a s u fficient qua n tity of more
particular evils can perhaps outweigh them. That is what is
meant, I think, by the allegation that it is good simply to be
alive, even if one is u n dergoing terrible experiences. The si tua
tion is roughly this: There are ele ments which, if added to one's
experience, make life better; there a re other elements which, if
added to one's experience, make life worse. But what remains
when these are set aside is not merely neutral: i t is emphatically
positive. Therefore life is worth living even when the bad
elements of experience are plentiful, and the good ones too
meager to o u tweigh the bad ones on their own. The addi tional
positive weight is supplied b y experience i tself, rather than by
any o f its contents.
I shall not discuss the value that one pers o n ' s life o r dea th may
have for others, or its o bjective value, b u t only the value it has
for the person h o is its s u bject. That seems to me the primary
case, and the case whicJ?. p resents the greatest d i ffi clties. Let me
a d d only two observations. First, the value of life and its
contents does not attach to mere organic s u rviva l : al most
everyone would be indifferent (other things equal) between
i m mediate death and i m mediate coma followed b y death twenty
yea rs later witho u t reawakening. And second, like most goods,
this can be multiplied by time: more is better than less. The
added quanti ties need not be temporally continuous (though
continuity has its social advantages ) . People are attracted to the
possibility o f l ong-term s uspended ani mation o r freezing, fol
lowed b y the resumption of conscious life, because they can
regard it fro m within simply as a continuation of their p resen t life.
If these techniques are ever perfected, what from outside
appeared as a dormant interval of t hree hundred years could be
experienced by the subject as nothing m o re than a sharp
discontinuity in the character of his experiences. I do not deny,
of cou rse, that this h as its own disadvantages. Family and frien ds
may have died in the meanti me; the language may have changed;
the comforts of social, geographical, and cultural familiarity
 Death 3

would be lacking. Nevertheless these inconvenien ces would not

obliterate the basic adva n t age of continued, tho ug h d iscon tinu
ous, existence.
If we t u rn from what i s g o od a b o u t life to what is b a d abo u t
death, the case i s completely d i fferent. E ss enti al ly, t h ou g h there
may be proble m s a bout t h ei r s p e cificat i on what we find des i r
,

able in l i fe are certain states, conditions, or types of acti v i ty. It i s

being alive, doit1g certain thing s , having certain exp erien ces, t h a t
we co nsider g oo d Bu t i f death i s a n ev i l i t i s t h e loss
. , o_flife, ra ther
than the state of b e i n g dead, or nonexistent, or unco nsci ou s tha t ,

is objectiona ble.! This asymmetry is i mporta nt I f it is . good to

be al ive, that advan ta g e can be a t t ribu te d to a p e rson a t each
point of his l i fe. It is a good o f which Bach had more t h a n
Schubert, s i m p l y beca u s e he lived longe r Death, however, i s not
.

an evil of w h i ch Sha k espeare has so far received a larger portion

than Proust. If d eath is a dis a d v a n tage, it is no t easy to say when
a man suffers it.
There are two other indica tions tha t we do not obj ect to death
merely because it i n v olves long periods o f nonexistence. Firs t, as
has been menti oned, m ost of u s would n o t r eg a rd t h e temporary
suspension of l i fe, even for s u b st a n t ial i ntervals, as in i ts elf a
mi s fo rtu ne . If it ever happens t h a t people can b e frozen w i thou t
reduc tion of the cons cious life s p an, i t will be inappro priate t o
p i ty those who are te m pora rily out of ci rculation. Se cond, none
of us existed befo re we w er e born (or conceived), but few regard
that as a m i sf ortune . I s h a l l have m o re to say a b out this l a ter.
The p o i n t that death is not r eg a r de d as an unfortunate state
en ab l es us to refu te a cu ri o u s b u t very co m m on su g g esti o n
about t h e ori gin o f t h e fear of dea th. I t i s o ften s aid t h a t those
who ob jec t to death h a v e made the m ist a ke of trying to i m agine
what it is like to be dead. It is al le g ed that the failure to realize
that this task is logically impossible ( fo r the b anal reason tha t
there is n othin g to i magine) leads to t h e conviction that death is a
mysterious a n d therefo re terrifying prospective state. But this
di a gnosis i s evidently false, for it is just as i m p ossible to imagine
being tota lly uncons cious as to imagine being dead (though i t i s
easy enough to imagine oneself, from t h e outs ide, i n either of
those conditions). Yet people who are averse to death a re not

1 It is sometimes suggested that what we really mind is the process of dying.

But I should not really object to dying if it were not followed by death.
4 Mortal questions

usually a verse to unconsciousness {s o long as i t does not entail a

substantial cut in the total duration of waking l i fe).

I f we a re to make sense o f the view that to die is bad, i t must
be on the ground that life is a good and death is the correspond
ing d eprivation or loss, bad not because of any positive features
but because of the desira bility of what it removes. We must now
turn to the serious d i fficul ties which this hypothesis raises,
difficulties about loss and privation in general, and about death
in particular.
Essentially, there are three types of problem. First, doubt may
be raised whether anything can be bad for a man without being
posi tively u n pleasant to h i m: speci fically, i t may be doubted that
there are any evils which consist merely in the deprivation or
absence o f possible goods, a n d which do not depend on so me
one's minding that deprivation. Second, there are special diffi cul
ties, in the case o f death, about how the s u pposed m isfortune is
to be assigned to a subj ect a t all. There is doubt both as to who its
subj ect is, and as to when he undergoes it. So long as a person
exists, he has not yet d ied, and once he has died, he no longer
exists; s o there seems to be no ti me when death, i f i t is a

misfortu ne, can be ascribed to its u n fortun a te subject. The third

type of d i fficulty concerns the a s y m metry, mentioned above,
between our a ttitudes to posthumous a n d prenatal nonexis tence.
How can the fo rmer be bad i f the latter is n o t ?
It s h o u l d be recognized that i f t h e s e a r e valid obj ections to
cou nting death as an evil, they will apply to many other
supposed evils as well. The first type of objection is exp ressed in
general form by the common remark that what you don't know
can't hurt you . I t means that even i f a man is betrayed by his
friends, rid i culed behind his back, and despised by people who
trea t h i m politely to his face, none of it can be cou nted as a

misfortune fo r h i m so long as he does not suffe r as a res ult. It

means that a man is not i nj ured if his wishes are ignored by the
executor of his will, or if, a fter his death, the belief becomes
current that all the literary works on which his fa me rests were
really written by his brother, who died in Mex i co at the age of
28. It seems to me worth asking what assu m p tions about good
and evil lead to these drastic restri ctions.
All the questions have so mething to do with time. There
certainly a re goods and evils of a simple kind (i ncluding some
 Death 5

p leasures and pa ins) w hich a pers o n possesses at a gi ven time

simply in virtue of his condition at that time. But this i s not true
of all the thin gs we reg a rd as good or b a d for a man. O ften we
need t o know his history to tell whether something is a
misfortu ne or no t ; this applies to ills like d e t e r i o ra t i on depriva
,

tion, and da mage. S omet i m es his experientia l state is r el ativ ely

uni mportant as in the case of a man who was tes h is life in the
-

che e rfu l purs u i t of a method of communicatin g w ith asparagus

plants. Someone who holds t hat a l l goods and evils must be
temporally a ss i g na b l e states of th e person may of course try to
bring difficul t cases i n to line by p o in t ing to the pleasure or pain
that more co m pl ica t ed goods and evils cause. Loss, betra yal,
deception, and ridicule are on this view bad because people
suffer when they learn of them. But it should be asked how our
ideas of human value would have to be constituted to accom
modate these cases directl y instead. One a d v ant ag e of such an
accoun t m ight be that it would enable us to explain why the
discovery o f these misfortu nes causes s u fferi n g - i n a w a y that
makes it reasonable. For the natu ral view is that the d is c o v er y of
b et r aya l makes us unhappy because it is bad to be betrayed- not
that betrayal is bad because its di sco ve r y makes us unhap py.
It therefore seems to me wo r th exploring the position that
most good and ill fortune has as its subject a person identified by
his history and his possibilities, rather than merel y b y his
ca tegorical state of the mo ment - and that while this subject can
be e x a ct l y located in a sequ ence of places and ti mes, t h e sa me i s
not necessarily t r u e of t h e goods and ills that befall hi m.2
These ideas can be illus trated by a n exa m ple of deprivation
whose severity approaches that of death. Suppose an intelli gent
person receives a brain injury that reduces him to the m e n t a l
condi tion of a c o n t ent ed in fant, and that such desires as remain
to h i m can be satisfied by a custodian, so that he is free fro m
care. Such a de v el opm e n t would be wide ly r e ga r ded as a severe
misfortune, not only for his fr ien ds and relations, or for society,
but also, and pri marily, for the person h i m s e l f. This d o e s not
mean that a c o n te n te d infant is u n fortu nate. The intelligent a d ul t
who has been reduced to this cond ition is the s ubject of the
misfortune. He is the one we pity, th o u g h of course he does not
2 I t i s certainly
not true i n general o f the things that can b e said o f him. For
example, Abraham Lincoln was taller than Louis XIV. But when?
6 Mortal questions

mind his condition - there is some doubt, in fact, whether he can

be said to exist any longer.
The view that such a man has suffered a misfortune is open to
the same obj ections which h ave been raised in regard to death.
He does not mind his condition. It is in fact the same condition
he was in at the age of three months, except that he is bigger. If
we did not pity him then, why pity him now; in any case, who
is there to pity? The intelligent adult has disappeared, and for a
creature like the one before us, happiness consists in a full
stomach and a dry diaper.'
If these obj ections are invalid, it must be because they res t on a
mistaken assu mption about the temporal relation between the
subject of a misfortune and the circu mstances which constitute
it. If, instead of concentrating exclusively on the oversized baby
before us, we consider the person he was, and the person he could
be now, then his reduction to this state and the cancellation of his
natural adult development -constitu te a perfectly intelligible
catastrophe.
This case should convince us that it is arbitrary to restrict the
goods a nd evils that can befall a man to nonrelational properties
ascribable to him at particular ti mes. As it stands, that restriction
excludes not only such cases of gross degeneration, but also a
good deal of what is i mportant about success and failu re, and
other features of a life that h ave the character of processes. I
believe we can go fu rther, however. There are goods and evils
which are irreducibly relational; they are featu res of the relations
between a person, with spatial and temporal boundaries of the
usual sort, and circu ms tances which may not coincide with him
either in space or in ti me. A man's life includes much that does
not take place within the boundaries of his body and his mind,
and what happens to him can include much that does not take
place within the boundaries of his life. These boundaries are
commonly crossed by the misfortunes of being deceived, or
despised, or betrayed. (If this is correct, there is a simple account
of what is wrong with breaking a deathbed promise. It is an
injury to the dead man. For certain purposes it is possible to
regard time as just another type of distance. ). The case of mental
degeneration shows us an evil that depends on a contra st
between the reality and the possible alternatives. A man is the
subj ect of good and evil as much because he has hopes which
 Death 7

may o r may n o t be fu l fi l led, or pos s i b i li t i es which may or may

not b e realized, as because o f his ca p ac i t y to suffer and enjoy. I f
dea th is a n e v i l , i t m u s t b e accounted for in t h e se terms, and the
i m p oss i b ilit y of locating it w it hi n life s h o u l d not trouble us.
W h en a man dies we are left with his c orp s e , and while a
corpse can suffer the kind of mishap that may occur to an a rticle
of fu rn i tu re , it is n o t a suitable object for pity. The man,
however, is. He has lost h is li fe , and if he h a d not died, he wo u ld
have continued to live it, and to poss e ss whatever g ood there is
in living. If we a p p l y t o death the account s u gge st ed f o r t h e case
of dementia, we shall s a y tha t a l t h o u gh the s p a t ia l and te mpo ra l
locations of t he individual who su ffered the loss a re clear
e n o ugh , the mis fortune itsel f cannot be so easily lo c a te d . One
must be co nte n t j u s t to state that his life is over and there will
ne ver be any more of it. T h at fact, rather t h a n his past o r p r e se nt
condition, co n s t i t ut es his misfortune, if it is o ne . Nevertheless i f
there is a lo s s, s o m eone m u s t suffer it, and he mu s t have
ex is te n c e an d s p eci fic spatial and te m p o ral location even i f the

loss i t sel f does not. The fac t that Beethoven h ad no ch i l d re n may

have been a cause of regret to him, or a sad thi n g for the wo rld,
but i t cannot be described as a misfortune for the ch ild re n t h at he
never had. All of us, I be lie ve , a re fo r t u n a te to h a ve been b orn.
But u nl ess good and ill can be a s s ign e d to an em b ry o , or even to
an unconnected p ai r o f g a m et es , i t cannot b e said that n ot to be
born is a m isfortu ne. (Tha t is a fa c t o r to be co nsidered in
deciding wh eth er abortion and contraception are akin to mur
der.)
T h i s a p proac h also provides a s o lu tio n to the p r o b l em o f
temporal asymmetry, p o i n te d ou t b y Lucretius. He o b se r ve d
that no one finds it distu r b i n g to contemplate the e t er nity
prece di n g his ow n bi rth, and he took this to show tha t it mu s t be
irrational to fear death, since d ea t h is s i mply the mirror i mage of
th e prior ab y s s . That is not true, howe ver, and the d i ffer e n ce
between t he two explains why it is reasonable to regard them
differen t l y . It is true that both the time before a man's birth and
the ti m e after his death ar e ti mes when he does n o t exist. Bu t the
time after his death is time of which his death d epr i v e s him. It is
time in wh i ch , had he not d ied then, h e would be alive .
Therefore a ny death e nt a il s the loss of some life th a t its victim
would h a ve led had he not died at tha t or any earlier point. We
8 Mortal questions

know perfectly well what it would be for him to have had it

instead of losing it, and there is no difficulty in identifying the
loser.
But we cannot say that the time prior to a man's birth is time
in which he would have lived had he been born not then but
earlier. For aside from the brief margin permitted by premature
labor, he could not have been born earlier: anyone born substan
tially earlier than he was would have been someone else.
Therefore the time prior to his birth is not time in which his
subsequent birth prevents him from living. His birth, when it
occurs, does not entail the loss to hi m of any life whatever.
The direction of time is crucial in assigning possibilities to
people or other individuals. Distinct possible lives of a single
person can diverge fro m a common beginning, but they cannot
converge to a com mon conclusion from diverse beginnings.
(The la tter would represent not a set of different possible lives of
one individual, but a set of distinct possible individuals, whose
lives have identical conclusions. ) Given an identifiable indi
vidual, countless possibilities for his continued existence are
imaginable, and we can clearly conceive of what it would be for
him to go on existing indefinitely. However inevitable it is that
this will not come about, its possibility is still that of the
continuation of a good for h i m, if life is the good we take it to
be. 3

I confess to being troubled by the above argument, on the ground that it is

too sophisticated to explain the simple difference between our attitudes to
prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. For this reason I suspect that
something essential is omitted from the account of the badness of death
by a n an alysis which treats it as a deprivation of possibilities. My
suspicion is supported by the following suggestion of Robert Nozick. We
could imagine discovering that people developed from individual spores
that had existed indefinitely far in adva nce of their birth. In this fantasy,
birth never occurs naturally more than a hundred years before the
permanent end of the spore's existence. But then we discover a way to
trigger the premature hatchi ng of these spores, and people are born who
have thousands of years of active life before them. Given such a situation,
it would be possible to i magine <llltself having come into existence
thousands of years previously. If we put aside the question whether this
would really be the same person, even given the identity of the spore, then
the consequence appears to be that a person's birth at a given time could
deprive him of many earlier years of possible life. Now while it would be
cause for regret that one had been d eprived of all those possible years of
life by being born too late, the feeling would differ from that which many
people have a bout death. I conclude that something a bout the future
 Death 9

We a re left, therefore, with the q uestion whether the nonreal

iza tion of this possi bility is in every case a misfortune, or
whether it depends on what can n a turally be hoped fo r. This
seems to m e the most serious difficulty with the view tha t death
is always a n evil. Even if we can dispose of the objections against
admitting misfortune that is not experienced, or cannot be
assigned to a definite ti me in the person's life, we still have to set
some limits on how possible a possibility must be for its
nonrea liza tion to be a misfo rtune (or good fortune, should the
pos sibility be a bad one). The death o f Keats at 24 is generally
regarded as tragic; that of Tolstoy a t 82 is not. A l though they
will both be dead for ever, Keats' death deprived him of many
yea rs of life which were allowed to Tolstoy; so i n a clea r sense
Keats' loss was greater (though not in the sense standardly
employed in m a thematical compa rison between infinite q uan
tities). However, this does not p rove that Tols toy's loss was
insignificant. Perhaps we record a n objection only to evils which
are gratuitously added to the inevitable; the fact that it is worse
to die a t 24 than a t 82 does not i mply tha t i t is not a terri ble thing
to die a t 82, o r even a t 806. The question is whether we can
regard as a misfortune a n y li mitation, like mortality, tha t is
normal to the species. Blindness o r near-blindness is not a
misfortune for a mole, nor would it be for a man, i f that were the
natural condition of the human ra ce.
The trouble is tha t life fa milia rizes us with the goods of which
death deprives us. We a re already able to a p p reciate them, as a
mole is not able to a pprecia te vision. I f we put aside doubts
about their status as goods and gra n t that their quantity is in part
a function of their d u ration, the q u estion remains whether death,
no ma tter when it occurs, can be said to deprive its victi m of
what is i n the releva n t sense a possible continuation of life.
The situa tion is a n a m biguous one. O bserved from without,
human beings obviously have a natural lifespan and cannot live
much longer than a hundred years. A man's sense o f his own

prospect o f permanent nothi ngness is n o t captured by the analysis i n terms

of denied possibilities. If so, then Lucretius' argumen t still awaits an
answer. I suspect that it requires a general treatme n t of the difference
between past and future in our atti tudes toward our own lives. Our
atti tudes toward past and future pain a re very d ifferent, for example.
Derek Parfit's unpublished wri tings on this topic have revealed its
difficulty to me.
10 Mortal questions

experience, on the other hand, does not embody this idea of a

natu ral limit. His existence defines for him an essentially open
ended possible futu re, containing the usual mixture of goods and
evils that he has found so tolerable in the past. Having been
gratuitously introduced to the world by a collection of natural,
historical, and social accidents, he finds himself the subject of a
life, with an indeterminate and not essentially limited future.
Viewed in this way, death, no matter how i nevitable, is an
abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods.
Normality seems to have nothing to do with it, for the fact that
we will aU inevitably die in a few score years cannot by itself
i mply that it would not be good to live longer. Suppose that we
were all inevitably going to die in agony - physical agony lasting
six months. Would inevi tability make that prospect any less
unpleasant? And why should it be different for a deprivation? If
the normal lifespan were a thousand years, death at 80 would be
a tragedy. As thi ngs are, it may just be a more widespread
tragedy. If there is no limit to the a mount of life that it would be
good to have, then it may be that a bad end is in s tore for us all.
 2

The Absurd

Mos t people feel on occasion that life is abs u rd, and some feel it
vividly and continu a l l y . Yet the reasons usually offered in
defense of thi s convic tion are p a tently i na d e qu a te : they could not
really explain w h y life is absurd. Wh y then do they provide a
natural expressi o n for t h e sense tha t it is?

Consider some examp l es. It is o fte n remarked that nothing w e

d o now will matter i n a million years. But i f that i s true, t h e n by
the same token, no th ing tha t will be the case in a million years
matters no w . In particul a r, it does no t matter now that in a
million years nothi ng we do now will ma tter. Moreover, even i f
what w e d i d n o w were going t o matter i n a million yea rs, how
could tha t k ee p our p r es e n t concerns from being a bsurd? If their
ma tt ering now is not enough to a ccomp lish t h a t, how wou l d it
hel p if they mattered a million years from now?
Whether w h a t we do now will matter in a m i l l ion years could
make the cru cial d ifference onl y if its mattering i n a mi llion yea rs
depended on i ts m a t ter i ng , peri od. But t h e n to deny t h a t
whatever hap pens n o w will matter in a m i l l ion years is to b eg
the question a gainst i ts m att e r i ng , period; for in that sense one
cannot k n ow t h a t it w i l l not mat ter in a mill ion years whe t her
(for e x a m p l e) someone now is h a p p y or miserable, w i thou t
knowing t h a t i t d oes no t m a t ter, p e riod.
What we say to convey the absurdity of our l i ves often h a s to
do with s p ace or time: we are t in y s p e cks i n the infini te vastness
of the u n iverse; our lives are mere instants even on a geological
12 Mortal questior1s

time scale, let alone a cos mic one; we will all be dead any minute.
B u t of course none of these evident facts can be what makes life
absurd, if it is absurd. For suppose we lived for ever; would not a
life that is absurd if it lasts seven ty years be infinitely absurd i f it
lasted through eternity? And if our lives a re absurd given our
present size, why would they be any less absurd if we filled the
uni verse (ei ther beca use we were la rger or because the universe
was s maller) ? Reflection on our minu teness and brevity appears
to be inti mately connected with the sense that life is meaningless;
but it is not clear what the connection is.
Another i nadequate argument is that because we are going to
die, all chains of justification must leave o ff i n mid-ai r: one
studies and works to earn money to pay for clothing, housing,
entertain ment, food, to sustain oneself fro m year to year,
perhaps to support a fa mily and pursue a career - but to what
final end? All of it is an elaborate jou rney leading nowhere. (One
will also have some e ffect on other people's lives, but that simply
reprodu ces the p roblem, for they will die too. )
There are several replies to this argu ment. First, life does not
consist of a sequence of activities each of which has as its purpose
some later member of the sequence. Chains of j usti fication co me
repea tedly to an end wi thin life, and whether the process as a
whole can be justified has no bearing on the finality of these
end-points. No fu rther justifica tion is needed to make i t reason
able to take aspirin for a headache, attend an exhib i tion of the
work of a painter one admires, or stop a child from putting his
hand on a hot stove. No larger context or fu rther pu rpose is
needed to prevent these acts fro m being pointless.
Even i f so meone wished to supply a fu rther justification for
pursuing all the things i n life that a re com monly regarded as
self-justifying, that justi fication would have to end somewhere
too. If nothing can justify unless i t is justi fied in terms of
something outside itself, which. is also justified, then an infinite
regress resul ts, and no chain of j u s ti fication can be co mplete.
Moreover, if a finite chain of reasons cannot j ustify anything,
what could be accompl ished by an i n finite chain, each link of
which must be justified by something outside i tself?
Since j ustifications must come to an end so mewhere, nothing
is gained by denying that they end where they appear to, within
life - or by trying to subsu me the multiple, often trivial ordinary
 1he absurd 13

justifications o f action under a single, controlling life scheme.

We can be satisfied more easily than that. In fact, through its
misrepresentation of the process of justification, the argument
makes a vacuous demand. It insists that the reasons available
within life are incomplete, but suggests thereby that all reasons
that come to an end are incomplete. This makes it impossible to
supply any reasons at all.
The standard arguments for absurdity appear therefore to fail
as arguments. Yet I believe they attempt to express somet hing
that is difficult to state, but fundamentally correct.

II
In ordinary life a situation is absurd when it includes a conspicu
ous 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.
When a person finds himself in an absurd situation, he will
usually attempt to change it, by modifying his aspirations, or by
trying to bring reality into better accord with them, or by
removing himself from the situation entirely. We are not always
willing or able to extricate ourselves from a position whose
absurdity has become clear to us. Nevertheless, it is usually
possible to imagine some change that would remove the absur
dity- whether or not we can or will implement it. The sense that
life as a whole is absurd arises when we perceive, perhaps dimly,
an inflated pretension or aspiration which is inseparable from the
continuation of human life and which makes its a bsurdity
inescapable, short of escape from life itself
Many people's lives are absurd, temporarily or permanently,
for conventional reasons having to do with their particubr
ambitions, circumstances, and personal relations. If there is a

philosophical sense of absurdity, however, it must arise from the

perception of something universal - some respect in which
pretension and reality inevitably clash for us all. This condition
is supplied, I shall argue, by the collison between the seriousness
with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of
regarding everything a bout which we are serious as arbitrary, or
open to doubt.
14 Mortal questiotlS

We cannot live human lives without energy and attention, n or

without making choices which show that we take some things
more seriously than others. Yet we have always available a point
of view outside the particular for m of our lives, fro m which the
seriousness appears gratuitous. These two i nescapable view
points collide in us, and that is what makes life absurd. It is
absurd because we ignore the dou bts that we know cannot be
settled, continuing to live w i th nearly undi minished seriousness
in spite of them.
This analysis requires defense i n two respects: first as regards
the unavoidability of seriousness; second as regards the ines
capability of doubt.
We take ourselves seriously whether we lead serious lives or
not a nd whether we are concerned primarily with fa me, p leas
ure, virtues, luxury, triu mph, beau ty, j ustice, knowledge, salva
tion, or mere su rvival. I f we take o ther people seriously and
devote ou rselves to them, that only multiplies the problem.
H u man life is fu ll of effort, plans, calculation, su ccess and failure:
we pursue our lives, with varying deg rees of sloth and energy.
It would be d i fferent if we could not step back and reflect on
the process, but were merel y led fro m i mpulse to i mpulse
without self-consciousness. But human beings do not act solely
on i mpulse. They are prudent, they reflect, they weigh consequ
ences, they ask whether what they are doing is worth while. Not
only are their lives full of particular choices that hang together in
la rger activities with temporal structure: they also decide i n the
broadest terms what to pursue and what to avoid, what the
priorities a mong their various aims should be, and what kind of
people they want to be or become. Some men a re faced with
such choices by the large decisions they make fro m time to ti me;
some merely by reflection on the course their lives are taking as
the product of countless s m al l decisions. They decide whom to
marry, what profession to follow, whether to j o i n the Country
Club, or the Resistance; or they may just wonder why they go
on being sales men or academics or taxi d rivers, and then stop
thinking abou t it a fter a certain period of inconclusive reflection.
Although they may be motivated fro m act to act b y those
i m mediate needs with which l i fe p resents them, they allow the
process to continue by adhering to the general system of habits
and the form of life in which such motives have their place - or
 The absurd 15

perhaps only by clinging t o life itsel( They spend enormous

quantities of energy, risk, and calculation on the details. Think of
how an ordinary individual sweats over his appearance, his
health, his sex life, his emotional honesty, his social u tility, his
self-knowledge, the quality of his ties with fa mily, colleagues,
and friends, how well he does his job, whether he u nderstands
the world and what is going on in it. Leading a human life is a
full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of
intense concern.
This fact is so obvious that it is hard to find it extraordinary
and important. Each of us lives his own life - lives with himself
twenty-four hours a day. What else is he supposed to do - live
someone else's life? Yet hu mans have the special capacity to s tep
back and su rvey themselves, and the lives to which they are
committed, with that detached a mazement which co mes fro m
watching an ant struggle up a heap of sand. Without developing
the illusion that they are able to escape from their highly specific
and idiosyncratic position, they can view it sub specie aeternitatis
-

and the view is at once sobering and comical.

The crucial backward s tep is not taken by asking for still
another justifica tion in the chain, and failing to get it. The
objections to that line of attack have already been stated ;
justifications come to an end. But this is precisely what provides
universal doub t with its object. We step back to find that the
whole system of j ustification and criticism, which controls our
choices and supports our claims to rationality, rests on responses
and habits that we never question, that we should not know how
to defend without circularity, and to which we shall continue to
adhere even after they a re called into question.
The things we do or want without reasons, and without
requiring reasons - the things that define what is a reason for us
and what is not - are the starting points of our skepticism. We
see ourselves fro m outside, and all the contingency and specific
ity of our aims and pursui ts become clear. Yet when we take this
view and recognize what we do as a rbitrary, i t does not
disengage us fro m life, and there lies our absurdity: not in the
fact that such an external view can be taken of us, but in the fact
that we ou rselves can take it, withou t ceasing to be the persons
whose ultimate concerns a re so coolly regarded.
16 Mortal questions

III
One may try to escape the position by seeking broader ultimate
concerns, fro m which i t is i mpossible to step back - the idea
being that absurdity results because what we take seriously is
something small and -insignificant and individual. Those seekin g
to supply their l ives with meaning usually envision a role or
function in something larger than themselves. They therefor e
seek fulfillment i n service to society, the state, the revolution, the
progress of history, the advance of science, or religion and the
glory of God.
But a role in some larger enterprise cannot confer significance
unless that enterprise is i tself significant. And i ts significance
must come back to what we can understand, or it will not even
appear to give us what we are seeking. I f we learned that we
were being raised to provide food for other creatures fond of
human flesh, who planned to turn us into cutlets before we got
too stringy - even if we learned that the human race had been
developed by ani mal breeders precisely for this pu rpose - that
would still not give our lives meaning, for two reasons. First, we
would still be in the dark as to the significance of the lives of
those other beings; second, although we might acknowledge
that this culinary role would mae our lives meaningful to them,
i t is not clear how it would make them meaningful to us.
A d mittedly, the usual form of service to a higher being is
different from this. One is supposed to behold and partake of the
glory of God, for example, in a way in which chickens do not
share in the glory of coq au vin. The same is true of service to a
state, a movement, or a revolution. People can come to feeL
when they are part of something bigger, that it is part of them
too. They worry less about what is peculiar to themselves, but
identify enough with the larger enterprise to find their role in it
fulfilling.
However, any such larger purpose can be put i n doubt in the
same way tha t the aims of an individual life can be, and for the
same reasons. It is as legitimate to find ulti mate j ustification
there as to find i t earlier, a mong the details of individual life. B ut
this does not alter the fact that justi fications come to an end
when we are content to have them end - when we do not fin d it
necessary to look any further. If we can step back fro m the
 The absurd 17

pu rp oses o f individual life and doubt their point, w e can step

ba ck also fro m the progress of human history, or of science, or
the su ccess of a society, or the kingdom, power, and glory of
God, and put all these things into question in the sa me way.
What seem s to us to confer meaning, justification, significance,
does so in virtue of the fact that we need no more reasons after a
certain point.
What makes doubt inescapable with regard to the limited aims
of individual life also makes i t inescapable with regard to any
larger purpose that encourages the sense tha t life is meaningful.
Once the funda mental doubt has begun, it cannot be laid to rest.
Camus maintains in The Myth pf Sisyp h us that the absurd
arises because the world fails to meet our demands for meaning.
This suggests that the world might satisfy those demands if it
were different. But now we can see that this is not the case.
There does not appear to be any conceivable world (containing
us) about which unsettlable doubts could not arise. Conse
quently the absurdity of our si tuation derives not fro m a collison
between our expectations and the world, but from a collision
within ourselves.

IV
It may be obj ected that the standpoint from which these doubts
a re supposed to be felt does not exist - that if we take the
recommended backward step we will land on thin air, without
any basis for judgment about the natural responses we are
supposed to be su rveying. If we retain our usual standards of
what is important, then questions about the significance of what
we are doing with our lives will be answerable in the usual way.
But if we do not, then those questions can mean nothing to us,
sin ce there is no longer any content to the idea of what matters,
and hence no content to the idea that nothing does.
But this obj ection misconceives the nature of the backward
step. It is not supposed to give us an understanding of what is
really important, so that we see by contrast that our lives are
insignificant. We never, in the course of these reflections,
abandon the ordinary standards that guide our lives. We merely
observe them in operation, and recognize that if they a re called
into question we can justify them only by reference to them
selves, uselessly. We adhere to them because of the way we a re
18 Mortal questions

put together; what seems to us i mportant or serious or valuable

would not seem so if we were differently constituted.
In ordinary life, to be su re, we do not judge a si tuation absurd
unless we have in mind some standards of seriousness, signifi
cance, or harmony with which the absurd can be contrasted.
This contrast is not i mplied by the philosophical judgment of
absurdity, a nd that might be though t to make the conce p t
u nsuitable for the expression of such judgments. This is not so,
however, for the philosophical judg ment depends on another
contrast which makes it a natural extension fro m more ordi nary
cases. It depa rts fro m them only in contrasting the pretensions of
life with a larger context in which no standards can be disco
vered, rather than with a context fro m which alternative,
overrid ing standards may be applied.

v
In this respect, as in o thers, philosophical perception of the
absurd resembles epistemological skep ticis m . I n both cases the
final, philosophical doubt is not contrasted with any unchal
lenged certainties, though i t is arrived at by extrapolation from
exa mples of doubt within the system of eviden ce or j usti fication,
where a con trast with other certainties is implied. In both cases
our limitedness joins with a capacity to transcend those limita
tions in thought (thus seeing them as limita tions, and as inescap
able).
Skepticism begins when we include ourselves i n the world
about which we claim knowledge. We notice that certai n types
of evidence convince us, that we are content to allow justi fica
tions 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 clai m to know false.
For example, I know that I am looking at a piece of pa p er,
although I have no adequate grounds for clai ming I know that I
am not dreaming; and i f l a m drea ming then I a m not looking at a
piece of paper. Here an ordinary conception of how appeara nce
may diverge fro m reality is employed to show that we take our
world largely for granted; the certainty that we a re not dream ing
cannot be j ustified except circularly, in terms of those very
appearances which are being put in doubt. It is somew h at
 The absurd 19

far-fetched to suggest I may be drea ming; but the possibility is

only illustrative. It reveals that our claims to knowledge depend
on our not feeling it necessary to exclude certain incompatible
altern at ives, and the dreaming possibility or the total
h alluci nation possibility are just representatives for limitless
p ossib ilities most of which we cannot even conceive. !
On ce we have taken the backward step to an abstract view of
our whole system of beliefs, evidence, and justification, and seen
th at it works only, despite its pretensions, by taking the world
larg ely for granted, we are not in a position to contrast all these
appearances with an alternative reality. We cannot shed our
ordinary responses, and if we could it would leave us with no
means of conceivi"ng a reality of any kind.
It is the same in the practical domain. We d o not step outside
our lives to a new vantage point from which we see what is
really, objectively significant. We continue to take life largely for
granted while seeing that all our decisions and certainties are
possible only because there is a great deal we do not bother to
rule out.
Both epistemological skepticism and a sense of the absurd can
be reached via initial doubts posed within systems of evidence
and justification that we accept, and can be stated without
violence to our ordinary concepts. We can ask not only why we
should believe there is a floor under us, but also why we should
believe the evidence of our senses at all - and at some point the
framable questions will have outlasted the answers. Similarly, we
can ask not only why we should take aspirin, but why we should
take trouble over our own comfort at all. The fact that we shall
take the aspirin without waiting for an answer to this last
question does not show that it is an unreal question. We shall
also continue to believe there is a floor under us without waiting
for an answer to the other question. In both cases it is this
unsupported natural confidence that generates skeptical doubts;
so it cannot be used to settle them.
Philosophical skepticism does not cause us to abandon our
ordinary beliefs, but it lends them a peculiar flavor. After

1 I am a ware that sk eptici s m a bout the external world is widely thought to

have been refuted, but I have rema ined con vinced of its irrefutability s ince
being exposed at Berkeley to Thompson Clarke's largely unpubli shed
ideas on the subject.
 20 Mortal questiom

acknowledging that thei r truth is incompa tible with possibilities

that we have no grounds for believing do not obtain - apart
fro m grounds in those very beliefs which we have called imo
ques tion - we return to o u r familiar convictions with a certain
irony and resignation. Unable to abandon the natu ral respons es
on which they depend, we take them back, like a spouse who has
run o ff with s omeone else and then decided to retu rn; b u t we

regard them differently (not that the new a ttitude is necessa ril y
inferior to the old, in either case).
The same situation obtains a fter we have put i n qu es tion the
seriousness with which we take our lives and h u ma n l i fe in
general and have looked a t ou rselves without presupposi tions.
We then return to our lives, as we must, b u t o u r seriousness is
laced with irony. Not that irony enables us to escape the absurd.
It is useless to m utter : ' Li fe is meaningless ; l i fe i s meaning
less . . . ' as an accompani ment to everything we do. In continu
ing to live and work and s trive, we take ou rselves seriously in
action no m atter what we say.
What sustains us, in belief as i n action, is not reason or
j u s ti fication, but so mething more basic than these - for we go on
in the sa me way even after we are convin ced that the reasons
have given out. 2 If we tried to rel y entirely on reason, and
pressed it hard, our lives and beliefs would collapse - a form of
madness tha t may actually occur if the i nertial force of taking the
world and l i fe for granted is somehow lost. I f we lose our grip
o n that, reason will not give i t back to us.

VI

In viewing o urselves fro m a perspective broader than we can

occupy in the flesh, we become spectators of o u r own lives. We
cannot do very much as p u re spectators of o u r own lives, so we
continue to lead them, a n d devote ou rselves to what we are ab le

2 As Hume says in a fa mous passage of the Treatise: ' Most fortunately it

happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature
herself suffices to that purpose, and cu res me of this philosophical
melancholy and deli riu m, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some
avocation, and lively i mpression of my senses, which obliterate all these
chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backga m mon, I converse, and am merry
with my friends; and when after three or fou r hours' a musement, I wou ld
rerurn to these speculations, they appea r so colc:J, and strain'd, and .
ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them ,any farther' (bk I,
pt 1 V , sect. 7; Selby..:Bigge, p. 2691 -
 The absurd 21

at the same time to view a s n o more than a curiosity, like the

ritual of a n alien religion.
This explains why the sense o f absurdity finds its natural
ex pressi on i n those bad argu ments with which the discussion
bega n. Reference to our s mall size and short l i fespan and to the
fa ct that all of mankind will eventually vanish without a trace are
m eta pho rs for the backward s tep which permits u s to regard
ourselves fro m without and to find the p articular for m of o u r
lives curious a n d slightly surprising. B y feigning a nebula's-eye
view, we illus trate the capacity to see ou rselves with o u t p resup
positions, as a rbitrary, idiosyncratic, highly specific occupants of
the world, one of countless possible forms o f life.
Before turning to the question whether the absurdity . o f o u r
lives is so mething to be regretted and i f possible escaped, let m e
consider what w o u l d h a v e to be given up i n o r d e r to avoid it.
Why is the l i fe o f a mouse not absurd? The orbit o f the moon
is not absurd either, but that i nvolves no strivings or aims a t all.
A mouse, however, has to work to stay alive. Yet he is not
absurd, because he lacks the capaci ties for self-consciousness and
self-trans cendence that would enable him to see that he is only a
mouse. If that did happen, his l i fe would beco me absu rd, since
self-awareness would not make hi m cease to be a mouse and
would not enable him to rise above his mousely s t rivings.
B ringing his new-found self-consciousness with him, he would
have to return to his meager yet frantic life, full of d o u b ts that he
was unable to answer, but also full o f pu rposes that he was
unable to abandon.
Given that the transcendental s tep is natu ral to us h u m ans, can
we avoid absurdity b y refusing to take that s tep and remaining
entirely within our su blunar lives ? Well, we cannot refuse
consciously, for to do that we would have to be aw are o f the
viewpoi nt we were refusing to adopt. The only way to avoid the
relevant sel f-consciousness would be either never to a ttain it or
to forget i t - neither of which can be achieved b y the will.
On the o ther hand, i t is possible to expend effort on an
attempt to destroy t h e o ther component o f t h e absurd - aban
doning one's earthly, individual, human l i fe in order to identify
as co mpletely as possible with that universal viewpoint fro m
w hich h u man life seems arbitrary a n d trivial. (This a ppears to b e
the ideal of certain Oriental religions. ) I f o n e succeeds, then one
22 Mortal questions

will not have to drag the superior a w a reness through a strenuous

mundane l i fe, and absurdity will be diminished.
H o wever, insofa r as this self-etiolation is the result of effort,
will-power, asceti cism, and so forth, i t req ui res that one take
onesel f seriously a s a n individual - that one be willing to take
considerable trouble to a v oi d being creatu rel y and absurd. Thus
one may undermine the aim o f unworldliness by p u rsuing it too
vigorously. S till, i f so meone s i m p l y allowed his individual,
animal nature to d rift and respond to i m p u lse, without making
the p u rsuit of i ts needs a cen tral conscious a i m , then he might, at
considerable dissociative cost, achieve a l i fe that was less absurd
than most. It would not be a meaningful life either, of cou rse;
but it would not involve the engagement of a transcendent
awa reness i n the assiduous p u rs u i t o f mundane goals. And that is
the main condition of a b s u rdity - the dragooning of an u ncon
vinced transcendent consciousness into the service of an i m ma
nent, l i m i ted enterprise like a hu man l i fe.

The final escape is s u i cide; but before adopting any hasty

solutions, i t would be wise to consider carefully whether the
absurdity of our existence truly p resents us with a problem , to
which some solution m u s t be found - a way o f dealing with
prima facie disaster. That is certainly the attitude wi th which
Camus a p p roa ches the issue, and it gains support fro m the fact
that we are all eager to escape fro m absurd situa tions on a

s maller scale.
Camus - not on u n i formly good grounds - rej ects suicide and
the other solutions he regards as escapist. What he reco m m ends
is defiance or scorn. We can salvage o u r dignity, he appears to
believe, by shaking a fist at the world which is deaf to our pleas,
and continuing to live in s pite of i t . This will not make o u r lives
u n-absurd, b u t it will lend them a certain nobility.3
This seems to me romantic and slightly self-pitying. Our
absurdity warrants neither that much distress nor that much
defiance. A t the risk of falling into romanticism by a different

3 ' S isyphus, p roletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the
whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his
descent. The lucidity chat was co constitute his torture at the same time
crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by sco rn'
(The Myth of Sisyphus, t rans. J ustin O ' B rien (New York : Vintage, 1 959),
p. 90; first published, Paris: Gallimard, 1 942).
 The absurd 23

route, I would argue that absurdity is one of the most hu man

things abo u t us: a manifestation o f our most advanced and
interesting characteristics. Like skepticism in epistemology, i t is
possible only because we possess a certain kind of insight - the
cap a city to transcend ou rselves in thought.
If a s ense o f the absurd is a way of perceiving o u r true
situati on (even though the situation i s not absurd u n til the
percep tion arises), then what reason can we have to resent or
escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticis m, i t
results fro m the a b i l i t y to understand o u r h u m a n li mitations. I t
need n o t be a matter for agony unless we m a k e i t s o . N or need i t
evoke a d efia n t contempt of fate tha t allows us to feel b rave or
prou d. Such dra m a tics, even if carried on i n private, betray a
failure to a ppreciate the cosmic uni mportance of the situation. I f
sub specie aetem itatis there is no reason to believe t h a t an ything
matters, then that does not matter either, and we can a p proach
our absurd lives wi th irony instead o f heroism o r despair.