Sic transit, wabi-sabi, and the far shore
LISTEN. Our discussion of Falter and the end of the "human game" yesterday in Environmental Ethics turned to questions of meaning and its possible loss in a technologically transformed future. Todd May's Stone conversation with George Yancy does too... (continues)
LISTEN. Our discussion of Falter and the end of the "human game" yesterday in Environmental Ethics turned to questions of meaning and its possible loss in a technologically transformed future. Todd May's Stone conversation with George Yancy does too... (continues)
==
Life (and Death) Without God
The philosopher Todd May is an atheist who rejects the supernatural, but not the people who believe in it.
In five previous interviews in this series we've explored the Buddhist, Jain, Taoist, Jewish and Christian views on death and the afterlife. But what about those without any religious faith or belief in God? Why not, some readers have asked, interview an atheist? So we did.
Today's conversation is with Todd May, the author of 16 books of philosophy ranging from recent French thought to contemporary ethics. His books — including "A Significant Life," "A Fragile Life" and, most recently, "A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us" — investigate meaning, suffering and morality. His work has been featured in episodes of the television show "The Good Place," where he served behind the scenes as a "philosophical consultant." This interview was conducted by email and edited. — George Yancy
...I believe, with some of the existentialists, that we're not here for any particular cosmic reason or purpose. We just show up, live our lives, and then die. This doesn't mean, of course, that I don't believe in things like morality; rather, I ground morality and values in another way. In fact, I've written a book on meaningfulness in life. It also means that my relation to my death is different.
Yancy: So, as an atheist, how do you deal with the fact that you will die, as we all will, at some point?
May: There is a paradox here, one which I wrote about in my book on death. On the one hand, our death threatens to sap meaning from our lives. Why is this? We live oriented toward our future. Our most important engagements — career, relationships, hobbies, etc. — presuppose future development. Death would cut us off from those developments and thus some of the meaning of our engagements. And it is important to note that because we can die at any time that threat is a constant one. We live under the shadow of death.
On the other hand, without mortality our lives would eventually become shapeless. If we lived forever, as some philosophers have pointed out, it would be difficult to sustain our enthusiasm for even many of our most significant engagements. To see why, we need to recognize how long immortality lasts. Here is one scenario that is used to see this: Imagine a desert the size of the Sahara. Every 10,000 years a bird comes along and plucks a single grain of sand from the desert. By the time the Sahara has been cleared not a single flicker of immortality would have passed.
So how do we live with this paradox? I suggest that we seek to live along two registers at once. First, we must engage in forward-looking projects and engagements, because that's inevitable for almost all human beings. A life without ongoing engagements is, for most people, an impoverished one.
Second, we must try to live as best we can within the moments of those engagements. Instead of solely looking forward, we should enjoy the present of what we do in the knowledge that at any moment the future could disappear. It's a kind of stereoscopic vision that seeks to orient toward the future while immersing in the present.
I don't think that doing this is easy. For my own part, living more fully in the present is difficult for me. But I have gotten to the stage in my life where I can see its far shore much more clearly than the shore I set out from, and so I am trying to do that with greater urgency... (continues)
The philosopher Todd May is an atheist who rejects the supernatural, but not the people who believe in it.
In five previous interviews in this series we've explored the Buddhist, Jain, Taoist, Jewish and Christian views on death and the afterlife. But what about those without any religious faith or belief in God? Why not, some readers have asked, interview an atheist? So we did.
Today's conversation is with Todd May, the author of 16 books of philosophy ranging from recent French thought to contemporary ethics. His books — including "A Significant Life," "A Fragile Life" and, most recently, "A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us" — investigate meaning, suffering and morality. His work has been featured in episodes of the television show "The Good Place," where he served behind the scenes as a "philosophical consultant." This interview was conducted by email and edited. — George Yancy
...I believe, with some of the existentialists, that we're not here for any particular cosmic reason or purpose. We just show up, live our lives, and then die. This doesn't mean, of course, that I don't believe in things like morality; rather, I ground morality and values in another way. In fact, I've written a book on meaningfulness in life. It also means that my relation to my death is different.
Yancy: So, as an atheist, how do you deal with the fact that you will die, as we all will, at some point?
May: There is a paradox here, one which I wrote about in my book on death. On the one hand, our death threatens to sap meaning from our lives. Why is this? We live oriented toward our future. Our most important engagements — career, relationships, hobbies, etc. — presuppose future development. Death would cut us off from those developments and thus some of the meaning of our engagements. And it is important to note that because we can die at any time that threat is a constant one. We live under the shadow of death.
On the other hand, without mortality our lives would eventually become shapeless. If we lived forever, as some philosophers have pointed out, it would be difficult to sustain our enthusiasm for even many of our most significant engagements. To see why, we need to recognize how long immortality lasts. Here is one scenario that is used to see this: Imagine a desert the size of the Sahara. Every 10,000 years a bird comes along and plucks a single grain of sand from the desert. By the time the Sahara has been cleared not a single flicker of immortality would have passed.
So how do we live with this paradox? I suggest that we seek to live along two registers at once. First, we must engage in forward-looking projects and engagements, because that's inevitable for almost all human beings. A life without ongoing engagements is, for most people, an impoverished one.
Second, we must try to live as best we can within the moments of those engagements. Instead of solely looking forward, we should enjoy the present of what we do in the knowledge that at any moment the future could disappear. It's a kind of stereoscopic vision that seeks to orient toward the future while immersing in the present.
I don't think that doing this is easy. For my own part, living more fully in the present is difficult for me. But I have gotten to the stage in my life where I can see its far shore much more clearly than the shore I set out from, and so I am trying to do that with greater urgency... (continues)
I want you to know that I wrote my post and plugged A&P before I read this one. Great minds.
ReplyDeleteSpooky.
Delete