Absurdity, Faith, and the Meaningful Narrative of Life

Absurdity is a crucial philosophical problem that has widespread social consequences. In this paper, I discuss three accounts of absurdity: Purposelessness of the world, lack of reasonability and seriousness, and failure and boredom. I suggest that, to discuss absurdity, one should look at the question of meaning in life as the question of narrative of life. Narratives are the way to make life intelligible and understandable. However, contradictory narratives of meaningful life necessitate criteria for evaluating different narratives. I take a step toward such criteria that covers both subjective and objective aspects of truth to evaluate narratives. To do so, I try to make a connection between Narrative and Understanding. Moreover, the theoretical and practical reasoning establish a ground to evaluate narratives. I argue that based on the criteria, one can prefer a meaningful narrative of life. One of the important resources for meaningful narrative is religious faith. Faith can introduce new realities as well as new interpretations of different aspects of life and hence help to develop a meaningful narrative of life.