Yes and No - Life is Absurd Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Yes and No - Life is Absurd - Term Paper Example after(prenominal) an assessment, this paper will point out some underlying ideas on which both metalworkers and Feinbergs differing views are based. A backgrounder Michael smith is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Hu servicemanities whose interests hold the ism of the consciousness. His article Is That All There Is poses a question which embodies the position of the philosophical school of Absurdism that man is incapable of ultimately finding inherent meaning to disembodied spirittime. In the article, metalworker implicitly avows his absurdist philosophy, nothing before long of revealing his growing up experience in an undeveloped suburb of Melbourne, Australias capital city. Smiths schooling was not remarkable, except for the intellectual cream of his schools teaching staff. Mr. Taffe, bingle of his respected teachers, came prominently in his recollection as the teacher who introduced him to the French language and cultur e. The opportunities afforded by Mr. Taffe allowed Smith to attend a Waiting for Godot theatre performance. As an adolescent with a malleable mind, Smith felt up strongly influenced by the plays dramatic portrayal of lifes tragic insufficiency of meaning. The play belongs to the genre of the Theatre of the Absurd which portrays horror and tragedy with characters caught up in situations of hopelessness and absurdity. In Smiths own words, the play impressed on him the utter pointlessness and tragedy of gentlemans gentleman existence (Smith 77). This sense of hopelessness would linger throughout the life of Smith in spite of such wonderful experiences as having a family. Later in his career, Smith would garner career achievements such his macrocosm a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. But in spite of his success he says he felt the intellectual racquet in his life, and this prompted his study of Joel Feinbergs paper Absurd Self-fulfilment. Feinbergs stress Feinbergs essay was a challenge to Smiths enduring adolescent dissonance. In his critique, Smith found an ally in Thomas Nagel, an American philosopher widely known in the field of the philosophy of the mind. Nagels What Is It Like to Be a Bat held a sceptical view of the world, as the mind is obstructed by three barriers to human consciousness-- physical, functional and mental. Smith then expounds his five arguments arguing against Feinbergs propositions which upheld coherence to human life as such, and the redeeming value of fulfilment to save human life from being tragic 1. What makes a life absurd? Smiths lays the ground for discussion as he explains Feinbergs explanation of what is absurd, namely the irrational/incongruous in things/activities/attitudes of the individual(a) person. For Fienberg, the Absurd can be likened to the mythologic Sisyphus who perpetually rolls a rock uphill, the rock rolling down the other side again and again. For Fienberg, in that respect is a spectrum of a bsurdities from the extreme-intrinsically worthless, to the absurdly trivial, the burdensome-ill-designed, and misfits in terms of pretensions of aspirations. With sweeping insight, Smith viewed Feinberg as positing different levels of absurdity, some more and others lesser the extreme being the thought of life as totally pointless. Smith clarifies that his adolescent dissonance does not redound to absurdity in the extreme case. 2. Can a pointless human life be saved from being tragic by being fulfilled? Smith gave cognizance to Feinbergs position that human lives can both be pointless to a certain extent and at the same time fulfilled, again to a certain extent. Feinbergs own definition of fulfilment is an individuals having and exercising the capacities that are centrally involved in her being the individual that she is