The Path of Meaninglessness: Beyond Ada Agada’s Consolationism

Abstract

In the previous chapters, I alluded to the fact that although death does not allow us to talk about the meaning of life, a longer life or an eternal life would equally not grant us the meaningfulness we desire. In the case of a longer life, death still plays the role of establishing nothingness and in the case of an eternal life (so far, an impossible reality), issues bordering around boredom, the higher chance of susceptibility to constant harm and the eventual redundancy of our values and sources of meaning (due to the infinite nature of our now eternal lives), generally make personal immortality unattractive. These conclusions leave me inclined to consider the view that life is ultimately meaningless and as such deny a meaning of life considered as a whole. From the foregoing, I shall in this chapter examine some responses to meaninglessness and why they fail. I shall also consider Ada Agada’s consolationism—the idea that the moments of joy in our lives should stand as a consolation for us in the face of our futile and tragic existence—as a plausible but inadequate way of dealing with the tragedy of existence. Thus, setting the stage for my eventual proposal of indifference as the proper mode/mood for living with meaninglessness.