Paul Edwards primarily addresses the "pessimist view" that if there is no God and death is final, life has no meaning. The focus here will be on subsequent philosophical work and on issues he leaves unaddressed. Some account of nonmonotheistic religion (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism) should be given, especially since religious perspectives are now taken more seriously by many in the analytic philosophical tradition.

Thomas Nagel (1986) argues both that (1) human life viewed objectively is insignificant though viewed subjectively is significant and that (2) it is our capacity to recognize both (1) and our constitutional self-absorption, which makes us irreducibly absurd and our lives ironic. Against (1) David Wiggins (2002) argues that for our strivings to matter, even subjectively, there must be something we can "invest with overwhelming importance," and that this entails both that values are objective, though "lit...