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The Meaning of Life Thaddeus Metz First
published Tue May 15, 2007 Many major historical figures
in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything,
makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these
terms. Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on
the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. While these concepts have
some bearing on happiness and morality, they are straightforwardly construed
as accounts of which final ends a person ought to realize in order to have a
significant existence. Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only in the last
50 years or so that something approaching a distinct field on the meaning of
life has been established in analytic philosophy, and it is only in the last
25 years that debate with real depth has appeared. Concomitant with the
demise of positivism and of utilitarianism in the post-war era has been the
rise of analytical enquiry into non-hedonistic conceptions of value grounded
on relatively uncontroversial (but not universally shared) judgments or
“intuitions,” including conceptions of meaning in life. English-speaking
philosophers can be expected to continue to find life's meaning of interest
as they increasingly realize that it is a distinct line of enquiry that
admits of rational enquiry to no less a degree than more familiar normative
categories such as well-being, right action, and distributive justice. This survey critically
discusses approaches to meaning in life that are prominent in contemporary
English-speaking philosophical literature. To provide context, sometimes it
mentions other texts, e.g., in Continental philosophy or from before the 20th
century. However, the central aim is to acquaint the reader with recent
analytic work on life's meaning and to pose questions about it that are
currently worthy of consideration. When the topic of the meaning
of life comes up, people often pose one of two questions: “So, what is the
meaning of life?” and “What are you talking about?” The literature can be
divided in terms of which question it seeks to answer. This discussion begins
by addressing works that discuss the latter, abstract question regarding the
sense of talk of “life's meaning,” i.e., that aim to clarify what we are
asking when we pose the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful.
Then it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive
question. Some accounts of what makes life meaningful provide particular ways
to do so, e.g., by making certain achievements (James 2005), developing moral
character (Thomas 2005), or learning from relationships with family members
(Velleman 2005). However, most recent discussions of meaning in life are
attempts to capture in a single principle all the variegated conditions that
confer meaning on life. This survey focuses heavily on the articulation and
evaluation of these theories of what makes life meaningful. It concludes by
examining nihilist views that the conditions necessary for meaning in life do
not obtain.
1.
The Meaning of “Meaning”
One part of the field on life's
meaning consists of the systematic attempt to clarify what people mean when
they ask in virtue of what life has meaning. This section addresses different
accounts of the sense of talk of “life's meaning” (and of “significance,”
“importance,” and other synonyms). A large majority of those writing on
life's meaning deem talk of it centrally to indicate a positive final value
that an individual's life can exhibit. So, few believe either that a
meaningful life is a neutral quality or that what is of key interest is the
meaning of all biological life or of the human species. Most ultimately want
to know whether and how the existence of one of us over time has meaning, a
certain property that is desirable for its own sake. Beyond drawing the distinction
between the life of an individual and that of a group, there has been very
little discussion of life as the bearer of meaning. For instance, is the
individual's life best understood biologically (qua human) or not
(person) (Flanagan 1996)? And if an individual is loved from afar, can
it affect the meaningfulness of her “life” (Brogaard and Smith 2005, 449)? Returning to topics on which
there is consensus, most writing on meaning believe that it comes in degrees
such that some periods of life are more meaningful than others and that some
lives as a whole are more meaningful than others (perhaps contra
Britton 1969, 192). Note that one can coherently hold the view that some
people's lives are less meaningful than others, or even meaningless, and
still maintain that people have an equal moral status. Consider a
consequentialist view according to which each individual counts for one in
virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life (cf. Railton 1984), or a
Kantian view that says that people have an intrinsic worth in virtue of their
capacity for autonomous choices, where meaning is a function of the exercise
of this capacity (Nozick 1974, ch. 3). On both views, morality could counsel
an agent to help people with relatively meaningless lives, at least if the
condition is not of their choosing. Another uncontroversial element
of the sense of “meaningfulness” is that it connotes a good that is
conceptually distinct from happiness or rightness. First, to ask whether
someone's life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her
life is happy or well off. A life in an experience or virtual reality machine
could conceivably be happy but is not a prima facie candidate for
meaningfulness, and, furthermore, one's life logically could become
meaningful precisely by sacrificing one's welfare, e.g., by helping others at
the expense of oneself. Second, asking whether a person's existence is
significant is not identical to considering whether she has been morally
upright; there seem to be ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do
with morality, for instance making a scientific discovery. Of course, one
might argue that a life would be meaningless if (or even because) it were
immoral or unhappy, particularly given Aristotelian conceptions of these
disvalues. However, that is to posit a synthetic relationship between the
concepts, and is far from indicating that speaking of “meaning in life” is
analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding welfare or morality, which
is what I am denying here. My point is that the question of what makes a life
meaningful is conceptually distinct from the question of what makes a life
well off or morally upright, even if it turns out that the best answer to the
question of meaning appeals to an answer to one of these other evaluative
questions. If talk about meaning in life is
not by definition talk about welfare or morality, then what is it about?
There is as yet no consensus in the field. One answer is that a meaningful
life is one that by definition has achieved choice-worthy purposes (Nielsen
1964) or involves satisfaction upon having done so (Wohlgennant 1981).
However, this analysis seems too broad for being unable to distinguish the
concept of a meaningful life from that of a moral life, which could equally
involve attaining worthwhile ends and feeling good upon doing so. We seem to
need an account of which purposes are relevant to meaning, with some
suggesting they are purposes that not only have a positive value, but also
render a life coherent (Markus 2003), make it intelligible (Thomson 2003,
8-13), or transcend one's animal nature (Levy 2005), all of which connote
something different from morality and also happiness. Now, it might be that a focus
on any kind of purpose is too narrow for ruling out the logical possibility
that meaning could inhere in certain actions, experiences, states, or
relationships that have not been adopted as ends and willed and that perhaps
even could not be, e.g., being an immortal offshoot of an unconscious,
spiritual force that grounds the physical universe, as in Hinduism. In
addition, the above purpose-based analyses exclude as not being about life's
meaning some of the most widely read texts that purport to be about it,
namely, Jean-Paul Sartre's (1948) existentialist account of meaning being
constituted by whatever one chooses, and Richard Taylor's (1970, ch. 18)
discussion of Sisyphus being able to acquire meaning in his life merely by
having his strongest desires satisfied. These are prima facie accounts of
meaning in life, but do not necessarily involve the attainment of purposes
that foster coherence, intelligibility or transcendence. The latter problem also faces
the alternative suggestion that talk of “life's meaning” is not necessarily
about purposes, but is rather just a matter of referring to goods that are
qualitatively superior, worthy of love and devotion, and appropriately awed
(Taylor 1989, ch. 1). It is implausible to think that whatever choices one
ends up making or whichever desires one happens to rank highly fit these
criteria. Although relatively few have
addressed the question of whether there exists a single, primary sense of
“life's meaning,” the inability to find one so far might suggest that none
exists. In that case, it could be that the field is united in virtue of
addressing certain overlapping but not equivalent ideas that have family
resemblances (Metz 2001). Perhaps when one of us speaks of “meaning in life,”
we have in mind one of these ideas: certain conditions that are worthy of
great pride or admiration, values that warrant devotion and love, qualities
that make a life intelligible, or ends apart from subjective satisfaction and
moral duty that are the most choice-worthy. As the field reflects more on
the sense of “life's meaning,” it should try to ascertain whether there is
more unity to it than mere family resemblance. And when doing so it should be
careful to differentiate the concept of life's meaning from other, closely
related ideas. For instance, the concept of a worthwhile life is not
identical to that of a meaningful one (Baier 1997, ch. 5). One would not be
conceptually confused to claim that a meaningless life full of animal
pleasures is most (or even alone) worth living. Furthermore, talk of a
“meaningless life” does not simply connote the concept of an absurd (Nagel
1970; Feinberg 1980), unreasonable (Baier 1997, ch. 5), futile (Trisel 2002),
or wasted (Kamm 2003, 210-14) life. Fortunately the field does not
need an extremely precise analysis of the concept of life's meaning (or
definition of the phrase “life's meaning”) in order to make progress on the
substantive question of what life's meaning is. Knowing that meaningfulness
analytically concerns a variable and gradient final good in a person's life
that is conceptually distinct from happiness, rightness, and worthwhileness
provides a certain amount of common ground. The rest of this discussion
addresses attempts to theoretically capture the nature of this good. 2. Supernaturalism
Most English speaking
philosophers writing on meaning in life are trying to develop and evaluate
theories, i.e., fundamental and general principles that are meant to capture
all the particular ways that a life could obtain meaning. These theories are
standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, i.e., in terms of which kinds of
properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are
views that meaning in life must be constituted by a certain relationship with
a spiritual realm. If God or a soul does not exist, or if they exist but one
fails to have the right relationship with them, then supernaturalism—or the
Western version of it (on which I focus)—entails that one's life is
meaningless. In contrast, naturalist theories are views that meaning can
obtain in a world as known solely by science. Here, although meaning could
accrue from a divine realm, certain ways of living in a purely physical
universe would be sufficient for it. Note that there is logical space for a
non-naturalist theory that meaning is a function of abstract properties that
are neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been
paid to this possibility in the Anglo-American literature (Williams 1999;
Audi 2005). Supernaturalist thinkers in the
monotheistic tradition are usefully divided into those with God-centered
views and soul-centered views. The former take some kind of connection with
God (understood to be a spiritual person who is all-knowing, all-good, and
all-powerful and who is the ground of the physical universe) to constitute
meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal,
spiritual substance). The latter deem having a soul and putting it into a
certain state to be what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist.
Of course, many supernaturalists believe that certain relationships with God
and a soul are jointly necessary and sufficient for a significant existence.
However, the simpler view is common, and often arguments proffered for the
more complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler view. 2.1
God-Centered Views
The most widely held and
influential God-based account of meaning in life is that one's existence is
more significant, the better one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The
familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one's life is
meaningful to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in the
particular way God wants one to do so. Fulfilling God's purpose (and doing so
freely and intentionally) is the sole source of meaning, with the existence
of an afterlife not necessary for it (Brown 1971; Levine 1987; Cottingham
2003). If a person failed to do what God intends him to do with his life,
then, on the current view, his life would be meaningless. “Purpose theorists” differ over
what it is about God's purpose that makes it uniquely able to confer meaning
on human lives. Some argue that God's purpose could be the sole source of
invariant moral rules, where a lack of such would render our lives
nonsensical (Craig 1994; Cottingham 2003, 2005, ch. 3). However, Euthyphro
problems arguably plague this rationale; God's purpose for us must be of a
particular sort for our lives to obtain meaning by fulfilling it (as is often
pointed out, serving as food for intergalactic travelers won't do), which
suggests that there is a standard external to God's purpose that determines
what the content of God's purpose ought to be. In addition, critics argue
that a universally applicable and binding moral code is not necessary for
meaning in life, even if the act of helping others is. Other purpose
theorists contend that having been created by God for a reason would be the
only way that our lives could avoid being contingent (Craig 1994; cf. Haber
1997). But it is unclear whether God's arbitrary will would avoid
contingency, or whether his non-arbitrary will would avoid contingency
anymore than a deterministic physical world. Furthermore, the literature is
still unclear what contingency is and why it is a deep problem. Still other
purpose theorists maintain that our lives would have meaning only insofar as
they were intentionally fashioned by a creator, thereby obtaining meaning of
the sort that an art-object has (Gordon 1983). Here, though, freely choosing
to do any particular thing would not be necessary for meaning, and everyone's
life would have an equal degree of meaning, which are both counterintuitive implications.
Are all these criticisms sound? Is there a promising reason for thinking that
fulfilling God's (as opposed to any human's) purpose is what constitutes
meaning in life? Not only does each of these
versions of the purpose theory have specific problems, but they all face this
shared objection: if God assigned us a purpose, God would degrade us and
hence undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the
purpose (Baier 1957, 118-20; Murphy 1982, 14-15; Singer 1996, 29). This objection
goes back at least to Jean-Paul Sartre (1948, p. 45), and there are many
replies to it in the literature that have yet to be assessed (e.g., Hepburn
1965, 271-73; Brown 1971, 20-21; Davis 1986, 155-56; Hanfling 1987, 45-46;
Moreland 1987, 129; Walker 1989; Metz 2000, 297-302; Jacquette 2001, 20-21). Robert Nozick presents a
God-centered theory that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as
infinite (Nozick 1981, ch. 6; Nozick 1989, chs. 15-16; see also Cooper 2005).
The basic idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must
obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning. So, if one's life
is meaningful, it might be so in virtue of being married to a person, who is
important. And, being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance
from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. And this work
must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is
meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful finite conditions is present,
and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something
infinite, a being so all-encompassing that it need not (indeed, cannot) go
beyond itself to obtain meaning from anything else. And that is God. The
standard objection to this rationale is that a finite condition could be
meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition;
perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, or obtain its meaning by being
related to something beautiful, autonomous or otherwise valuable for its own
sake (but not meaningful). The purpose- and infinity-based
rationales are the two most common instances of God-centered theory in the
literature, and the naturalist can point out that they arguably share a
common problem: a purely physical world seems able to do the job for which
God is purportedly necessary. Nature seems able to ground a universal
morality and the sort of final value from which meaning might spring. And
other God-based views seem to suffer from this same problem. For two
examples, some claim that God must exist in order for there to be a just
world, where a world in which the bad do well and the good fare poorly would
render our lives senseless (Craig 1994; cf. Cottingham 2003, pt. 3), and
others maintain that God's remembering all of us with love is alone what
would confer significance on our lives (Hartshorne 1984; Hartshorne 1996).
However, the naturalist will point out that an impersonal Karmic force could
justly distribute penalties and rewards in the way a retributive personal
judge would, and that actually living together in loving relationships would
seem to confer more meaning on life than a loving fond remembrance. A second problem facing all
God-based views is the existence of apparent counterexamples. If we think of
the stereotypical lives of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Pablo Picasso,
they seem meaningful even if we suppose there is no all-knowing,
all-powerful, and all-good spiritual person who is the ground of the physical
world. Even religiously inclined philosophers find this hard to deny (Quinn
2000, 58; Audi 2005), though some of them suggest that a supernatural realm
is necessary for a “deep” or “ultimate” meaning (Nozick 1981, 618; Craig
1994, 42). What is the difference between a deep meaning and a shallow one?
And why think a spiritual existence is necessary for the former? At this point, the
supernaturalist could usefully step back and reflect on what it might be
about God that would make Him uniquely able to confer meaning in life,
perhaps as follows from the perfect being theological tradition. For God to
be solely responsible for any significance in our lives, God must have
certain qualities that cannot be found in the natural world, these qualities
must be qualitatively superior to any goods possible in a physical universe,
and they must be what ground meaning in it. Here, the supernaturalist could
argue that meaning depends on the existence of a perfect being, where
perfection requires properties such as atemporality, simplicity and
immutability that are possible only in a spiritual realm (Metz 2000; cf.
Morris 1992; contra Brown 1971 and Hartshorne 1996). Perhaps meaning
would come from loving a perfect being or from orienting one's life toward it
in other ways such as imitating it or perhaps even fulfilling its purpose. Although this might be a
promising strategy for a God-centered theory, it faces a serious dilemma. On
the one hand, in order for God to be the sole source of meaning, God must be
utterly unlike us; for the more God were like us, the more reason there would
be to think we could obtain meaning from ourselves, absent God. On the other
hand, the more God is utterly unlike us, the less clear it is how we could
obtain meaning by relating to Him. How can one love a being that cannot
change? How can one imitate such a being? Could an immutable, atemporal,
simple being even have purposes? Could it truly be a person? And why think an
utterly perfect being is necessary for meaning? Why would not a very good but
imperfect being confer some meaning? 2.2
Soul-Centered Views
Recall that a soul-centered
theory is the view that meaning in life comes from relating in a certain way
to an immortal, spiritual substance that supervenes on one's body when it is
alive and that will forever outlive its death. If one lacks a soul, or if one
has a soul but relates to it in the wrong way, then one's life is
meaningless. There are two prominent arguments for a soul-based perspective. The first one is often
expressed by laypeople and is suggested by the work of Leo Tolstoy (1884; see
also Hanfling 1987, 22-24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Tolstoy argues that
for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that nothing is
worth doing if nothing one does will make a permanent difference to the
world, and that doing so requires having an immortal, spiritual self. Many of
course question whether having an infinite effect is necessary for meaning
(e.g., Schmidtz 2001; Audi 2005, 354-55). Others point out that one need not
be immortal in order to have an infinite effect (Levine 1987, 462), for God's
eternal remembrance of one's mortal existence would be sufficient for
that. The other major rationale for a
soul-based theory of life's meaning is that a soul is necessary for perfect
justice, which, in turn, is necessary for a meaningful life. Life seems
nonsensical when the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, at least
supposing there is no other world in which these injustices will be
rectified, whether by God or by Karma. Something like this argument can be
found in the Biblical chapter Ecclesiastes, and it continues to be
defended (Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, like the previous rationale, the
inferential structure of this one seems weak; even if an afterlife were
required for just outcomes, it is not obvious why an eternal afterlife
should be thought necessary (Perrett 1986, 220). Work has been done to try to
make the inferences of these two arguments stronger, and the basic strategy
has been to appeal to the value of perfection (Metz 2003a). Perhaps the
Tolstoian reason why one must live forever in order to make the relevant
permanent difference is an agent-relative need to honor an infinite value,
something qualitatively higher than the worth of, say, pleasure. And maybe
the reason why immortality is required in order to mete out just deserts is
that rewarding the virtuous requires satisfying their highest free and
informed desires, one of which would be for eternal flourishing of some kind.
While far from obviously sound, these arguments at least provide some reason
for thinking that immortality is necessary to satisfy the major premise about
what is required for meaning. However, both arguments are
still plagued by a problem facing the original versions; even if they show that
meaning depends on immortality, they do not yet show that it depends on
having a soul. If one has a soul, then one is by definition immortal, but it
is not true that if one is immortal, then one necessarily has a soul. Perhaps
being able to upload one's consciousness into an infinite succession of
different bodies in an everlasting universe would count as an instance of
immortality without a soul. Such a possibility would not require an
individual to have an immortal spiritual substance (imagine that when in
between bodies, the information constitutive of one's consciousness were
temporarily stored in a computer). What reason is there to think that one
must have a soul in particular for life to be significant? The most promising reason seems
to be one that takes us beyond the simple version of soul-centered theory to
the more complex view that both God and a soul constitute meaning. The best
justification for thinking that one must have a soul in order for one's life
to be significant seems to be that significance comes from uniting with God
in a spiritual realm such as Heaven, a view espoused by Thomas Aquinas, Leo
Tolstoy (1884), and contemporary religious thinkers (e.g., Craig 1994).
Another possibility is that meaning comes from honoring what is divine within
oneself, i.e., a soul (Swenson 1949). As with God-based views,
naturalist critics offer counterexamples to the claim that a soul or
immortality of any kind is necessary for meaning. Great works, whether they
be moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, would seem to confer meaning on one's
life regardless of whether one will live forever. Critics maintain that
soul-centered theorists are seeking too high a standard for appraising the
meaning of people's lives (Baier 1957, 124-29; Baier 1997, chs. 4-5; Trisel
2002; Trisel 2004); they are requiring perfection, whether it be, as above, a
perfect object to honor, a perfectly just reward to enjoy, or a perfect being
with which to commune. However, if indeed soul-centered theory ultimately
relies on claims about meaning turning on perfection, such a view is
attractive at least for being simple, and rival views have yet to specify in
a principled and thoroughly defended way where to draw the line at less than
perfection. What less than ideal amount of value is sufficient for a life to
count as “meaningful”? Critics of soul-based views
maintain not merely that immortality is not necessary for meaning in life,
but also that it is sufficient for a meaningless life. One influential
argument is that an immortal life, whether spiritual or physical, could not
avoid becoming boring, rendering life pointless (Williams 1973; Ellin 1995,
311-12; Belshaw 2005, 82-91). The most common reply is that immortality need
not get boring (Fischer 1994; Wisnewski 2005). However, it might also be
worth questioning whether boredom or a lack of positive engagement in what
one is doing is truly sufficient for meaningless (Metz 2003b, 63-67).
Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others
will not be; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make. Another argument that being
immortal would be sufficient to make our lives insignificant is that persons
who cannot die could not exhibit certain virtues (Nussbaum 1989). For
instance, they could not promote justice of any important sort, be benevolent
to any significant degree, or exhibit courage of any kind that matters, since
life and death issues would not be at stake. Critics reply that even if these
virtues would not be possible, there are other virtues that could be. And of
course it is not obvious that meaning-conferring justice, benevolence and
courage would not be possible if we were immortal, perhaps if we were not
always aware that we could not die or if our indestructible souls could still
be harmed by virtue of intense pain, frustrated ends, and repetitive lives. There are other, related
arguments maintaining that awareness of immortality would have the effect of
removing meaning from life, say, because our lives would lack a sense of
preciousness and urgency (Lenman 2004) or because external rather than
internal factors would then dictate their course (Wollheim 1984, 266). Note
that the target here is belief in an eternal afterlife, and not
immortality itself, and so I merely mention these rationales. 3. Naturalism
I now address views that even
if there is no spiritual realm, meaning in life is possible, at least for
many people. Among those who believe that a significant existence can be had
in a world as known by science, there is debate about two things: the extent
to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are any
standards for meaning that are invariant among human beings. Subjectivists
believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is
relative to the subjective, i.e., depends on an individual's pro-attitudes
such as desires, ends, and choices. Roughly, something is meaningful for a
person if she believes it to be or seeks it out. Objectivists maintain, in
contrast, that there are some invariant standards of meaning because meaning
is mind-independent, i.e., is a real property that exists regardless of being
the object of anyone's mental states. Here, something is meaningful at least
in part because of its intrinsic nature, independent of whether it is believed
to be meaningful or sought. There is logical space for an intersubjective
theory according to which there are invariant standards of meaning that are
constituted by what all human beings would agree upon from a communal
standpoint (Darwall 1983, chs. 11-12), but it is not much of a player in the
field and so I set it aside in what follows. 3.1 Subjectivism
According to this view, meaning
in life varies from person to person, depending on each one's variable mental
states. Common instances are views that one's life is more meaningful, the
more one gets what one happens to want strongly, the more one achieves one's
highly ranked goals, or the more one does what one believes to be really
important. Lately, one influential subjectivist has maintained that the relevant
mental state is caring or loving, so that life is meaningful just to the
extent that one cares about or loves something (Frankfurt 1982; Frankfurt
2002; Frankfurt 2004). Subjectivism was dominant for
much of the 20th century when pragmatism, positivism,
existentialism, noncognitivism, and Humeanism were quite influential (James
1900; Ayer 1947; Sartre 1948; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Hare 1972; Williams
1976; Klemke 1981). However, in the last quarter of the century, “reflective
equilibrium” became a widely accepted argumentative procedure, whereby more
controversial normative claims are justified by virtue of entailing and
explaining less controversial normative claims that do not command universal
acceptance. Such a method has been used to defend the existence of objective
value, and, as a result, subjectivism about meaning has lost its dominance
over the past thirty years. Those who continue to hold
subjectivism remain suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective
value (e.g., Frankfurt 2002, 250; Trisel 2002, 73, 79; Trisel 2004, 378-79).
Theorists are primarily moved to accept subjectivism because the alternatives
are unpalatable; they are sure that value in general and meaning in
particular exists, but do not see how it could be grounded in something
independent of the mind, whether it be the natural, the non-natural, or the
supernatural. In contrast to these possibilities, it appears straightforward
to account for what is meaningful in terms of what people find meaningful or
what people want out of life. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in
epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to
address this rationale for subjectivism. There are two other, more
circumscribed arguments for subjectivism. One is that subjectivism is
plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an
authentic one (Frankfurt 1982). If a person's life is significant insofar as
she is true to herself or her deepest nature, then we have some reason to
believe that meaning simply is a function of satisfying certain desires held
by the individual or realizing certain ends of hers. Another argument is that
meaning intuitively comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in
an activity or experience (Frankfurt 1982). Work that concentrates the mind
and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so
because of the subjective element involved, that is, because of the
concentration and engrossment. However, critics maintain that both of these
arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of
objective value both in realizing oneself and in losing oneself (Taylor 1992,
esp. ch. 4). One is not really being true to oneself if one intentionally
harms others (Dahl 1987, 12), successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one's
head (Taylor 1992, 36), or lives in an experience machine (Nozick 1974,
42-45), and one is also not losing oneself in a meaning-conferring way if one
is consumed by these things. There seem to be certain actions, relationships,
states, and experiences that one ought to concentrate on or be engrossed in,
if meaning is to accrue. So says the objectivist, but
many subjectivists also feel the pull of the point. Paralleling replies in
the literature on well-being, subjectivists often respond by contending that
no or very few individuals would desire to do such intuitively trivial
things, at least after a certain idealized process of reflection (e.g.,
Griffin 1981). More promising, perhaps, is the attempt to ground value not in
the responses of an individual, but in those of a community (Brogaard and
Smith 2005) or in those of all human persons from a certain standpoint
(Darwall 1983, chs. 11-12). Do these intersubjective moves avoid the
counterexamples? If so, do they do so more plausibly than an objective
theory? 3.2 Objectivism
Objective naturalists believe
that meaning is constituted by something physical independent of the mind
about which we can have correct or incorrect beliefs. Obtaining the object of
some variable pro-attitude is not sufficient for meaning, on this view.
Instead, there are certain inherently worthwhile or finally valuable
conditions that confer meaning for anyone, neither merely because they are
wanted, chosen, or believed to be meaningful, nor because they somehow are
grounded in God. Morality and creativity are
widely held instances of actions that confer meaning on life, while trimming
toenails and eating snow are not. Objectivism is thought to be the best
explanation for these respective kinds of judgments: the former are actions
that are meaningful regardless of whether any arbitrary agent (including God)
believes them to be or seeks to engage in them, while the latter actions
simply lack this kind of value and cannot obtain it if someone believes them
to have it or engages in them. To obtain meaning in one's life, one ought to
pursue the former actions and avoid the latter ones. Of course, meta-ethical
debates about the nature of value are again relevant here. A “pure” objectivist is someone
who thinks that being the object of a person's mental states plays no role in
making that person's life meaningful. Relatively few objectivists are pure,
so construed. That is, a large majority of them believe that a life is more
meaningful not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because
of subjective ones such as cognition, affection, and emotion. Most commonly
held is the hybrid view captured by Susan Wolf's pithy slogan: “Meaning
arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf
1997a, 211; see also Hepburn 1965; Kekes 1986; Wiggins 1988; Wolf 1997b;
Dworkin 2000, ch. 6; Kekes 2000; Raz 2001, ch. 1; Schmidtz 2001; Wolf 2002;
Brogaard and Smith 2005; Starkey 2006). This theory implies that no meaning
accrues to one's life if one believes in, is satisfied by, or cares about a
project that is not worthwhile, or if one takes up a worthwhile project but
fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, or care about it. Different
versions of this theory will have different accounts of the appropriate
mental states and of worthwhileness. Pure objectivists will of
course question whether subjective attraction plays any role in conferring
meaning on life. For instance, utilitarians with respect to meaning (as
opposed to morality) are pure objectivists, for they claim that certain
actions confer meaning on life regardless of the agent's reactions to them.
On this view, the more one benefits others, the more meaningful one's life,
regardless of whether one enjoys benefiting them, believes they should be
aided, works particularly hard to help them, etc. (Singer 1993, ch. 12;
Singer 1995, chs. 10-11; Singer 1996, ch. 4). Midway between pure objectivism
and the hybrid theory is the view that having certain propositional attitudes
toward finally good activities would enhance the meaning of life without
being necessary for it (Metz 2003b, 63-67; Audi 2005, 344). For instance,
would a stereotypical Mother Teresa who is bored by her charity work have a
significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more
significant existence if she were excited by it? There have been several
attempts to theoretically capture what all objectively attractive, inherently
worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they
bear on meaning. Some believe that they can all be captured as actions that
are creative (Taylor 1987), while others maintain that they are all morally
right or exhibit virtue (Kant 1791, pt. 2; cf. Pogge 1997). Most objectivists
deem these respective aesthetic and ethical theories to be too narrow. It
seems to many not only that creativity and morality are independent sources
of meaning, but also that there are sources in addition to these two. For
just a few examples, consider making an intellectual discovery, rearing
children with love, playing music, and developing superior athletic ability. So, in the literature one finds
a variety of principles that aim to capture all these and other (apparent)
objective grounds of meaning. One can read the perfectionist tradition as
including objective theories of what a significant existence is, even if
their proponents do not frequently use contemporary terminology to express
this. Consider Aristotle's account of the good life for a human being as one
that fulfills its natural purpose qua rational, Marx's vision of a
distinctly human history characterized by less alienation and more autonomy,
culture, and community, and Nietzsche's ideal of a being with a superlative
degree of power, creativity, and complexity. More recently, some have
maintained that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that:
transcend the limits of the self (Nozick 1981, ch. 6; Nozick 1989, chs.
15-16); comprise human excellences (Bond 1983, chs. 6, 8); maximally promote
non-hedonist goods such as friendship, beauty, and knowledge (Railton 1984);
exercise or develop rational nature in exceptional ways (Hurka 1993; Gewirth
1998, ch. 5); substantially improve the quality of life of people and animals
(Singer 1993, ch. 12; Singer 1995, chs. 10-11; Singer 1996, ch. 4); overcome
challenges that one recognizes to be important at one's stage of history
(Dworkin 2000, ch. 6); are positively oriented toward final value beyond
one's animal self (Metz 2003b; Levy 2005); or constitute rewarding experiences
in the life of the agent or the lives of others the agent affects (Audi
2005). One major test of these
theories is whether they capture all experiences, states, relationships, and
actions that intuitively make life meaningful. The more counterexamples of apparently
meaningful conditions that a principle entails lack meaning, the less
justified the principle. The field lacks any consensus about which principle,
if any, accounts for commonsensical judgments about meaning to an adequate,
convincing degree. Indeed, some believe the search for such a principle to be
pointless (Wolf 1997b, 12-13; Kekes 2000; Schmidtz 2001). Are these
pluralists correct, or does the field have a good chance of discovering a
single, general idea that grounds all the particular ways to acquire meaning
in life? Another important way to
criticize these theories is more comprehensive: all are aggregative or
additive, objectionably reducing life to a “container” of meaningful
conditions (Brännmark 2003, 330). As with the growth of “organic unity” views
in the context of debates about intrinsic value, it is becoming common to
think that life as a whole (or at least stretches of it) can affect its
meaning apart from the amount of meaning in its parts. For instance, a life
that has lots of beneficent and otherwise intuitively meaning-conferring
conditions but that is also extremely repetitive (à la the movie Groundhog
Day) is less than maximally meaningful (Taylor 1987). Furthermore, a
life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount
of meaningful parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the
same amount of meaningful parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2003,
210-14). And a life in which its meaningless parts cause its meaningful parts
to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue
of this causal pattern or being a “good story” (Fischer 2005). Some even
maintain the extreme view that the only bearer of meaning is life as a whole,
so that there are strictly speaking no parts that are meaningful in
themselves (Brännmark 2003; Levinson 2004). What are the ultimate bearers of
meaning? What are all the fundamentally different ways (if any) that holism
can affect meaning? Are they all a function of narrativity, life-stories, and
artistic self-expression, or are there holistic facets of life's meaning that
are not a matter of such literary concepts? 4. Nihilism
So far, I have addressed theoretical
accounts of what confers meaning on life, which obviously assume that some
lives are in fact meaningful. However, there are nihilistic perspectives that
question this assumption. One straightforward rationale
for nihilism is the combination of supernaturalism about what makes life
meaningful and atheism about whether God exists. If you believe that God or a
soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither
exists, then you are a nihilist, someone who denies that life has meaning.
Albert Camus is famous for expressing this kind of perspective, suggesting
that the lack of an afterlife and of a rational, divinely ordered universe
undercuts the possibility of meaning (Camus 1955; cf. Ecclesiastes). Interestingly, the most common rationales
for nihilism do not appeal to supernaturalism, at least not explicitly. The
idea shared among many nihilists is that there is something inherent to the
human condition that prevents meaning from arising, even if God exists. For
instance, some nihilists make the Schopenhauerian claim that our lives lack
meaning because we are invariably dissatisfied; either we have not yet
obtained what we seek, or we have obtained it and are bored (Martin 1993).
Critics tend to reply that at least a number of human lives do have the
requisite amount of satisfaction required for meaning, supposing some is
(Blackburn 2001, 74-77). Other nihilists claim that life
would be meaningless if there were no invariant moral rules that could be
fully justified—the world would be nonsensical if, in Dostoyevskian terms,
“everything were permitted”—and that such rules cannot exist for persons who
can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, ch. 1). While a
number of philosophers agree that a universally binding and warranted
morality is necessary for meaning in life (Kant 1791; Tännsjö 1988; Jacquette
2001, ch. 1; Cottingham 2003; Cottingham 2005, ch. 3), some do not (Margolis
1990; Ellin 1995, 325-27). Furthermore, contemporary work in meta-ethics has
led many to believe that such a moral system exists. The most influential rationale
for nihilism is Thomas Nagel's invocation of the external standpoint that
purportedly reveals our lives to be unimportant (Nagel 1986; cf. Dworkin
2000, ch. 6). According to Nagel, we are capable of comprehending the world
from a variety of standpoints that are either internal or external. The most
internal perspective would be a particular human being's desire at a given
instant, with a somewhat less internal perspective being one's interests over
a life-time, and an even less internal perspective being the interests of
one's family or community. In contrast, the most external perspective, an
encompassing standpoint utterly independent of one's particularity, would be,
to use Henry Sidgwick's phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is,
the standpoint that considers the interests of all sentient beings at all
times and in all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and
views one's finite—and even downright puny—impact on the world, little of
one's life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth
over an approximately 70 year span just does not amount to much, when
considering the billions of years and likely trillions of beings that are a
part of space-time. Very few accept the authority
of the (most) external standpoint (Ellin 1995, 316-17; Blackburn 2001, 79-80;
Schmidtz 2001) or the implications that Nagel believes it has for the meaning
of our lives (Quinn 2000, 65-66; Singer 1993, 333-34; Wolf 1997b, 19-21).
However, the field could use much more discussion of this rationale, given
its persistence in human thought. It is plausible to think, with Nagel, that
part of what it is to be a person is to be able to take up an external
standpoint. However, what precisely is a standpoint? Must we invariably adopt
one standpoint or the other, or is it possible not to take one up at all? Is
there a reliable way to ascertain which standpoint is normatively more
authoritative than others? These and the other questions posed in this survey
still lack conclusive answers, making the field of life's meaning
tantalizingly open for substantial contributions. Bibliography
Related Entries
afterlife | death | ethics:
ancient | existentialism
| friendship
| love | perfectionism,
in moral and political philosophy | value:
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