The Philosophy of Indifference: An Introduction

Abstract

If we grant the fact that life is ultimately meaningless, one question that might arise is: How does one live with the meaninglessness of life? In this chapter, I introduce the philosophy of indifference as a way of living (or dying) with meaninglessness. I identify two mutually exclusive and equally plausible modes of indifference—suicide and living for living sake. While suicide serves as the ultimate acknowledgement of meaninglessness, living for living sake involves an unwillingness to hope for meaning as well as a comic understanding of the absurdity of our existence. I argue that both suicide and living for living sake are equally viable modes of/for living with meaninglessness.