what are the characteristics of life essay

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Biology library

Course: biology library   >   unit 1.

• Preparing to study biology
• Biology overview

What is life?

Introduction

Properties of life, 1. organization, 2. metabolism, 3. homeostasis, 5. reproduction, 6. response, 7. evolution, is this the definitive list, separating living and non-living things, what counts as life is still being defined., what do you think, works cited:.

• Eveleth, R. "There Are 37.2 Trillion Cells in Your Body." Smithsonian.com. October 24, 2013. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-372-trillion-cells-in-your-body-4941473/?no-ist .
• Koshland, D. E. "The Seven Pillars of Life." Science 295, no. 5563 (2002): 2215-216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1068489 .
• Mullen, L. "Defining Life: Q&A with Scientist Gerald Joyce." Space.com. August 1, 2013. http://www.space.com/22210-life-definition-gerald-joyce-interview.html .

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Module 1: Introduction to Biology

The characteristics of life, list the defining characteristics of biological life.

Biology is the science that studies life, but what exactly is life? This may sound like a silly question with an obvious response, but it is not always easy to define life. For example, a branch of biology called virology studies viruses, which exhibit some of the characteristics of living entities but lack others. It turns out that although viruses can attack living organisms, cause diseases, and even reproduce, they do not meet the criteria that biologists use to define life. Consequently, virologists are not biologists, strictly speaking. Similarly, some biologists study the early molecular evolution that gave rise to life; since the events that preceded life are not biological events, these scientists are also excluded from biology in the strict sense of the term.

From its earliest beginnings, biology has wrestled with these questions: What are the shared properties that make something “alive”? And once we know something is alive, how do we find meaningful levels of organization in its structure?

Learning Objectives

• List the properties of life
• Order the levels of organization of living things

Properties of Life

All living organisms share several key characteristics or functions: order, sensitivity or response to the environment, reproduction, growth and development, regulation, homeostasis, and energy processing. When viewed together, these characteristics serve to define life.

Figure 1. A toad represents a highly organized structure consisting of cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.

Organisms are highly organized, coordinated structures that consist of one or more cells. Even very simple, single-celled organisms are remarkably complex: inside each cell, atoms make up molecules; these in turn make up cell organelles and other cellular inclusions.

In multicellular organisms (Figure 1), similar cells form tissues. Tissues, in turn, collaborate to create organs (body structures with a distinct function). Organs work together to form organ systems.

Sensitivity or Response to Stimuli

Organisms respond to diverse stimuli. For example, plants can bend toward a source of light, climb on fences and walls, or respond to touch (Figure 2).

Figure 2.The leaves of this sensitive plant ( Mimosa pudica ) will instantly droop and fold when touched. After a few minutes, the plant returns to normal. (credit: Alex Lomas)

Even tiny bacteria can move toward or away from chemicals (a process called  chemotaxis ) or light ( phototaxis ). Movement toward a stimulus is considered a positive response, while movement away from a stimulus is considered a negative response.

Watch  this video to see how plants respond to a stimulus—from opening to light, to wrapping a tendril around a branch, to capturing prey.

Reproduction

Single-celled organisms reproduce by first duplicating their DNA, and then dividing it equally as the cell prepares to divide to form two new cells. Multicellular organisms often produce specialized reproductive germline cells that will form new individuals. When reproduction occurs, genes containing DNA are passed along to an organism’s offspring. These genes ensure that the offspring will belong to the same species and will have similar characteristics, such as size and shape.

Growth and Development

Figure 3. Although no two look alike, these puppies have inherited genes from both parents and share many of the same characteristics.

Organisms grow and develop following specific instructions coded for by their genes. These genes provide instructions that will direct cellular growth and development, ensuring that a species’ young (Figure 3) will grow up to exhibit many of the same characteristics as its parents.

Even the smallest organisms are complex and require multiple regulatory mechanisms to coordinate internal functions, respond to stimuli, and cope with environmental stresses. Two examples of internal functions regulated in an organism are nutrient transport and blood flow. Organs (groups of tissues working together) perform specific functions, such as carrying oxygen throughout the body, removing wastes, delivering nutrients to every cell, and cooling the body.

Homeostasis

Figure 4. Polar bears ( Ursus maritimus ) and other mammals living in ice-covered regions maintain their body temperature by generating heat and reducing heat loss through thick fur and a dense layer of fat under their skin. (credit: “longhorndave”/Flickr)

In order to function properly, cells need to have appropriate conditions such as proper temperature, pH, and appropriate concentration of diverse chemicals. These conditions may, however, change from one moment to the next. Organisms are able to maintain internal conditions within a narrow range almost constantly, despite environmental changes, through  homeostasis (literally, “steady state”)—the ability of an organism to maintain constant internal conditions. For example, an organism needs to regulate body temperature through a process known as thermoregulation. Organisms that live in cold climates, such as the polar bear (Figure 4), have body structures that help them withstand low temperatures and conserve body heat. Structures that aid in this type of insulation include fur, feathers, blubber, and fat. In hot climates, organisms have methods (such as perspiration in humans or panting in dogs) that help them to shed excess body heat.

Energy Processing

All organisms use a source of energy for their metabolic activities. Some organisms capture energy from the sun and convert it into chemical energy in food (photosynthesis); others use chemical energy in molecules they take in as food (cellular respiration).

Figure 5. The California condor ( Gymnogyps californianus ) uses chemical energy derived from food to power flight. California condors are an endangered species; this bird has a wing tag that helps biologists identify the individual.

Levels of Organization of Living Things

Living things are highly organized and structured, following a hierarchy that can be examined on a scale from small to large. The atom is the smallest and most fundamental unit of matter. It consists of a nucleus surrounded by electrons. Atoms form molecules. A molecule is a chemical structure consisting of at least two atoms held together by one or more chemical bonds. Many molecules that are biologically important are macromolecules , large molecules that are typically formed by polymerization (a polymer is a large molecule that is made by combining smaller units called monomers, which are simpler than macromolecules). An example of a macromolecule is deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (Figure 6), which contains the instructions for the structure and functioning of all living organisms.

Figure 6. All molecules, including this DNA molecule, are composed of atoms. (credit: “brian0918″/Wikimedia Commons)

Some cells contain aggregates of macromolecules surrounded by membranes; these are called  organelles . Organelles are small structures that exist within cells. Examples of organelles include mitochondria and chloroplasts, which carry out indispensable functions: mitochondria produce energy to power the cell, while chloroplasts enable green plants to utilize the energy in sunlight to make sugars. All living things are made of cells; the cell itself is the smallest fundamental unit of structure and function in living organisms. (This requirement is why viruses are not considered living: they are not made of cells. To make new viruses, they have to invade and hijack the reproductive mechanism of a living cell; only then can they obtain the materials they need to reproduce.) Some organisms consist of a single cell and others are multicellular. Cells are classified as prokaryotic or eukaryotic. Prokaryotes are single-celled or colonial organisms that do not have membrane-bound nuclei or organelles; in contrast, the cells of eukaryotes do have membrane-bound organelles and a membrane-bound nucleus.

In larger organisms, cells combine to make  tissues , which are groups of similar cells carrying out similar or related functions. Organs are collections of tissues grouped together performing a common function. Organs are present not only in animals but also in plants. An organ system is a higher level of organization that consists of functionally related organs. Mammals have many organ systems. For instance, the circulatory system transports blood through the body and to and from the lungs; it includes organs such as the heart and blood vessels. Organisms are individual living entities. For example, each tree in a forest is an organism. Single-celled prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes are also considered organisms and are typically referred to as microorganisms.

All the individuals of a species living within a specific area are collectively called a  population . For example, a forest may include many pine trees. All of these pine trees represent the population of pine trees in this forest. Different populations may live in the same specific area. For example, the forest with the pine trees includes populations of flowering plants and also insects and microbial populations. A community is the sum of populations inhabiting a particular area. For instance, all of the trees, flowers, insects, and other populations in a forest form the forest’s community. The forest itself is an ecosystem. An ecosystem consists of all the living things in a particular area together with the abiotic, non-living parts of that environment such as nitrogen in the soil or rain water. At the highest level of organization (Figure 7), the biosphere is the collection of all ecosystems, and it represents the zones of life on earth. It includes land, water, and even the atmosphere to a certain extent.

Practice Question

From a single organelle to the entire biosphere, living organisms are parts of a highly structured hierarchy.

Figure 7. The biological levels of organization of living things are shown. From a single organelle to the entire biosphere, living organisms are parts of a highly structured hierarchy. (credit “organelles”: modification of work by Umberto Salvagnin; credit “cells”: modification of work by Bruce Wetzel, Harry Schaefer/ National Cancer Institute; credit “tissues”: modification of work by Kilbad; Fama Clamosa; Mikael Häggström; credit “organs”: modification of work by Mariana Ruiz Villareal; credit “organisms”: modification of work by “Crystal”/Flickr; credit “ecosystems”: modification of work by US Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters; credit “biosphere”: modification of work by NASA)

Which of the following statements is false?

• Tissues exist within organs, which exist within organ systems.
• Communities exist within populations, which exist within ecosystems.
• Organelles exist within cells, which exist within tissues.
• Communities exist within ecosystems, which exist in the biosphere.

Check Your Understanding

Answer the question(s) below to see how well you understand the topics covered in the previous section. This short quiz does  not  count toward your grade in the class, and you can retake it an unlimited number of times.

Use this quiz to check your understanding and decide whether to (1) study the previous section further or (2) move on to the next section.

• Introduction to Characteristics of Life. Authored by : Shelli Carter and Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Biology. Provided by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected] . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]
• fresh litter. Authored by : Magalie LAbbe. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/9yeYXd . License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
• Bufo viridis/European Green Toad. Authored by : Ivengo(RUS). Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bufo_viridis.jpg . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright
• Young California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) ready for flight. Provided by : US Fish and Wildlife Service. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:California-condor.jpg . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

Seven Characteristics of Life

What is life.

Table of Contents

Biologists have identified seven characteristics that all living things share.

There are characteristics that all of life on earth share. While it may seem obvious that a rock is not alive and a person is, there are questions regarding other things, such as viruses . The following are seven characteristics that are used in the science of biology to define what life is.

Cells and Organization

Cells are the basic unit of life. The smallest organism consists of one cell. Within that cell is the cellular equivalent of organs, called organelles. Organelles are made of molecules or macromolecules such as carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. These organelles serve different functions including transferring ribonucleic acid (RNA), making adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for energy, or transferring molecules in and out of the cell.

Similar cells combine to form tissues, such as the pericardium, the membrane around the heart. Tissues give rise to organs, like the liver, heart, or skin. Unlike the single-celled organism, complex organisms consist of a combination of cells, tissues, and organs.

Organisms must acquire and use energy in order to maintain their complex, living systems. Cells metabolize molecules, such as nutrients, to produce energy and use it for other processes, like replicating deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).

Some organisms, including plants and some bacteria, can convert light energy to produce nutrients. This is called photosynthesis. Other organisms, such as animals, must consume other organisms to meet their energy needs.

Environmental Adaptation

Organisms must be able to adapt to their changing environments. For example, during the season when the sun is directly overhead, plants will grow upward, but they will grow more toward the side during those seasons when the sun is lower in the sky. Horses shed their coats in the spring and summer to allow for easier cooling during the warmer weather. They acquire a thick coat for the winter months when it is necessary to keep warm air close to the skin.

Homeostasis

Organisms must maintain an internal environment that is conducive to cell metabolism. For example, humans must maintain a specific body temperature. When they are cold, they will shiver, a response that causes the muscles to produce more heat. When they are too warm, the body will produce sweat which carries heat away from the body when it evaporates. The degree to which this must be done varies among organisms.

Growth and Development

All organisms undergo a process of growth and development. Single-celled organisms start as smaller cells that grow. The contents of the cell may become more diverse and complex. More complex organisms, such as humans, start out as a single cell that divides to create more cells. These new cells differentiate to develop into specialized cells that form different tissues and organs.

Reproduction

All living organisms have DNA, which is genetic material containing the information and instructions for forming an organism. All organisms die and must be able to pass this genetic material on to create more organisms. This is done through reproduction. Single-celled organisms may divide in half and grow. Other organisms reproduce sexually, a process that requires another organism with which to share its DNA.

The book, Biology , by Robert J. Brooker, et al., defines biological evolution as “the phenomenon that populations of organisms change over the course of many generations.” This can include the beak length and shape of a particular species of bird that is better suited to acquiring certain kinds of food in a particular environment.

The characteristics of living things begin with the organization from the molecular level to the organismal level. Organisms are able to acquire energy and break it down for cellular use. This energy is used to maintain an internal environment that is conducive to cellular processes. Organisms can adapt to environmental changes, and a species as a whole can evolve over the period of many generations. Living organisms can reproduce to create more organisms that will grow and develop. Essentially, these properties of life, together, are the definition of life.

Living organisms share these seven characteristics, but that does not make them the same. The ability of the individual to adapt and the population to evolve allows for a diverse number of species throughout the world. This diversity allows organisms to live within the various environments of the earth.

Brooker, Robert J., Widmaier, Eric P., Graham, Linda E., and Stiling, Peter D. Biology . New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.

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1 Definition of Life

Study guide, learn objectives.

• Identify the core characteristics that define “life.”
• Identify the commonalities and differences among various definitions of “life.”
• Discuss the challenges of settling on a single definition of life.

Key Concepts and Terms

• Sensitivity to stimuli

Reproduction

• Homeostasis
• Growth and development
• Energy processing

Biology is the science that studies life. What exactly is life? This may sound like a silly question with an obvious answer, but it is not easy to define life. For example, a branch of biology called virology studies viruses, which exhibit some of the characteristics of living entities but lack others. Although viruses can attack living organisms, cause diseases, and even reproduce, they do not meet the criteria that biologists use to define life.

From its earliest beginnings, biology has wrestled with four questions: What are the shared properties that make something “alive”? How do those various living things function? When faced with the remarkable diversity of life, how do we organize the different kinds of organisms so that we can better understand them? Finally, what biologists ultimately seek to understand is how this diversity arises and how it continues. As new organisms are discovered every day, biologists continue to seek answers to these and other questions.

Properties of Life

All groups of living organisms share several key characteristics or functions: order, sensitivity or response to stimuli, reproduction, adaptation, growth and development, regulation, homeostasis, and energy processing. When viewed together, these characteristics serve to define life.

Order (Cells)

Cells are considered the most basic units of life because they represent discrete units that can independently embody all of the other characteristics listed below. All life living things consist of one or more cells. Even very simple, single-celled organisms are remarkably complex. Inside each cell, atoms make up molecules. These in turn make up cell components or organelles. Multicellular organisms, which may consist of millions of individual cells, have an advantage over single-celled organisms in that their cells can be specialized to perform specific functions and even sacrificed in certain situations for the good of the organism as a whole. How these specialized cells come together to form organs such as the heart, lung, or skin in organisms like the toad shown in Figure 1  will be discussed later.

Sensitivity or Response to Stimuli

Organisms respond to diverse stimuli. For example, plants can grow toward a source of light or respond to touch ( Figure 2 ). Even tiny bacteria can move toward or away from chemicals (a process called chemotaxis) or light (phototaxis). The movement toward a stimulus is considered a positive response, while the movement away from a stimulus is considered a negative response.

CONCEPTS IN ACTION

Watch this video to see how the sensitive plant responds to a touch stimulus .

Single-celled organisms reproduce by first duplicating their DNA, which is the genetic material, and then dividing it equally as the cell prepares to divide to form two new cells. Many multicellular organisms (those made up of more than one cell) produce specialized reproductive cells that will form new individuals. When reproduction occurs, DNA, which encodes genes, is passed along to an organism’s offspring. These genes are the reason that the offspring will belong to the same species and will have characteristics similar to the parent, such as fur color and blood type.

Growth and Development

All organisms grow and develop according to specific instructions coded for by their genes. These genes provide instructions that will direct cellular growth and development, ensuring that a species’ young ( Figur e 3 ) will grow up to exhibit many of the same characteristics as its parents.

Regulation/Homeostasis

Even the smallest organisms are complex and require multiple regulatory mechanisms to coordinate internal functions, such as the transport of nutrients, response to stimuli, and coping with environmental stresses. For example, organ systems such as the digestive or circulatory systems perform specific functions like carrying oxygen throughout the body, removing wastes, delivering nutrients to every cell, and cooling the body.

To function properly, cells require appropriate conditions such as proper temperature, pH, and concentrations of diverse chemicals. These conditions may, however, change from one moment to the next. Organisms are able to maintain internal conditions within a narrow range almost constantly, despite environmental changes, through a process called homeostasis or “steady state”—the ability of an organism to maintain constant internal conditions. For example, many organisms regulate their body temperature in a process known as thermoregulation. Organisms that live in cold climates, such as the polar bear ( Figure 4 ), have body structures that help them withstand low temperatures and conserve body heat. In hot climates, organisms have methods (such as perspiration in humans or panting in dogs) that help them to shed excess body heat.

Energy Processing

All organisms (such as the California condor shown in Figure 5 ) use a source of energy for their metabolic activities. Some organisms capture energy from the Sun and convert it into chemical energy in food; others use chemical energy from molecules they take in.

The diversity of life on Earth is a result of mutations or random changes in hereditary material over time. These mutations allow the possibility for organisms to adapt to a changing environment. An organism that evolves characteristics fit for the environment will have greater reproductive success, subject to the forces of natural selection.

Evolution by natural selection results in adaptations . All living organisms exhibit a “fit” to their environment. Biologists refer to this fit as adaptation and it is a consequence of evolution by natural selection, which operates in every lineage of reproducing organisms. Examples of adaptations are as diverse as unique heat-resistant Archaea that live in boiling hot springs to the tongue length of a nectar-feeding moth that matches the size of the flower from which it feeds. All adaptations enhance the reproductive potential of the individual exhibiting them, including their ability to survive to reproduce. Adaptations are not constant. As an environment changes, natural selection causes the characteristics of the individuals in a population to track those changes.

Watch the following video to review the characteristics of life. Do the characteristics listed in the video differ from those listed above?

the study of living organisms and their interactions with one another and their environments

Introductory Biology: Evolutionary and Ecological Perspectives Copyright © by Various Authors - See Each Chapter Attribution is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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1.7: Themes and Concepts of Biology - Properties of Life

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Learning Objectives

• Describe the properties of life

All living organisms share several key characteristics or functions: order, sensitivity or response to the environment, reproduction, growth and development, regulation, homeostasis, and energy processing. When viewed together, these eight characteristics serve to define life.

Organisms are highly organized, coordinated structures that consist of one or more cells. Even very simple, single-celled organisms are remarkably complex: inside each cell, atoms make up molecules; these in turn make up cell organelles and other cellular inclusions. In multicellular organisms, similar cells form tissues. Tissues, in turn, collaborate to create organs (body structures with a distinct function). Organs work together to form organ systems.

Sensitivity or Response to Stimuli

Organisms can respond to diverse stimuli. For example, plants can grow toward a source of light, climb on fences and walls, or respond to touch. Even tiny bacteria can move toward or away from chemicals (a process called chemotaxis) or light (phototaxis). Movement toward a stimulus is considered a positive response, while movement away from a stimulus is considered a negative response.

Reproduction

Single-celled organisms reproduce by first duplicating their DNA. They then divide it equally as the cell prepares to divide to form two new cells. Multicellular organisms often produce specialized reproductive germline cells that will form new individuals. When reproduction occurs, genes containing DNA are passed along to an organism’s offspring. These genes ensure that the offspring will belong to the same species and will have similar characteristics, such as size and shape.

Growth and Development

All organisms grow and develop following specific instructions coded for by their genes. These genes provide instructions that will direct cellular growth and development, ensuring that a species’ young will grow up to exhibit many of the same characteristics as its parents.

Even the smallest organisms are complex and require multiple regulatory mechanisms to coordinate internal functions, respond to stimuli, and cope with environmental stresses. Two examples of internal functions regulated in an organism are nutrient transport and blood flow. Organs (groups of tissues working together) perform specific functions, such as carrying oxygen throughout the body, removing wastes, delivering nutrients to every cell, and cooling the body.

Homeostasis

In order to function properly, cells need to have appropriate conditions such as proper temperature, pH, and appropriate concentration of diverse chemicals. These conditions may, however, change from one moment to the next. Organisms are able to maintain internal conditions within a narrow range almost constantly, despite environmental changes, through homeostasis (literally, “steady state”)—the ability of an organism to maintain constant internal conditions. For example, an organism needs to regulate body temperature through a process known as thermoregulation. Organisms that live in cold climates, such as the polar bear, have body structures that help them withstand low temperatures and conserve body heat. Structures that aid in this type of insulation include fur, feathers, blubber, and fat. In hot climates, organisms have methods (such as perspiration in humans or panting in dogs) that help them to shed excess body heat.

Energy Processing

All organisms use a source of energy for their metabolic activities. Some organisms capture energy from the sun and convert it into chemical energy in food; others use chemical energy in molecules they take in as food.

As a population of organisms interacts with the environment, individuals with traits that contribute to reproduction and survival in that particular environment will leave more offspring. Over time those advantageous traits (called adaptations ) will become more common in the population. This process, change over time, is called evolution, and it is one of the processes that explain the diverse species seen in biology. Adaptations help organisms survive in their ecological niches, and adaptive traits may be structural, behavioral, or physiological; as such, adaptations frequently involve other properties of organisms such as homeostasis, reproduction, and growth and development.

• Order can include highly organized structures such as cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.
• Interaction with the environment is shown by response to stimuli.
• The ability to reproduce, grow and develop are defining features of life.
• The concepts of biological regulation and maintenance of homeostasis are key to survival and define major properties of life.
• Organisms use energy to maintain their metabolic processes.
• Populations of organisms evolve to produce individuals that are adapted to their specific environment.
• phototaxis : The movement of an organism either towards or away from a source of light
• gene : a unit of heredity; the functional units of chromosomes that determine specific characteristics by coding for specific proteins
• chemotaxis : the movement of a cell or an organism in response to a chemical stimulant

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The Meaning of Life

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 (with such talk having arisen only in the past 250 years or so, on which see Landau 1997). Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. Relatedly, think about Koheleth, the presumed author of the Biblical book Ecclesiastes, describing life as “futility” and akin to “the pursuit of wind,” Nietzsche on nihilism, as well as Schopenhauer when he remarks that whenever we reach a goal we have longed for we discover “how vain and empty it is.” While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and virtue (and their opposites), they are straightforwardly construed (roughly) as accounts of which highly ranked purposes a person ought to realize that would make her life significant (if any would).

Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only since the 1980s or so that a distinct field of the meaning of life has been established in Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy, on which this survey focuses, and it is only in the past 20 years that debate with real depth and intricacy has appeared. Two decades ago analytic reflection on life’s meaning was described as a “backwater” compared to that on well-being or good character, and it was possible to cite nearly all the literature in a given critical discussion of the field (Metz 2002). Neither is true any longer. Anglo-American-Australasian philosophy of life’s meaning has become vibrant, such that there is now way too much literature to be able to cite comprehensively in this survey. To obtain focus, it tends to discuss books, influential essays, and more recent works, and it leaves aside contributions from other philosophical traditions (such as the Continental or African) and from non-philosophical fields (e.g., psychology or literature). This survey’s central aim is to acquaint the reader with current analytic approaches to life’s meaning, sketching major debates and pointing out neglected topics that merit further consideration.

When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people tend to pose one of three questions: “What are you talking about?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Is life in fact meaningful?”. The literature on life's meaning composed by those working in the analytic tradition (on which this entry focuses) can be usefully organized according to which question it seeks to answer. This survey starts off with recent work that addresses the first, abstract (or “meta”) question regarding the sense of talk of “life’s meaning,” i.e., that aims to clarify what we have in mind when inquiring into the meaning of life (section 1). Afterward, it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question about the nature of meaningfulness (sections 2–3). There is in the making a sub-field of applied meaning that parallels applied ethics, in which meaningfulness is considered in the context of particular cases or specific themes. Examples include downshifting (Levy 2005), implementing genetic enhancements (Agar 2013), making achievements (Bradford 2015), getting an education (Schinkel et al. 2015), interacting with research participants (Olson 2016), automating labor (Danaher 2017), and creating children (Ferracioli 2018). In contrast, this survey focuses nearly exclusively on contemporary normative-theoretical approaches to life’s meanining, that is, attempts to capture in a single, general principle all the variegated conditions that could confer meaning on life. Finally, this survey examines fresh arguments for the nihilist view that the conditions necessary for a meaningful life do not obtain for any of us, i.e., that all our lives are meaningless (section 4).

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

2.1. god-centered views, 2.2. soul-centered views, 3.1. subjectivism, 3.2. objectivism, 3.3. rejecting god and a soul, 4. nihilism, works cited, classic works, collections, books for the general reader, other internet resources, related entries.

One of the field's aims consists of the systematic attempt to identify what people (essentially or characteristically) have in mind when they think about the topic of life’s meaning. For many in the field, terms such as “importance” and “significance” are synonyms of “meaningfulness” and so are insufficiently revealing, but there are those who draw a distinction between meaningfulness and significance (Singer 1996, 112–18; Belliotti 2019, 145–50, 186). There is also debate about how the concept of a meaningless life relates to the ideas of a life that is absurd (Nagel 1970, 1986, 214–23; Feinberg 1980; Belliotti 2019), futile (Trisel 2002), and not worth living (Landau 2017, 12–15; Matheson 2017).

A useful way to begin to get clear about what thinking about life’s meaning involves is to specify the bearer. Which life does the inquirer have in mind? A standard distinction to draw is between the meaning “in” life, where a human person is what can exhibit meaning, and the meaning “of” life in a narrow sense, where the human species as a whole is what can be meaningful or not. There has also been a bit of recent consideration of whether animals or human infants can have meaning in their lives, with most rejecting that possibility (e.g., Wong 2008, 131, 147; Fischer 2019, 1–24), but a handful of others beginning to make a case for it (Purves and Delon 2018; Thomas 2018). Also under-explored is the issue of whether groups, such as a people or an organization, can be bearers of meaning, and, if so, under what conditions.

Most analytic philosophers have been interested in meaning in life, that is, in the meaningfulness that a person’s life could exhibit, with comparatively few these days addressing the meaning of life in the narrow sense. Even those who believe that God is or would be central to life’s meaning have lately addressed how an individual’s life might be meaningful in virtue of God more often than how the human race might be. Although some have argued that the meaningfulness of human life as such merits inquiry to no less a degree (if not more) than the meaning in a life (Seachris 2013; Tartaglia 2015; cf. Trisel 2016), a large majority of the field has instead been interested in whether their lives as individual persons (and the lives of those they care about) are meaningful and how they could become more so.

Focusing on meaning in life, it is quite common to maintain that it is conceptually something good for its own sake or, relatedly, something that provides a basic reason for action (on which see Visak 2017). There are a few who have recently suggested otherwise, maintaining that there can be neutral or even undesirable kinds of meaning in a person’s life (e.g., Mawson 2016, 90, 193; Thomas 2018, 291, 294). However, these are outliers, with most analytic philosophers, and presumably laypeople, instead wanting to know when an individual’s life exhibits a certain kind of final value (or non-instrumental reason for action).

Another claim about which there is substantial consensus is that meaningfulness is not all or nothing and instead 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. Note that one can coherently hold the view that some people’s lives are less meaningful (or even in a certain sense less “important”) than others, or are even meaningless (unimportant), and still maintain that people have an equal standing from a moral point of view. Consider a consequentialist moral principle according to which each individual counts for one in virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life, or a Kantian approach according to which all people have a dignity in virtue of their capacity for autonomous decision-making, where meaning is a function of the exercise of this capacity. For both moral outlooks, we could be required to help people with relatively meaningless lives.

Yet another relatively uncontroversial element of the concept of meaningfulness in respect of individual persons is that it is logically distinct from happiness or rightness (emphasized in Wolf 2010, 2016). First, to ask whether someone’s life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is pleasant or she is subjectively well off. A life in an experience machine or virtual reality device would surely be a happy one, but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, a number would say that one’s life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one’s well-being, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one’s self-interest. Second, asking whether a person’s existence over time is meaningful is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there are intuitively ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with right action or moral virtue, such as making a scientific discovery or becoming an excellent dancer. Now, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if, or even because, it were unhappy or immoral, but that would be to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, far from indicating that speaking of “meaningfulness” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness. The question of what (if anything) makes a person’s life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the questions of what makes a life happy or moral, although it could turn out that the best answer to the former question appeals to an answer to one of the latter questions.

Supposing, then, that talk of “meaning in life” connotes something good for its own sake that can come in degrees and that is not analytically equivalent to happiness or rightness, what else does it involve? What more can we say about this final value, by definition? Most contemporary analytic philosophers would say that the relevant value is absent from spending time in an experience machine (but see Goetz 2012 for a different view) or living akin to Sisyphus, the mythic figure doomed by the Greek gods to roll a stone up a hill for eternity (famously discussed by Albert Camus and Taylor 1970). In addition, many would say that the relevant value is typified by the classic triad of “the good, the true, and the beautiful” (or would be under certain conditions). These terms are not to be taken literally, but instead are rough catchwords for beneficent relationships (love, collegiality, morality), intellectual reflection (wisdom, education, discoveries), and creativity (particularly the arts, but also potentially things like humor or gardening).

Pressing further, is there something that the values of the good, the true, the beautiful, and any other logically possible sources of meaning involve? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One salient view is that the concept of meaning in life is a cluster or amalgam of overlapping ideas, such as fulfilling higher-order purposes, meriting substantial esteem or admiration, having a noteworthy impact, transcending one’s animal nature, making sense, or exhibiting a compelling life-story (Markus 2003; Thomson 2003; Metz 2013, 24–35; Seachris 2013, 3–4; Mawson 2016). However, there are philosophers who maintain that something much more monistic is true of the concept, so that (nearly) all thought about meaningfulness in a person’s life is essentially about a single property. Suggestions include being devoted to or in awe of qualitatively superior goods (Taylor 1989, 3–24), transcending one’s limits (Levy 2005), or making a contribution (Martela 2016).

Recently there has been something of an “interpretive turn” in the field, one instance of which is the strong view that meaning-talk is logically about whether and how a life is intelligible within a wider frame of reference (Goldman 2018, 116–29; Seachris 2019; Thomas 2019; cf. Repp 2018). According to this approach, inquiring into life’s meaning is nothing other than seeking out sense-making information, perhaps a narrative about life or an explanation of its source and destiny. This analysis has the advantage of promising to unify a wide array of uses of the term “meaning.” However, it has the disadvantages of being unable to capture the intuitions that meaning in life is essentially good for its own sake (Landau 2017, 12–15), that it is not logically contradictory to maintain that an ineffable condition is what confers meaning on life (as per Cooper 2003, 126–42; Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014), and that often human actions themselves (as distinct from an interpretation of them), such as rescuing a child from a burning building, are what bear meaning.

Some thinkers have suggested that a complete analysis of the concept of life’s meaning should include what has been called “anti-matter” (Metz 2002, 805–07, 2013, 63–65, 71–73) or “anti-meaning” (Campbell and Nyholm 2015; Egerstrom 2015), conditions that reduce the meaningfulness of a life. The thought is that meaning is well represented by a bipolar scale, where there is a dimension of not merely positive conditions, but also negative ones. Gratuitous cruelty or destructiveness are prima facie candidates for actions that not merely fail to add meaning, but also subtract from any meaning one’s life might have had.

Despite the ongoing debates about how to analyze the concept of life’s meaning (or articulate the definition of the phrase “meaning in life”), the field remains in a good position to make progress on the other key questions posed above, viz., of what would make a life meaningful and whether any lives are in fact meaningful. A certain amount of common ground is provided by the point that meaningfulness at least involves a gradient final value in a person’s life that is conceptually distinct from happiness and rightness, with exemplars of it potentially being the good, the true, and the beautiful. The rest of this discussion addresses philosophical attempts to capture the nature of this value theoretically and to ascertain whether it exists in at least some of our lives.

2. Supernaturalism

Most analytic philosophers writing on meaning in life have been 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. As in moral philosophy, there are recognizable “anti-theorists,” i.e., those who maintain that there is too much pluralism among meaning conditions to be able to unify them in the form of a principle (e.g., Kekes 2000; Hosseini 2015). Arguably, though, the systematic search for unity is too nascent to be able to draw a firm conclusion about whether it is available.

The theories are standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, that is, in terms of which kinds of properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are views according to which a spiritual realm is central to meaning in life. Most Western philosophers have conceived of the spiritual in terms of God or a soul as commonly understood in the Abrahamic faiths (but see Mulgan 2015 for discussion of meaning in the context of a God uninterested in us). In contrast, naturalist theories are views that the physical world as known particularly well by the scientific method is central to life’s meaning.

There is logical space for a non-naturalist theory, according to which central to meaning is an abstract property that is neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been paid to this possibility in the recent Anglo-American-Australasian literature (Audi 2005).

It is important to note that supernaturalism, a claim that God (or a soul) would confer meaning on a life, is logically distinct from theism, the claim that God (or a soul) exists. Although most who hold supernaturalism also hold theism, one could accept the former without the latter (as Camus more or less did), committing one to the view that life is meaningless or at least lacks substantial meaning. Similarly, while most naturalists are atheists, it is not contradictory to maintain that God exists but has nothing to do with meaning in life or perhaps even detracts from it. Although these combinations of positions are logically possible, some of them might be substantively implausible. The field could benefit from discussion of the comparative attractiveness of various combinations of evaluative claims about what would make life meaningful and metaphysical claims about whether spiritual conditions exist.

Over the past 15 years or so, two different types of supernaturalism have become distinguished on a regular basis (Metz 2019). That is true not only in the literature on life’s meaning, but also in that on the related pro-theism/anti-theism debate, about whether it would be desirable for God or a soul to exist (e.g., Kahane 2011; Kraay 2018; Lougheed 2020). On the one hand, there is extreme supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for any meaning in life. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life is meaningless. On the other hand, there is moderate supernaturalism, according to which spiritual conditions are necessary for a great or ultimate meaning in life, although not meaning in life as such. If neither God nor a soul exists, then, by this view, everyone’s life could have some meaning, or even be meaningful, but no one’s life could exhibit the most desirable meaning. For a moderate supernaturalist, God or a soul would substantially enhance meaningfulness or be a major contributory condition for it.

There are a variety of ways that great or ultimate meaning has been described, sometimes quantitatively as “infinite” (Mawson 2016), qualitatively as “deeper” (Swinburne 2016), relationally as “unlimited” (Nozick 1981, 618–19; cf. Waghorn 2014), temporally as “eternal” (Cottingham 2016), and perspectivally as “from the point of view of the universe” (Benatar 2017). There has been no reflection as yet on the crucial question of how these distinctions might bear on each another, for instance, on whether some are more basic than others or some are more valuable than others.

Cross-cutting the extreme/moderate distinction is one between God-centered theories and soul-centered ones. According to the former, 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) constitutes meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal, spiritual substance that contains one’s identity). In contrast, by the latter, having a soul and putting it into a certain state is what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Many supernaturalists of course believe that God and a soul are jointly necessary for a (greatly) meaningful existence. However, the simpler view, that only one of them is necessary, is common, and sometimes arguments proffered for the complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler one.

The most influential God-based account of meaning in life has been the extreme view that one’s existence is significant if and only if 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 just to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in a particular way that God wants one to do so. If a person failed to do what God intends her to do with her life (or if God does not even exist), then, on the current view, her life would be meaningless.

Thinkers differ over what it is about God’s purpose that might make it uniquely able to confer meaning on human lives, but the most influential argument has been that only God’s purpose could be the source of invariant moral rules (Davis 1987, 296, 304–05; Moreland 1987, 124–29; Craig 1994/2013, 161–67) or of objective values more generally (Cottingham 2005, 37–57), where a lack of such would render our lives nonsensical. According to this argument, lower goods such as animal pleasure or desire satisfaction could exist without God, but higher ones pertaining to meaning in life, particularly moral virtue, could not. However, critics point to many non-moral sources of meaning in life (e.g., Kekes 2000; Wolf 2010), with one arguing that a universal moral code is not necessary for meaning in life, even if, say, beneficent actions are (Ellin 1995, 327). In addition, there are a variety of naturalist and non-naturalist accounts of objective morality––and of value more generally––on offer these days, so that it is not clear that it must have a supernatural source in God’s will.

One recurrent objection to the idea that God’s purpose could make life meaningful is that if God had created us with a purpose in mind, then God would have degraded us and thereby undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the purpose. The objection harks back to Jean-Paul Sartre, but in the analytic literature it appears that Kurt Baier was the first to articulate it (1957/2000, 118–20; see also Murphy 1982, 14–15; Singer 1996, 29; Kahane 2011; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). Sometimes the concern is the threat of punishment God would make so that we do God’s bidding, while other times it is that the source of meaning would be constrictive and not up to us, and still other times it is that our dignity would be maligned simply by having been created with a certain end in mind (for some replies to such concerns, see Hanfling 1987, 45–46; Cottingham 2005, 37–57; Lougheed 2020, 111–21).

There is a different argument for an extreme God-based view that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite, unlimited, or ineffable, which Robert Nozick first articulated with care (Nozick 1981, 594–618; see also Bennett-Hunter 2014; Waghorn 2014). The core 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. Being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. This work also must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something 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 relational rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition. Perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, without being connected to something beyond it, or maybe it could obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is beautiful or otherwise valuable for its own sake but not meaningful (Nozick 1989, 167–68; Thomson 2003, 25–26, 48).

A serious concern for any extreme God-based view 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 (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 31–37, 49–50; Landau 2017). Even religiously inclined philosophers have found this hard to deny these days (Quinn 2000, 58; Audi 2005; Mawson 2016, 5; Williams 2020, 132–34).

Largely for that reason, contemporary supernaturalists have tended to opt for moderation, that is, to maintain that God would greatly enhance the meaning in our lives, even if some meaning would be possible in a world without God. One approach is to invoke the relational argument to show that God is necessary, not for any meaning whatsoever, but rather for an ultimate meaning. “Limited transcendence, the transcending of our limits so as to connect with a wider context of value which itself is limited, does give our lives meaning––but a limited one. We may thirst for more” (Nozick 1981, 618). Another angle is to appeal to playing a role in God’s plan, again to claim, not that it is essential for meaning as such, but rather for “a cosmic significance....intead of a significance very limited in time and space” (Swinburne 2016, 154; see also Quinn 2000; Cottingham 2016, 131). Another rationale is that by fulfilling God’s purpose, we would meaningfully please God, a perfect person, as well as be remembered favorably by God forever (Cottingham 2016, 135; Williams 2020, 21–22, 29, 101, 108). Still another argument is that only with God could the deepest desires of human nature be satisfied (e.g., Goetz 2012; Seachris 2013, 20; Cottingham 2016, 127, 136), even if more surface desires could be satisfied without God.

In reply to such rationales for a moderate supernaturalism, there has been the suggestion that it is precisely by virtue of being alone in the universe that our lives would be particularly significant; otherwise, God’s greatness would overshadow us (Kahane 2014). There has also been the response that, with the opportunity for greater meaning from God would also come that for greater anti-meaning, so that it is not clear that a world with God would offer a net gain in respect of meaning (Metz 2019, 34–35). For example, if pleasing God would greatly enhance meaning in our lives, then presumably displeasing God would greatly reduce it and to a comparable degree. In addition, there are arguments for extreme naturalism (or its “anti-theist” cousin) mentioned below (sub-section 3.3).

Notice that none of the above arguments for supernaturalism appeals to the prospect of eternal life (at least not explicitly). Arguments that do make such an appeal are soul-centered, holding that meaning in life mainly comes from having an immortal, spiritual substance that is contiguous with one’s body when it is alive and that will forever outlive its death. Some think of the afterlife in terms of one’s soul entering a transcendent, spiritual realm (Heaven), while others conceive of one’s soul getting reincarnated into another body on Earth. According to the extreme version, if one has a soul but fails to put it in the right state (or if one lacks a soul altogether), then one’s life is meaningless.

There are three prominent arguments for an extreme soul-based perspective. One argument, made famous by Leo Tolstoy, is the suggestion that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that something is worth doing only if it will make a permanent difference to the world, and that making a permanent difference requires being immortal (see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Critics most often appeal to counterexamples, suggesting for instance that it is surely worth your time and effort to help prevent people from suffering, even if you and they are mortal. Indeed, some have gone on the offensive and argued that helping people is worth the sacrifice only if and because they are mortal, for otherwise they could invariably be compensated in an afterlife (e.g., Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Another recent and interesting criticism is that the major motivations for the claim that nothing matters now if one day it will end are incoherent (Greene 2021).

A second argument for the view that life would be meaningless without a soul is that it is necessary for justice to be done, 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 a Karmic force. Something like this argument can be found in Ecclesiastes, and it continues to be defended (e.g., Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, even granting that an afterlife is required for perfectly just outcomes, it is far from obvious that an eternal afterlife is necessary for them, and, then, there is the suggestion that some lives, such as Mandela’s, have been meaningful precisely in virtue of encountering injustice and fighting it.

A third argument for thinking that having a soul is essential for any meaning is that it is required to have the sort of free will without which our lives would be meaningless. Immanuel Kant is known for having maintained that if we were merely physical beings, subjected to the laws of nature like everything else in the material world, then we could not act for moral reasons and hence would be unimportant. More recently, one theologian has eloquently put the point in religious terms: “The moral spirit finds the meaning of life in choice. It finds it in that which proceeds from man and remains with him as his inner essence rather than in the accidents of circumstances turns of external fortune....(W)henever a human being rubs the lamp of his moral conscience, a Spirit does appear. This Spirit is God....It is in the ‘Thou must’ of God and man’s ‘I can’ that the divine image of God in human life is contained” (Swenson 1949/2000, 27–28). Notice that, even if moral norms did not spring from God’s commands, the logic of the argument entails that one’s life could be meaningful, so long as one had the inherent ability to make the morally correct choice in any situation. That, in turn, arguably requires something non-physical about one’s self, so as to be able to overcome whichever physical laws and forces one might confront. The standard objection to this reasoning is to advance a compatibilism about having a determined physical nature and being able to act for moral reasons (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77). It is also worth wondering whether, if one had to have a spiritual essence in order to make free choices, it would have to be one that never perished.

Like God-centered theorists, many soul-centered theorists these days advance a moderate view, accepting that some meaning in life would be possible without immortality, but arguing that a much greater meaning would be possible with it. Granting that Einstein, Mandela, and Picasso had somewhat meaningful lives despite not having survived the deaths of their bodies (as per, e.g., Trisel 2004; Wolf 2015, 89–140; Landau 2017), there remains a powerful thought: more is better. If a finite life with the good, the true, and the beautiful has meaning in it to some degree, then surely it would have all the more meaning if it exhibited such higher values––including a relationship with God––for an eternity (Cottingham 2016, 132–35; Mawson 2016, 2019, 52–53; Williams 2020, 112–34; cf. Benatar 2017, 35–63). One objection to this reasoning is that the infinity of meaning that would be possible with a soul would be “too big,” rendering it difficult for the moderate supernaturalist to make sense of the intution that a finite life such as Einstein’s can indeed count as meaningful by comparison (Metz 2019, 30–31; cf. Mawson 2019, 53–54). More common, though, is the objection that an eternal life would include anti-meaning of various kinds, such as boredom and repetition, discussed below in the context of extreme naturalism (sub-section 3.3).

3. Naturalism

Recall that naturalism is the view that a physical life is central to life’s meaning, that even if there is no spiritual realm, a substantially meaningful life is possible. Like supernaturalism, contemporary naturalism admits of two distinguishable variants, moderate and extreme (Metz 2019). The moderate version is that, while a genuinely meaningful life could be had in a purely physical universe as known well by science, a somewhat more meaningful life would be possible if a spiritual realm also existed. God or a soul could enhance meaning in life, although they would not be major contributors. The extreme version of naturalism is the view that it would be better in respect of life’s meaning if there were no spiritual realm. From this perspective, God or a soul would be anti-matter, i.e., would detract from the meaning available to us, making a purely physical world (even if not this particular one) preferable.

Cross-cutting the moderate/extreme distinction is that between subjectivism and objectivism, which are theoretical accounts of the nature of meaningfulness insofar as it is physical. They differ in terms of the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings. Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i.e., depends on an individual’s pro-attitudes such as her particular desires or ends, which are not shared by everyone. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she strongly wants it or intends to seek it out and she gets it. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards for meaning because meaning is at least partly mind-independent, i.e., obtains not merely in virtue of being the object of anyone’s mental states. Here, something is meaningful (partially) because of its intrinsic nature, in the sense of being independent of whether it is wanted or intended; meaning is instead (to some extent) the sort of thing that merits these reactions.

There is logical space for an orthogonal view, according to which there are invariant standards of meaningfulness constituted by what all human beings would converge on from a certain standpoint. However, it has not been much of a player in the field (Darwall 1983, 164–66).

According to this version of naturalism, meaning in life varies from person to person, depending on each one’s variable pro-attitudes. Common instances are views that one’s life is more meaningful, the more one gets what one happens to want strongly, achieves one’s highly ranked goals, or does what one believes to be really important (Trisel 2002; Hooker 2008). One influential subjectivist has recently 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 1988, 80–94, 2004). Another recent proposal is that meaningfulness consists of “an active engagement and affirmation that vivifies the person who has freely created or accepted and now promotes and nurtures the projects of her highest concern” (Belliotti 2019, 183).

Subjectivism was dominant in the middle of the twentieth century, when positivism, noncognitivism, existentialism, and Humeanism were influential (Ayer 1947; Hare 1957; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Williams 1976). However, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, inference to the best explanation and reflective equilibrium became accepted forms of normative argumentation and were frequently used to defend claims about the existence and nature of objective value (or of “external reasons,” ones obtaining independently of one’s extant attitudes). As a result, subjectivism about meaning lost its dominance. Those who continue to hold subjectivism often remain suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Trisel 2002, 73, 79, 2004, 378–79; Frankfurt 2004, 47–48, 55–57; Wong 2008, 138–39; Evers 2017, 32, 36; Svensson 2017, 54). Theorists are moved to accept subjectivism typically because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are reasonably sure that meaning in life obtains for some people, but do not see how it could be grounded on something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural or the supernatural (or the non-natural). 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 their lives. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There is a cluster of other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism, according to which this theory best explains certain intuitive features of meaning in life. For one, subjectivism seems plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94). 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 those matters for which the person cares. For another, it is uncontroversial that often meaning comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in an activity or experience, as opposed to being bored by it or finding it frustrating (Frankfurt 1988, 80–94; Belliotti 2019, 162–70). Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective elements involved. For a third, meaning is often taken to be something that makes life worth continuing for a specific person, i.e., that gives her a reason to get out of bed in the morning, which subjectivism is thought to account for best (Williams 1976; Svensson 2017; Calhoun 2018).

Critics maintain that these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value (or an external reason) in realizing oneself, losing oneself, and having a reason to live (Taylor 1989, 1992; Wolf 2010, 2015, 89–140). One is not really being true to oneself, losing oneself in a meaningful way, or having a genuine reason to live insofar as one, say, successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one’s head (Taylor 1992, 36), cultivates one’s prowess at long-distance spitting (Wolf 2010, 104), collects a big ball of string (Wolf 2010, 104), or, well, eats one’s own excrement (Wielenberg 2005, 22). The counterexamples suggest that subjective conditions are insufficient to ground meaning in life; there seem to be certain actions, relationships, and states that are objectively valuable (but see Evers 2017, 30–32) and toward which one’s pro-attitudes ought to be oriented, if meaning is to accrue.

So say objectivists, but subjectivists feel the pull of the point and usually seek to avoid the counterexamples, lest they have to bite the bullet by accepting the meaningfulness of maintaining 3,732 hairs on one’s head and all the rest (for some who do, see Svensson 2017, 54–55; Belliotti 2019, 181–83). One important strategy is to suggest that subjectivists can avoid the counterexamples by appealing to the right sort of pro-attitude. Instead of whatever an individual happens to want, perhaps the relevant mental state is an emotional-perceptual one of seeing-as (Alexis 2011; cf. Hosseini 2015, 47–66), a “categorical” desire, that is, an intrinsic desire constitutive of one’s identity that one takes to make life worth continuing (Svensson 2017), or a judgment that one has a good reason to value something highly for its own sake (Calhoun 2018). Even here, though, objectivists will argue that it might “appear that whatever the will chooses to treat as a good reason to engage itself is, for the will, a good reason. But the will itself....craves objective reasons; and often it could not go forward unless it thought it had them” (Wiggins 1988, 136). And without any appeal to objectivity, it is perhaps likely that counterexamples would resurface.

Another subjectivist strategy by which to deal with the counterexamples is the attempt to ground meaningfulness, not on the pro-attitudes of an individual valuer, but on those of a group (Darwall 1983, 164–66; Brogaard and Smith 2005; Wong 2008). Does such an intersubjective move avoid (more of) the counterexamples? If so, does it do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning in life is constituted at least in part by something physical beyond merely the fact that it is the object of a pro-attitude. Obtaining the object of some emotion, desire, or judgment is not sufficient for meaningfulness, on this view. Instead, there are certain conditions of the material world that could confer meaning on anyone’s life, not merely because they are viewed as meaningful, wanted for their own sake, or believed to be choiceworthy, but instead (at least partially) because they are inherently worthwhile or valuable in themselves.

Morality (the good), enquiry (the true), and creativity (the beautiful) are widely held instances of activities that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow––along with the counterexamples to subjectivism above––are not. Objectivism is widely thought to be a powerful general explanation of these particular judgments: the former are meaningful not merely because some agent (whether it is an individual, her society, or even God) cares about them or judges them to be worth doing, while the latter simply lack significance and cannot obtain it even if some agent does care about them or judge them to be worth doing. From an objective perspective, it is possible for an individual to care about the wrong thing or to be mistaken that something is worthwhile, and not merely because of something she cares about all the more or judges to be still more choiceworthy. Of course, meta-ethical debates about the existence and nature of value are again relevant to appraising this rationale.

Some objectivists think that being the object of a person’s mental states plays no constitutive role in making that person’s life meaningful, although they of course contend that it often plays an instrumental role––liking a certain activity, after all, is likely to motivate one to do it. Relatively few objectivists are “pure” in that way, although consequentialists do stand out as clear instances (e.g., Singer 1995; Smuts 2018, 75–99). Most objectivists instead try to account for the above intuitions driving subjectivism by holding that a life is more meaningful, not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of propositional attitudes such as cognition, conation, and emotion. Particularly influential has been Susan Wolf’s hybrid view, captured by this pithy slogan: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf 2015, 112; see also Kekes 1986, 2000; Wiggins 1988; Raz 2001, 10–40; Mintoff 2008; Wolf 2010, 2016; Fischer 2019, 9–23; Belshaw 2021, 160–81). 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 truly worthwhile, or if one takes up a truly worthwhile project but fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, or care about it. A related approach is that, while subjective attraction is not necessary for meaning, it could enhance it (e.g., Audi 2005, 344; Metz 2013, 183–84, 196–98, 220–25). For instance, a stereotypical Mother Teresa who is bored by and alienated from her substantial charity work might have a somewhat significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she felt pride in it or identified with it.

There have been several attempts to capture theoretically what all objectively attractive, inherently worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they bear on meaning in a person’s life. Over the past few decades, one encounters the proposals that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that involve: positively connecting with organic unity beyond oneself (Nozick 1981, 594–619); being creative (Taylor 1987; Matheson 2018); living an emotional life (Solomon 1993; cf. Williams 2020, 56–78); promoting good consequences, such as improving the quality of life of oneself and others (Singer 1995; Audi 2005; Smuts 2018, 75–99); exercising or fostering rational nature in exceptional ways (Smith 1997, 179–221; Gewirth 1998, 177–82; Metz 2013, 222–36); progressing toward ends that can never be fully realized because one’s knowledge of them changes as one approaches them (Levy 2005); realizing goals that are transcendent for being long-lasting in duration and broad in scope (Mintoff 2008); living virtuously (May 2015, 61–138; McPherson 2020); and loving what is worth loving (Wolf 2016). There is as yet no convergence in the field on one, or even a small cluster, of these accounts.

One feature of a large majority of the above naturalist theories is that they are aggregative or additive, objectionably treating a life as a mere “container” of bits of life that are meaningful considered in isolation from other bits (Brännmark 2003, 330). It has become increasingly common for philosophers of life’s meaning, especially objectivists, to hold that life as a whole, or at least long stretches of it, can substantially affect its meaningfulness beyond the amount of meaning (if any) in its parts.

For instance, a life that has lots of beneficence 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; Blumenfeld 2009). Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful (or otherwise desirable) parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful (desirable) parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2013, 18–22; Dorsey 2015). Still more, a life in which its meaningless (or otherwise undesirable parts) cause its meaningful (desirable) parts to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue of this redemptive pattern, “good life-story,” or narrative self-expression (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Wong 2008; Fischer 2009, 145–77; Kauppinen 2012; May 2015, 61–138; Velleman 2015, 141–73). These three cases suggest that meaning can inhere in life as a whole, that is, in the relationships between its parts, and not merely in the parts considered in isolation. However, some would maintain that it is, strictly speaking, the story that is or could be told of a life that matters, not so much the life-story qua relations between events themselves (de Bres 2018).

There are pure or extreme versions of holism present in the literature, according to which the only possible bearer of meaning in life is a person’s life as a whole, and not any isolated activities, relationships, or states (Taylor 1989, 48–51; Tabensky 2003; Levinson 2004). A salient argument for this position is that judgments of the meaningfulness of a part of someone’s life are merely provisional, open to revision upon considering how they fit into a wider perspective. So, for example, it would initially appear that taking an ax away from a madman and thereby protecting innocent parties confers some meaning on one’s life, but one might well revise that judgment upon learning that the intention behind it was merely to steal an ax, not to save lives, or that the madman then took out a machine gun, causing much more harm than his ax would have. It is worth considering how far this sort of case is generalizable, and, if it can be to a substantial extent, whether that provides strong evidence that only life as a whole can exhibit meaningfulness.

Perhaps most objectivists would, at least upon reflection, accept that both the parts of a life and the whole-life relationships among the parts can exhibit meaning. Supposing there are two bearers of meaning in a life, important questions arise. One is whether a certain narrative can be meaningful even if its parts are not, while a second is whether the meaningfulness of a part increases if it is an aspect of a meaningful whole (on which see Brännmark 2003), and a third is whether there is anything revealing to say about how to make tradeoffs between the parts and whole in cases where one must choose between them (Blumenfeld 2009 appears to assign lexical priority to the whole).

Naturalists until recently had been largely concerned to show that meaning in life is possible without God or a soul; they have not spent much time considering how such spiritual conditions might enhance meaning, but have, in moderate fashion, tended to leave that possibility open (an exception is Hooker 2008). Lately, however, an extreme form of naturalism has arisen, according to which our lives would probably, if not unavoidably, have less meaning in a world with God or a soul than in one without. Although such an approach was voiced early on by Baier (1957), it is really in the past decade or so that this “anti-theist” position has become widely and intricately discussed.

One rationale, mentioned above as an objection to the view that God’s purpose constitutes meaning in life, has also been deployed to argue that the existence of God as such would necessarily reduce meaning, that is, would consist of anti-matter. It is the idea that master/servant and parent/child analogies so prominent in the monotheist religious traditions reveal something about our status in a world where there is a qualitatively higher being who has created us with certain ends in mind: our independence or dignity as adult persons would be violated (e.g., Baier 1957/2000, 118–20; Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 121–41). One interesting objection to this reasoning has been to accept that God’s existence is necessarily incompatible with the sort of meaning that would come (roughly stated) from being one’s own boss, but to argue that God would also make greater sorts of meaning available, offering a net gain to us (Mawson 2016, 110–58).

Another salient argument for thinking that God would detract from meaning in life appeals to the value of privacy (Kahane 2011, 681–85; Lougheed 2020, 55–110). God’s omniscience would unavoidably make it impossible for us to control another person’s access to the most intimate details about ourselves, which, for some, amounts to a less meaningful life than one with such control. Beyond questioning the value of our privacy in relation to God, one thought-provoking criticism has been to suggest that, if a lack of privacy really would substantially reduce meaning in our lives, then God, qua morally perfect person, would simply avoid knowing everything about us (Tooley 2018). Lacking complete knowledge of our mental states would be compatible with describing God as “omniscient,” so the criticism goes, insofar as that is plausibly understood as having as much knowledge as is morally permissible.

Turn, now, to major arguments for thinking that having a soul would reduce life’s meaning, so that if one wants a maximally meaningful life, one should prefer a purely physical world, or at least one in which people are mortal. First and foremost, there has been the argument that an immortal life could not avoid becoming boring (Williams 1973), rendering life pointless according to many subjective and objective theories. The literature on this topic has become enormous, with the central reply being that immortality need not get boring (for more recent discussions, see Fischer 2009, 79–101, 2019, 117–42; Mawson 2019, 51–52; Williams 2020, 30–41, 123–29; Belshaw 2021, 182–97). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom is sufficient for meaninglessness. Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be bored; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make. Being bored for an eternity would not be blissful or even satisfying, to be sure, but if it served the function of preventing others from being bored for an eternity, would it be meaningful (at least to some degree)? If, as is commonly held, sacrificing one’s life could be meaningful, why not also sacrificing one’s liveliness?

Another reason given to reject eternal life is that it would become repetitive, which would substantially drain it of meaning (Scarre 2007, 54–55; May 2009, 46–47, 64–65, 71; Smuts 2011, 142–44; cf. Blumenfeld 2009). If, as it appears, there are only a finite number of actions one could perform, relationships one could have, and states one could be in during an eternity, one would have to end up doing the same things again. Even though one’s activities might be more valuable than rolling a stone up a hill forever à la Sisyphus, the prospect of doing them over and over again forever is disheartening for many. To be sure, one might not remember having done them before and hence could avoid boredom, but for some philosophers that would make it all the worse, akin to having dementia and forgetting that one has told the same stories. Others, however, still find meaning in such a life (e.g., Belshaw 2021, 197, 205n41).

A third meaning-based argument against immortality invokes considerations of narrative. If the pattern of one’s life as a whole substantially matters, and if a proper pattern would include a beginning, a middle, and an end, it appears that a life that never ends would lack the relevant narrative structure. “Because it would drag on endlessly, it would, sooner or later, just be a string of events lacking all form....With immortality, the novel never ends....How meaningful can such a novel be?” (May 2009, 68, 72; see also Scarre 2007, 58–60). Notice that this objection is distinct from considerations of boredom and repetition (which concern novelty ); even if one were stimulated and active, and even if one found a way not to repeat one’s life in the course of eternity, an immortal life would appear to lack shape. In reply, some reject the idea that a meaningful life must be akin to a novel, and intead opt for narrativity in the form of something like a string of short stories that build on each other (Fischer 2009, 145–77, 2019, 101–16). Others, though, have sought to show that eternity could still be novel-like, deeming the sort of ending that matters to be a function of what the content is and how it relates to the content that came before (e.g., Seachris 2011; Williams 2020, 112–19).

There have been additional objections to immortality as undercutting meaningfulness, but they are prima facie less powerful than the previous three in that, if sound, they arguably show that an eternal life would have a cost, but probably not one that would utterly occlude the prospect of meaning in it. For example, there have been the suggestions that eternal lives would lack a sense of preciousness and urgency (Nussbaum 1989, 339; Kass 2002, 266–67), could not exemplify virtues such as courageously risking one’s life for others (Kass 2002, 267–68; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94), and could not obtain meaning from sustaining or saving others’ lives (Nussbaum 1989, 338; Wielenberg 2005, 91–94). Note that at least the first two rationales turn substantially on the belief in immortality, not quite immortality itself: if one were immortal but forgot that one is or did not know that at all, then one could appreciate life and obtain much of the virtue of courage (and, conversely, if one were not immortal, but thought that one is, then, by the logic of these arguments, one would fail to appreciate limits and be unable to exemplify courage).

The previous two sections addressed theoretical accounts of what would confer meaning on a human person’s life. Although these theories do not imply that some people’s lives are in fact meaningful, that has been the presumption of a very large majority of those who have advanced them. Much of the procedure has been to suppose that many lives have had meaning in them and then to consider in virtue of what they have or otherwise could. However, there are nihilist (or pessimist) perspectives that question this supposition. According to nihilism (pessimism), what would make a life meaningful in principle cannot obtain for any of us.

One straightforward rationale for nihilism is the combination of extreme supernaturalism about what makes life meaningful and atheism about whether a spiritual realm exists. If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither is real, then you are committed to nihilism, to the denial that life can have any meaning. Athough this rationale for nihilism was prominent in the modern era (and was more or less Camus’ position), it has been on the wane in analytic philosophical circles, as extreme supernaturalism has been eclipsed by the moderate variety.

The most common rationales for nihilism these days do not appeal to supernaturalism, or at least not explicitly. One cluster of ideas appeals to what meta-ethicists call “error theory,” the view that evaluative claims (in this case about meaning in life, or about morality qua necessary for meaning) characteristically posit objectively real or universally justified values, but that such values do not exist. According to one version, value judgments often analytically include a claim to objectivity but there is no reason to think that objective values exist, as they “would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe” (Mackie 1977/1990, 38). According to a second version, life would be meaningless if there were no set of moral standards that could be fully justified to all rational enquirers, but it so happens that such standards cannot exist for persons who can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, 12–17). According to a third, we hold certain beliefs about the objectivity and universality of morality and related values such as meaning because they were evolutionarily advantageous to our ancestors, not because they are true. Humans have been “deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a distinterested, objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey” (Ruse and Wilson 1986, 179; cf. Street 2015). One must draw on the intricate work in meta-ethics that has been underway for the past several decades in order to appraise these arguments.

In contrast to error-theoretic arguments for nihilism, there are rationales for it accepting that objective values exist but denying that our lives can ever exhibit or promote them so as to obtain meaning. One version of this approach maintains that, for our lives to matter, we must be in a position to add objective value to the world, which we are not since the objective value of the world is already infinite (Smith 2003). The key premises for this view are that every bit of space-time (or at least the stars in the physical universe) have some positive value, that these values can be added up, and that space is infinite. If the physical world at present contains an infinite degree of value, nothing we do can make a difference in terms of meaning, for infinity plus any amount of value remains infinity. One way to question this argument, beyond doubting the value of space-time or stars, is to suggest that, even if one cannot add to the value of the universe, meaning plausibly comes from being the source of certain values.

A second rationale for nihilism that accepts the existence of objective value is David Benatar’s (2006, 18–59) intriguing “asymmetry argument” for anti-natalism, the view that it is immoral to bring new people into existence because doing so would always be on balance bad for them. For Benatar, the bads of existing (e.g., pains) are real disadvantages relative to not existing, while the goods of existing (pleasures) are not real advantages relative to not existing, since there is in the latter state no one to be deprived of them. If indeed the state of not existing is no worse than that of experiencing the benefits of existence, then, since existing invariably brings harm in its wake, it follows that existing is always worse compared to not existing. Although this argument is illustrated with experiential goods and bads, it seems generalizable to non-experiential ones, including meaning in life and anti-matter. The literature on this argument has become large (for a recent collection, see Hauskeller and Hallich 2022).

Benatar (2006, 60–92, 2017, 35–63) has advanced an additional argument for nihilism, one that appeals to Thomas Nagel’s (1986, 208–32) widely discussed analysis of the extremely external standpoint that human persons can take on their lives. There exists, to use Henry Sidgwick’s influential phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is, the standpoint that considers a human being’s life in relation to all times and all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one’s puny impact on the world, little of one’s life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth over 75 years or so just does not amount to much, when considering the billions of temporal years and billions of light-years that make up space-time. Although this reasoning grants limited kinds of meaning to human beings, from a personal, social, or human perspective, Benatar both denies that the greatest sort of meaning––a cosmic one––is available to them and contends that this makes their lives bad, hence the “nihilist” tag. Some have objected that our lives could in fact have a cosmic significance, say, if they played a role in God’s plan (Quinn 2000, 65–66; Swinburne 2016, 154), were the sole ones with a dignity in the universe (Kahane 2014), or engaged in valuable activities that could be appreciated by anyone anywhere anytime (Wolf 2016, 261–62). Others naturally maintain that cosmic significance is irrelevant to appraising a human life, with some denying that it would be a genuine source of meaning (Landau 2017, 93–99), and others accepting that it would be but maintaining that the absence of this good would not count as a bad or merit regret (discussed in Benatar 2017, 56–62; Williams 2020, 108–11).

Finally, a distinguishable source of nihilism concerns the ontological, as distinct from axiological, preconditions for meaning in life. Perhaps most radically, there are those who deny that we have selves. Do we indeed lack selves, and, if we do, is a meaningful life impossible for us (see essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018; Le Bihan 2019)? Somewhat less radically, there are those who grant that we have selves, but deny that they are in charge in the relevant way. That is, some have argued that we lack self-governance or free will of the sort that is essential for meaning in life, at least if determinism is true (Pisciotta 2013; essays in Caruso and Flanagan 2018). Non-quantum events, including human decisions, appear to be necessited by a prior state of the world, such that none could have been otherwise, and many of our decisions are a product of unconscious neurological mechanisms (while quantum events are of course utterly beyond our control). If none of our conscious choices could have been avoided and all were ultimately necessited by something external to them, perhaps they are insufficient to merit pride or admiration or to constitute narrative authorship of a life. In reply, some maintain that a compatibilism between determinism and moral responsibility applies with comparable force to meaning in life (e.g., Arpaly 2006; Fischer 2009, 145–77), while others contend that incompatibilism is true of moral responsibility but not of meaning (Pereboom 2014).

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• –––, 2016, “From the Meaning Triad to Meaning Holism: Unifying Life’s Meaning”, Human Affairs , 29: 363–78.
• Singer, I., 1996, Meaning in Life, Volume 1: The Creation of Value , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Singer, P., 1995, How Are We to Live? Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Smith, Q., 1997, Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytic Philosophy of Language , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• –––, 2003, “Moral Realism and Infinite Spacetime Imply Moral Nihilism”, in Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection , H. Dyke (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 43–54.
• Smuts, A., 2011, “Immortality and Significance”, Philosophy and Literature , 35: 134–49.
• –––, 2018, Welfare, Meaning, and Worth , New York: Routledge
• Solomon, R., 1993, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life , Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
• Street, S., 2015, “Does Anything Really Matter or Did We Just Evolve to Think So?”, in The Norton Introduction to Philosophy , G. Rosen et al. (eds.), New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.: 685–95.
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• Swenson, D., 1949, “The Dignity of Human Life”, repr. in The Meaning of Life, 2 nd Ed. , E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 21–30.
• Swinburne, R., 2016, “How God Makes Life a Lot More Meaningful”, in God and Meaning , J. Seachris and S. Goetz (eds.), New York: Bloomsbury Academic: 151–63.
• Tabensky, P., 2003, “Parallels Between Living and Painting”, The Journal of Value Inquiry , 37: 59–68.
• Tartaglia, J., 2015, Philosophy in a Meaningless Life , London: Bloomsbury.
• Taylor, C., 1989, Sources of the Self , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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• Thomas, J., 2018, “Can Only Human Lives Be Meaningful?”, Philosophical Papers , 47: 265–97.
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• Tooley, M., 2018, “Axiology: Theism Versus Widely Accepted Monotheisms”, in Does God Matter? Essays on the Axiological Consequences of Theism , K. Kraay, (ed.), New York: Routledge: 46–69.
• Trisel, B. A., 2002, “Futility and the Meaning of Life Debate”, Sorites , 14: 70–84.
• –––, 2004, “Human Extinction and the Value of Our Efforts”, The Philosophical Forum , 35: 371–91.
• –––, 2016, “Human Extinction, Narrative Ending, and Meaning of Life”, Journal of Philosophy of Life , 6: 1–22.
• Velleman, J. D., 2015, Beyond Price: Essays on Birth and Death , Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
• Visak, T., 2017, “Understanding ‘Meaning of Life’ in Terms of Reasons for Action”, The Journal of Value Inquiry , 51: 507–30.
• Waghorn, N., 2014, Nothingness and the Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches to Ultimate Meaning through Nothing and Reflexivity , London: Bloomsbury.
• Wielenberg, E., 2005, Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wiggins, D., 1988, “Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life”, rev. edn. in Essays on Moral Realism , G. Sayre-McCord (ed.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 127–65.
• Williams, B., 1973, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality”, in Problems of the Self , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 82–100.
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• Williams, C., 2020, Religion and the Meaning of Life: An Existential Approach , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wolf, S., 2010, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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• Wong, W., 2008, “Meaningfulness and Identities”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 11: 123–48.
• Buber, M., 1923, I and Thou , W. Kaufmann (tr.), New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1970.
• Camus, A., 1942, The Myth of Sisyphus , J. O’Brian (tr.), London: H. Hamilton, 1955.
• James, W., 1899, “What Makes a Life Significant?”, in On Some of Life’s Ideals , New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1900.
• Jaspers, K., 1931, Man in the Modern Age , E. Paul and C. Paul (tr.), New York: Routledge, 2010.
• Kant, I., 1791, Critique of the Power of Judgment , P. Guyer and E. Mathews (tr.), New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Kierkegaard, S., 1849, The Sickness unto Death , H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (tr.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
• Marx, K., 1844, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts , in Karl Marx Selected Writings, 2 nd Ed. , D. McLellan (ed., tr.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Nietzsche, F., 1885, Thus Spoke Zarathustra , in The Portable Nietzsche , W. Kaufmann (ed., tr.), New York: Viking Press, 1954.
• Sartre, J.-P., 1946, Existentialism Is a Humanism , P. Mairet (tr.), London: Methuen & Co, 1948.
• Schlick, M., 1927, “ On the Meaning of Life ”, P. Heath (tr.).
• Schopenhauer, A., 1851, Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Volume 2 , E. F. J. Payne (tr.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
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• Wittgenstein, L., 1929, Lecture on Ethics , E. Zamuner et al. (eds.), Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014.
• Benatar, D. (ed.), 2016, Life, Death & Meaning, 3 rd Ed. , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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• Klemke, E. D. and Cahn, S. M. (eds.), 2018, The Meaning of Life: A Reader, 4 th Ed. , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kolodny, N. (ed.), 2013, Death and the Afterlife , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Leach, S. and Tartaglia, J. (eds.), 2018, The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers , London: Routledge.
• Morioka, M. (ed.), 2015, Reconsidering Meaning in Life , Saitama: Waseda University.
• ––– (ed.), 2017, Nihilism and the Meaning of Life , Saitama: Waseda University.
• Seachris, J. (ed.), 2013, Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Seachris, J. and Goetz, S. (eds.), 2016, God and Meaning: New Essays , New York: Bloombsury Academic.
• Baggini, J., 2004, What’s It All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life , London: Granta Books.
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• Eagleton, T., 2007, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Fischer, J. M., 2019, Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Ford, D., 2007, The Search for Meaning: A Short History , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Hauskeller, M., 2020, The Meaning of Life and Death: Ten Classic Thinkers on the Ultimate Question , London: Bloomsbury Academic.
• Martin, M., 2002, Atheism, Morality, and Meaning , Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Messerly, J., 2012, The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Transhumanist, and Scientific Approaches , Seattle: Darwin and Hume Publishers.
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• Young, J., 2003, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life , New York: Routledge.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Delon, N., 2021, “ The Meaning of Life ”, a bibliography on PhilPapers.
• Metz, T., 2021, “ Life, Meaning of ”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , E. Mason (ed.).
• O’Brien, W., 2021, “ The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.).
• Seachris, J., 2021, “ Meaning of Life: The Analytic Perspective ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.).

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Essay on Life for Students and Children

500+ words essay on life.

First of all, Life refers to an aspect of existence. This aspect processes acts, evaluates, and evolves through growth. Life is what distinguishes humans from inorganic matter. Some individuals certainly enjoy free will in Life. Others like slaves and prisoners don’t have that privilege. However, Life isn’t just about living independently in society. It is certainly much more than that. Hence, quality of Life carries huge importance. Above all, the ultimate purpose should be to live a meaningful life. A meaningful life is one which allows us to connect with our deeper self.

Why is Life Important?

One important aspect of Life is that it keeps going forward. This means nothing is permanent. Hence, there should be a reason to stay in dejection. A happy occasion will come to pass, just like a sad one. Above all, one must be optimistic no matter how bad things get. This is because nothing will stay forever. Every situation, occasion, and event shall pass. This is certainly a beauty of Life.

Many people become very sad because of failures . However, these people certainly fail to see the bright side. The bright side is that there is a reason for every failure. Therefore, every failure teaches us a valuable lesson. This means every failure builds experience. This experience is what improves the skills and efficiency of humans.

Probably a huge number of individuals complain that Life is a pain. Many people believe that the word pain is a synonym for Life. However, it is pain that makes us stronger. Pain is certainly an excellent way of increasing mental resilience. Above all, pain enriches the mind.

The uncertainty of death is what makes life so precious. No one knows the hour of one’s death. This probably is the most important reason to live life to the fullest. Staying in depression or being a workaholic is an utter wastage of Life. One must certainly enjoy the beautiful blessings of Life before death overtakes.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

How to Improve Quality of Life?

Most noteworthy, optimism is the ultimate way of enriching life. Optimism increases job performance, self-confidence, creativity, and skills. An optimistic person certainly can overcome huge hurdles.

Meditation is another useful way of improving Life quality. Meditation probably allows a person to dwell upon his past. This way one can avoid past mistakes. It also gives peace of mind to an individual. Furthermore, meditation reduces stress and tension.

Pursuing a hobby is a perfect way to bring meaning to life. Without a passion or interest, an individual’s life would probably be dull. Following a hobby certainly brings new energy to life. It provides new hope to live and experience Life.

In conclusion, Life is not something that one should take for granted. It’s certainly a shame to see individuals waste away their lives. We should be very thankful for experiencing our lives. Above all, everyone should try to make their life more meaningful.

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Personal Characteristics Essay: Top Examples and Tips for Successful Writing

Looking to write a compelling personal characteristics essay? Our article offers top examples and tips for successful writing.

Posted August 18, 2023

Featuring Ellen W.

AADSAS Essay: What Do I Say?

Starting wednesday, may 29.

11:00 PM UTC · 60 minutes

Table of Contents

When it comes to writing a personal characteristics essay, there are several important factors to consider to ensure that your essay stands out from the rest. This type of essay requires you to talk about your personal traits and characteristics and how they have shaped your life experiences and decisions. Writing a personal characteristics essay can be daunting, but with the right strategies and techniques, you can craft an impressive essay that leaves a lasting impression.

Understanding the Purpose of a Personal Characteristics Essay

Before diving into the writing process, it's essential to understand the purpose of a personal characteristics essay. The purpose of this type of essay is to showcase your unique qualities and characteristics, which makes you stand out from the rest. It's an opportunity for the reader to gain insight into your personality and the way you think. Your essay should not only provide a description of your traits but also demonstrate how they influence your actions and decisions.

Additionally, a personal characteristics essay can also serve as a tool for self-reflection and personal growth. Through the process of writing about your traits and how they have impacted your life, you may gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your values. This type of essay can also help you identify areas for improvement and set goals for personal development.

How to Choose a Topic for Your Personal Characteristics Essay

Choosing the right topic for your personal characteristics essay is crucial. You want to select a topic that not only reflects your personality but also allows you to showcase your writing skills. Start by brainstorming a list of traits and characteristics that define you. From there, select a topic that highlights one or two of these traits. Think about a situation that showcases these traits and how you overcame a challenge or learned a valuable lesson.

Another important factor to consider when choosing a topic for your personal characteristics essay is your audience. Think about who will be reading your essay and what they might be interested in learning about you. Consider selecting a topic that is relatable and relevant to your audience, while still highlighting your unique qualities.

It's also important to remember that your personal characteristics essay should not just be a list of traits or accomplishments. Instead, focus on telling a story that illustrates your personality and how it has shaped your experiences and perspectives. Choose a topic that allows you to delve deeper into your personal journey and share insights that will resonate with your readers.

Brainstorming Techniques for Your Personal Characteristics Essay

Brainstorming is an essential step in the writing process. It allows you to generate ideas and make connections between them. Try using mind maps or free-writing to get your ideas down on paper. You might also consider asking friends or family members what they think your most prominent traits are to get an outside perspective.

Another effective technique for brainstorming your personal characteristics essay is to reflect on your past experiences and how they have shaped you. Think about challenges you have faced and how you overcame them, or moments of success and how they have contributed to your personal growth. These experiences can provide valuable insight into your character and help you identify key traits to highlight in your essay.

The Importance of Organizing Your Thoughts and Ideas

Once you've generated your ideas, it's time to organize them. Start by creating an outline that includes the main points you want to make in your essay. Your outline should also include the introduction, body, and conclusion sections of your essay. Organizing your thoughts and ideas will help you stay on track and ensure that you cover all the necessary points in your essay.

Moreover, organizing your thoughts and ideas can also help you identify any gaps in your argument or areas where you need to do more research. By creating an outline, you can see where you need to add more information or examples to support your points. This can help you create a more well-rounded and convincing essay.

Additionally, organizing your thoughts and ideas can also help you save time in the long run. When you have a clear outline to follow, you can write your essay more efficiently and effectively. You won't waste time trying to figure out what to write next or how to structure your essay. Instead, you can focus on writing high-quality content that supports your thesis statement and engages your readers.

Tips for Writing a Strong Introduction to Your Essay

The introduction to your essay is crucial as it sets the tone for the rest of your essay. Your introduction should grab the reader's attention and entice them to keep reading. Consider starting with a hook, such as a quote, an anecdote, or a question. Your introduction should also include your thesis statement, which outlines the main point of your essay.

In addition to a hook and thesis statement, your introduction should also provide some background information on the topic you are writing about. This can help to contextualize your essay and give the reader a better understanding of the subject matter. However, be careful not to include too much information in your introduction, as it can become overwhelming and detract from the main point of your essay.

The Art of Developing a Compelling Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should be concise and clear. It should provide a roadmap for the rest of your essay. Think about the main point you want to make and how you plan on supporting it throughout your essay. Make sure your thesis statement is arguable and specific.

Supporting Your Claims with Relevant Examples and Evidence

To make your essay more compelling, you should back up your claims and arguments with relevant examples and evidence. This will help your reader understand the extent of your personal qualities and how they have impacted your life experiences. Make sure to include specific examples from your life that illustrate the qualities you're discussing in your essay.

One effective way to provide evidence for your claims is to use statistics or data that support your argument. For example, if you're writing an essay about the benefits of exercise, you could include statistics about the number of people who have improved their health through regular exercise. This will add credibility to your argument and make it more convincing.

Another way to support your claims is to use expert opinions or quotes from reputable sources. This can help to strengthen your argument and show that you have done your research on the topic. Be sure to properly cite any sources you use in your essay.

The Power of Descriptive Writing: Painting a Vivid Picture with Words

Descriptive writing is a powerful tool that can be used to paint a vivid picture of your experiences and personality in your essay. Use sensory details to help your reader visualize your experiences. Consider incorporating metaphors or similes to make your writing more interesting and engaging.

Adding Depth and Complexity to Your Essay through Analysis and Reflection

Analysis and reflection are essential elements of an outstanding personal characteristics essay. Once you have described your traits and experiences, you should analyze how they have contributed to your personal growth and development. Reflection is also important as it allows you to consider how you might apply your characteristics to future situations.

The Benefits of Peer Review and Collaboration in Essay Writing

Collaborating with others can be immensely helpful in refining your essay. You might consider having a friend or family member review your essay and provide feedback. Peer review can help you identify areas where your essay needs improvement and provide suggestions for how to improve it.

Strategies for Effective Editing and Proofreading

Editing and proofreading are crucial steps in the writing process. Once you have completed your essay, take a break and come back to it with fresh eyes. Look for errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Make sure to also check that your essay flows logically and that your arguments are well-supported.

Addressing Common Pitfalls in Personal Characteristics Essays

One common pitfall in personal characteristics essays is focusing too much on describing your traits instead of analyzing how they have impacted your life experiences. Another common pitfall is using cliches or generic language instead of making your essay unique and interesting. Be sure to avoid these pitfalls to ensure your essay stands out.

Using Keywords and Meta Tags to Optimize Your Essay for Search Engines

If you plan on publishing your essay online, you might consider optimizing it for search engines such as Google. This involves using keywords and meta tags in your essay that will help it appear higher in search results. Be sure to research the most popular keywords related to your topic and include them strategically in your essay.

Crafting an Impressive Conclusion that Leaves a Lasting Impression

Finally, your conclusion should leave a lasting impression on the reader. Summarize your main points and reiterate your thesis statement. Think about what you want your reader to take away from your essay. Consider ending with a call to action or a memorable quote.

Writing a personal characteristics essay can be a challenging task, but with the right strategies and techniques, you can craft an impressive essay that showcases your unique qualities and characteristics. By following the tips outlined above, you'll be well on your way to writing a successful personal characteristics essay that leaves a lasting impression.

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All About the Ocean

The ocean covers 70 percent of Earth's surface.

Biology, Earth Science, Oceanography, Geography, Physical Geography

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This article is also available in Spanish .

The ocean covers 70 percent of Earth 's surface. It contains about 1.35 billion cubic kilometers (324 million cubic miles) of water, which is about 97 percent of all the water on Earth. The ocean makes all life on Earth possible, and makes the planet appear blue when viewed from space. Earth is the only planet in our solar system that is definitely known to contain liquid water. Although the ocean is one continuous body of water, oceanographers have divided it into five principal areas: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Southern Oceans. The Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans merge into icy waters around Antarctica. Climate The ocean plays a vital role in climate and weather . The sun’s heat causes water to evaporate , adding moisture to the air. The oceans provide most of this evaporated water. The water vapor condenses to form clouds, which release their moisture as rain or other kinds of precipitation . All life on Earth depends on this process, called the water cycle . The atmosphere receives much of its heat from the ocean. As the sun warms the water, the ocean transfers heat to the atmosphere. In turn, the atmosphere distributes the heat around the globe. Because water absorbs and loses heat more slowly than land masses, the ocean helps balance global temperatures by absorbing heat in the summer and releasing it in the winter. Without the ocean to help regulate global temperatures, Earth’s climate would be bitterly cold. Ocean Formation After Earth began to form about 4.6 billion years ago, it gradually separated into layers of lighter and heavier rock. The lighter rock rose and formed Earth’s crust . The heavier rock sank and formed Earth’s core and mantle . The ocean’s water came from rocks inside the newly forming Earth. As the molten rocks cooled, they released water vapor and other gases. Eventually, the water vapor condensed and covered the crust with a primitive ocean. Today, hot gases from the Earth’s interior continue to produce new water at the bottom of the ocean. Ocean Floor Scientists began mapping the ocean floor in the 1920s. They used instruments called echo sounders , which measure water depths using sound waves . Echo sounders use sonar technology. Sonar is an acronym for SOund Navigation And Ranging. The sonar showed that the ocean floor has dramatic physical features, including huge mountains, deep canyons , steep cliffs , and wide plains . The ocean’s crust is a thin layer of volcanic rock called basalt . The ocean floor is divided into several different areas. The first is the continental shelf , the nearly flat, underwater extension of a continent. Continental shelves vary in width. They are usually wide along low-lying land, and narrow along mountainous coasts. A shelf is covered in sediment from the nearby continent. Some of the sediment is deposited by rivers and trapped by features such as natural dams. Most sediment comes from the last glacial period , or Ice Age, when the oceans receded and exposed the continental shelf. This sediment is called relict sediment . At the outer edge of the continental shelf, the land drops off sharply in what is called the continental slope . The slope descends almost to the bottom of the ocean. Then it tapers off into a gentler slope known as the continental rise. The continental rise descends to the deep ocean floor, which is called the abyssal plain . Abyssal plains are broad, flat areas that lie at depths of about 4,000 to 6,000 meters (13,123 to 19,680 feet). Abyssal plains cover 30 percent of the ocean floor and are the flattest feature on Earth. They are covered by fine-grained sediment like clay and silt. Pelagic sediments, the remains of small ocean organisms, also drift down from upper layers of the ocean. Scattered across abyssal plains are abyssal hills and underwater volcanic peaks called seamounts. Rising from the abyssal plains in each major ocean is a huge chain of mostly undersea mountains. Called the mid-ocean ridge , the chain circles Earth, stretching more than 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles). Much of the mid-ocean ridge is split by a deep central rift, or crack. Mid-ocean ridges mark the boundaries between tectonic plates . Molten rock from Earth’s interior wells up from the rift, building new seafloor in a process called seafloor spreading . A major portion of the ridge runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and is known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It was not directly seen or explored until 1973. Some areas of the ocean floor have deep, narrow depressions called ocean trenches . They are the deepest parts of the ocean. The deepest spot of all is the Challenger Deep , which lies in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean near the island of Guam. Its true depth is not known, but the most accurate measurements put the Challenger Deep at 11,000 meters (36,198 feet) below the ocean’s surface—that’s more than 2,000 meters (6,000 feet) taller than Mount Everest, Earth’s highest point. The pressure in the Challenger Deep is about eight tons per square inch.

Ocean Life Zones From the shoreline to the deepest seafloor, the ocean teems with life. The hundreds of thousands of marine species range from microscopic algae to the largest creature to have ever lived on Earth, the blue whale. The ocean has five major life zones, each with organisms uniquely adapted to their specific marine ecosystem . The epipelagic zone (1) is the sunlit upper layer of the ocean. It reaches from the surface to about 200 meters (660 feet) deep. The epipelagic zone is also known as the photic or euphotic zone, and can exist in lakes as well as the ocean. The sunlight in the epipelagic zone allows photosynthesis to occur. Photosynthesis is the process by which some organisms convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into energy and oxygen . In the ocean, photosynthesis takes place in plants and algae. Plants such as seagrass are similar to land plants—they have roots, stems, and leaves. Algae is a type of aquatic organism that can photosynthesize sunlight. Large algae such as kelp are called seaweed . Phytoplankton also live in the epipelagic zone. Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that include plants, algae, and bacteria. They are only visible when billions of them form algal blooms , and appear as green or blue splotches in the ocean. Phytoplankton are a basis of the ocean food web . Through photosynthesis, phytoplankton are responsible for almost half the oxygen released into Earth’s atmosphere. Animals such as krill (a type of shrimp), fish, and microscopic organisms called zooplankton all eat phytoplankton. In turn, these animals are eaten by whales, bigger fish, ocean birds, and human beings. The next zone down, stretching to about 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) deep, is the mesopelagic zone (2). This zone is also known as the twilight zone because the light there is very dim. The lack of sunlight means there are no plants in the mesopelagic zone, but large fish and whales dive there to hunt prey . Fish in this zone are small and luminous . One of the most common is the lanternfish, which has organs along its side that produce light. Sometimes, animals from the mesopelagic zone (such as sperm whales ( Physeter macrocephalus ) and squid) dive into the bathypelagic zone (3), which reaches to about 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) deep. The bathypelagic zone is also known as the midnight zone because no light reaches it. Animals that live in the bathypelagic zone are small, but they often have huge mouths, sharp teeth, and expandable stomachs that let them eat any food that comes along. Most of this food comes from the remains of plants and animals drifting down from upper pelagic zones. Many bathypelagic animals do not have eyes because they are unneeded in the dark. Because the pressure is so great and it is so difficult to find nutrients , fish in the bathypelagic zone move slowly and have strong gills to extract oxygen from the water. The water at the bottom of the ocean, the abyssopelagic zone (4), is very salty and cold (2 degrees Celsius, or 35 degrees Fahrenheit). At depths up to 6,000 meters (19,700 feet), the pressure is very strong—11,000 pounds per square inch. This makes it impossible for most animals to live. Animals in this zone have bizarre adaptations to cope with their ecosystem. Many fish have jaws that look unhinged. The jaws allow them to drag their open mouth along the seafloor to find food, such as mussels, shrimp, and microscopic organisms. Many of the animals in this zone, including squid and fish, are bioluminescent. Bioluminescent organisms produce light through chemical reactions in their bodies. A type of angler fish, for example, has a glowing growth extending in front of its huge, toothy mouth. When smaller fish are attracted to the light, the angler fish simply snaps its jaws to eat its prey. The deepest ocean zone, found in trenches and canyons, is called the hadalpelagic zone (5). Few organisms live here. They include tiny isopods , a type of crustacean related to crabs and shrimp. Invertebrates such as sponges and sea cucumbers thrive in the abyssopelagic and hadalpelagic zones. Like many sea stars and jellyfish, these animals are almost entirely dependent on falling parts of dead or decaying plants and animals, called marine detritus . Not all bottom dwellers, however, depend on marine detritus. In 1977, oceanographers discovered a community of creatures on the ocean floor that feed on bacteria around openings called hydrothermal vents. These vents discharge superheated water enriched with minerals from Earth’s interior. The minerals nourish unique bacteria, which in turn nourish creatures such as crabs, clams, and tube worms. Ocean Currents Currents are streams of water running through a larger body of water. Oceans, rivers, and streams have currents. The ocean’s salinity and temperature and the coast’s geographic features determine an ocean current’s behavior. Earth’s rotation and wind also influence ocean currents. Currents flowing near the surface transport heat from the tropics to the poles and move cooler water back toward the Equator . This keeps the ocean from becoming extremely hot or cold. Deep, cold currents transport oxygen to organisms throughout the ocean. They also carry rich supplies of nutrients that all living things need. The nutrients come from plankton and the remains of other organisms that drift down and decay on the ocean floor. Along some coasts, winds and currents produce a phenomenon called upwelling . As winds push surface water away from shore, deep currents of cold water rise to take its place. This upwelling of deep water brings up nutrients that nourish new growth of plankton, providing food for fish. Ocean food chains constantly recycle food and energy this way.

Some ocean currents are enormous and extremely powerful. One of the most powerful is the Gulf Stream , a warm surface current that originates in the tropical Caribbean Sea and flows northeast along the eastern coast of the United States. The Gulf Stream measures up to 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide and is more than a kilometer (3,281 feet) deep. Like other ocean currents, the Gulf Stream plays a major role in climate. As the current travels north, it transfers moisture from its warm tropical waters to the air above. Westerly, or prevailing, winds carry the warm, moist air to the British Isles and to Scandinavia , causing them to have milder winters than they otherwise would experience at their northern latitudes . Northern parts of Norway are near the Arctic Circle but remain ice-free for most of the year because of the Gulf Stream. The weather pattern known as El Niño includes a change to the Humboldt Current (also called the Peru Current) off the western coast of South America. In El Niño conditions, a current of warm surface water travels east along the Equator and prevents the normal upwelling of the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt Current. El Niño, which can devastate the fisheries of Peru and Ecuador, occurs every two to seven years, usually in December. The paths of ocean currents are partially determined by Earth’s rotation. This is known as the Coriolis effect . It causes large systems, such as winds and ocean currents that would normally move in a straight line, to veer to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere . People and the Ocean For thousands of years, people have depended on the ocean as a source of food and as a route for trade and exploration . Today, people continue to travel on the ocean and rely on the resources it contains. Nations continue to negotiate how to determine the extent of their territory beyond the coast. The United Nations’ Law of the Sea treaty established exclusive economic zones (EEZs), extending 200 nautical miles (230 miles) beyond a nation’s coastline. Even though some countries have not signed or ratified the treaty (including the U.S.), it is regarded as standard. Russia has proposed extending its EEZ beyond 200 nautical miles because two mid-ocean ridges, the Lomonosov and Medeleev Ridges, are extensions of the continental shelf belonging to Russia. This territory includes the North Pole. Russian explorers in a submersible vehicle planted a metal Russian flag on the disputed territory in 2007. Through the centuries, people have sailed the ocean on trade routes . Today, ships still carry most of the world’s freight , particularly bulky goods such as machinery, grain, and oil . Ocean ports are areas of commerce and culture. Water and land transportation meet there, and so do people of different professions: businesspeople who import and export goods and services; dockworkers who load and unload cargo ; and ships’ crews. Ports also have a high concentration of migrants and immigrants with a wide variety of ethnicities, nationalities, languages, and religions. Important ports in the U.S. are New York/ New Jersey and New Orleans. The busiest ports around the world include the Port of Shanghai in China and the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Ocean ports are also important for a nation’s armed forces. Some ports are used exclusively for military purposes, although most share space with commercial businesses. “The sun never sets on the British Empire” is a phrase used to explain the scope of the empire of Great Britain , mostly in the 19th century. Although based on the small European island nation of Great Britain, British military sea power extended its empire from Africa to the Americas, Asia, and Australia. Scientists and other experts hope the ocean will be used more widely as a source of renewable energy . Some countries have already harnessed the energy of ocean waves, temperature, currents, or tides to power turbines and generate electricity. One source of renewable energy are generators that are powered by tidal streams or ocean currents. They convert the movement of currents into energy. Ocean current generators have not been developed on a large scale, but are working in some places in Ireland and Norway. Some conservationists criticize the impact the large constructions have on the marine environment. Another source of renewable energy is ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). It uses the difference in temperature between the warm, surface water and cold, deep water to run an engine. OTEC facilities exist in places with significant differences in ocean depth: Japan, India and the U.S. state of Hawai'i, for instance. An emerging source of renewable energy is salinity gradient power , also known as osmotic power. It is an energy source that uses the power of freshwater entering into saltwater. This technology is still being developed, but it has potential in delta areas where fresh river water is constantly interacting with the ocean. Fishing Fishers catch more than 90 million tons of seafood each year, including more than 100 species of fish and shellfish . Millions of people, from professional fishers to business owners like restaurant owners and boat builders, depend on fisheries for their livelihood . Fishing can be classified in two ways. In subsistence fishing, fishers use their catch to help meet the nutritional needs of their families or communities. In commercial fishing , fishers sell their catch for money, goods or services. Popular subsistence and commercial fish are tuna, cod, and shrimp. Ocean fishing is also a popular recreational sport. Sport fishing can be competitive or noncompetitive. In sport fishing tournaments, individuals or teams compete for prizes based on the size of a particular species caught in a specific time period. Both competitive and noncompetitive sport fishers need licenses to fish, and may or may not keep the caught fish. Increasingly, sport fishers practice catch-and-release fishing, where a fish is caught, measured, weighed, and often recorded on film before being released back to the ocean. Popular game fish (fish caught for sport) are tuna and marlin. Whaling is a type of fishing that involves the harvesting of whales and dolphins. It has declined in popularity since the 19th century but is still a way of life for many cultures, such as those in Scandinavia, Japan, Canada, and the Caribbean. The ocean offers a wealth of fishing and whaling resources, but these resources are threatened. People have harvested so much fish and marine life for food and other products that some species have disappeared. During the 1800s and early 1900s, whalers killed thousands of whales for whale oil (wax made from boiled blubber ) and ivory (whales’ teeth). Some species, including the blue whale ( Balaenoptera musculus ) and the right whale, were hunted nearly to extinction . Many species are still endangered today. In the 1960s and 1970s, catches of important food fish, such as herring in the North Sea and anchovies in the Pacific, began to drop off dramatically. Governments took notice of overfishing —harvesting more fish than the ecosystem can replenish . Fishers were forced to go farther out to sea to find fish, putting them at risk. (Deep-sea fishing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.) Now, they use advanced equipment, such as electronic fish finders and large gill nets or trawling nets, to catch more fish. This means there are far fewer fish to reproduce and replenish the supply. In 1992, the collapse, or disappearance, of cod in Canada’s Newfoundland Grand Banks put 40,000 fishers out of work. A ban was placed on cod fishing, and to this day, neither the cod nor the fisheries have recovered. To catch the dwindling numbers of fish, most fishers use trawl nets. They drag the nets along the seabed and across acres of ocean. These nets accidentally catch many small, young fish and mammals. Animals caught in fishing nets meant for other species are called bycatch . The fishing industry and fisheries management agencies argue about how to address the problem of bycatch and overfishing. Those involved in the fishing industry do not want to lose their jobs, while conservationists want to maintain healthy levels of fish in the ocean. A number of consumers are choosing to purchase sustainable seafood . Sustainable seafood is harvested from sources (either wild or farmed) that do not deplete the natural ecosystem. Mining and Drilling Many minerals come from the ocean. Sea salt is a mineral that has been used as a flavoring and preservative since ancient times. Sea salt has many additional minerals, such as calcium, that ordinary table salt lacks. Hydrothermal vents often form seafloor massive sulfide (SMS) deposits , which contain precious metals. These SMS deposits sit on the ocean floor, sometimes in the deep ocean and sometimes closer to the surface. New techniques are being developed to mine the seafloor for valuable minerals such as copper, lead, nickel, gold, and silver. Mining companies employ thousands of people and provide goods and services for millions more. Critics of undersea mining maintain that it disrupts the local ecology . Organisms—corals, shrimp, mussels—that live on the seabed have their habitat disturbed, upsetting the food chain. In addition, destruction of habitat threatens the viability of species that have a narrow niche . Maui’s dolphin ( Cephalorhynchus hectori maui ), for instance, is a critically endangered species native to the waters of New Zealand’s North Island. The numbers of Maui’s dolphin are already reduced because of bycatch. Seabed mining threatens its habitat, putting it at further risk of extinction. Oil is one of the most valuable resources taken from the ocean today. Offshore oil rigs pump petroleum from wells drilled into the continental shelf. About one-quarter of all oil and natural gas supplies now comes from offshore oil deposits around the world. Offshore drilling requires complex engineering . An oil platform can be constructed directly onto the ocean floor, or it can “float” above an anchor. Depending on how far out on the continental shelf an oil platform is located, workers may have to be flown in. Underwater, or subsea, facilities are complicated groups of drilling equipment connected to each other and a single oil rig. Subsea production often requires remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs). Some countries invest in offshore drilling for profit and to prevent reliance on oil from other regions. The Gulf of Mexico near the U.S. states of Texas and Louisiana is heavily drilled. Several European countries, including the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the Netherlands, drill in the North Sea. Offshore drilling is a complicated and expensive program, however. There are a limited number of companies that have the knowledge and resources to work with local governments to set up offshore oil rigs. Most of these companies are based in Europe and North America, although they do business all over the world. Some governments have banned offshore oil drilling. They cite safety and environmental concerns. There have been several accidents where the platform itself has exploded, at the cost of many lives. Offshore drilling also poses threats to the ocean ecosystem. Spills and leaks from oil rigs and oil tankers that transport the material seriously harm marine mammals and birds. Oil coats feathers, impairing birds’ ability to maintain their body temperature and remain buoyant in the water. The fur of otters and seals are also coated, and oil entering the digestive tract of animals may damage their organs. Offshore oil rigs also release metal cuttings, minute amounts of oil, and drilling fluid into the ocean every day. Drilling fluid is the liquid used with machinery to drill holes deep in the planet. This liquid can contain pollutants such as toxic chemicals and heavy metals . Pollution Most oil pollution does not come from oil spills, however. It comes from the runoff of pollutants into streams and rivers that flow into the ocean. Most runoff comes from individual consumers. Cars, buses, motorcycles, and even lawn mowers spill oil and grease on roads, streets, and highways. (Runoff is what makes busy roads shiny and sometimes slippery.) Storm drains or creeks wash the runoff into local waterways, which eventually flow into the ocean. The largest U.S. oil spill in the ocean took place in Alaska in 1989, by the tanker Exxon Valdez . The Exxon Valdez spilled at least 10 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. In comparison, American and Canadian consumers spill about 16 million gallons of oil runoff into the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans every year. For centuries, people have used the ocean as a dumping ground for sewage and other wastes. In the 21st century, the wastes include not only oil, but also chemical runoff from factories and agriculture . These chemicals include nitrates and phosphates , which are often used as fertilizers . These chemicals encourage algae blooms. An algae bloom is an increase in algae and bacteria that threatens plants and other marine life. Algae blooms limit the amount of oxygen in a marine environment, leading to what are known as dead zones , where little life exists beneath the ocean’s surface. Algae blooms can spread across hundreds or even thousands of miles. Another source of pollution is plastics . Most ocean debris, or garbage, is plastic thrown out by consumers. Plastics such as water bottles, bags, six-pack rings, and packing material put marine life at risk. Sea animals are harmed by the plastic either by getting tangled in it or by eating it. An example of marine pollution consisting mainly of plastics is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch . The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a floating dump in the North Pacific. It’s about twice the size of Texas and probably contains about 100 million tons of debris. Most of this debris comes from the western coast of North America (the U.S. and Canada) and the eastern coast of Asia (Japan, China, Russia, North Korea, and South Korea). Because of ocean currents and weather patterns, the patch is a relatively stable formation and contains new and disintegrating debris. The smaller pieces of plastic debris are eaten by jellyfish or other organisms, and are then consumed by larger predators in the food web. These plastic chemicals may then enter a human’s diet through fish or shellfish. Another source of pollution is carbon dioxide. The ocean absorbs most carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, which is necessary for life, is known as a greenhouse gas and traps radiation in Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide forms many acids, called carbonic acids , in the ocean. Ocean ecosystems have adapted to the presence of certain levels of carbonic acids, but the increase in carbon dioxide has led to an increase in ocean acids. This ocean acidification erodes the shells of animals such as clams, crabs, and corals. Global Warming Global warming contributes to rising ocean temperatures and sea levels . Warmer oceans radically alter the ecosystem. Global warming causes cold-water habitats to shrink, meaning there is less room for animals such as penguins, seals, or whales. Plankton, the base of the ocean food chain, thrives in cold water. Warming water means there will be less plankton available for marine life to eat. Melting glaciers and ice sheets contribute to sea level rise . Rising sea levels threaten coastal ecosystems and property. River deltas and estuaries are put at risk for flooding. Coasts are more likely to suffer erosion . Seawater more often contaminates sources of fresh water. All these consequences—flooding, erosion, water contamination—put low-lying island nations, such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, at high risk for disaster. To find ways to protect the ocean from pollution and the effects of climate change, scientists from all over the world are cooperating in studies of ocean waters and marine life. They are also working together to control pollution and limit global warming. Many countries are working to reach agreements on how to manage and harvest ocean resources. Although the ocean is vast, it is more easily polluted and damaged than people once thought. It requires care and protection as well as expert management. Only then can it continue to provide the many resources that living things—including people—need.

The Most Coast . . . Canada has 202,080 kilometers (125,567 miles) of coastline. Short But Sweet . . . Monaco has four kilometers (2.5 miles) of coastline.

No, the Toilet Doesn't Flush Backward in Australia The Coriolis effect, which can be seen in large-scale phenomena like trade winds and ocean currents, cannot be duplicated in small basins like sinks.

Extraterrestrial Oceans Mars probably had oceans billions of years ago, but ice and dry seabeds are all that remain today. Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, is probably covered by an ocean of water more than 96 kilometers (60 miles) deep, but it is trapped beneath a layer of ice, which the warmer water below frequently cracks. One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has cryovolcanism, or ice volcanoes. Instead of erupting with lava, ice volcanoes erupt with water, ammonia, or methane. Ice volcanoes may indicate oceanic activity.

International Oil Spill The largest oil spill in history, the Gulf War oil spill, released at least 40 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf. Valves at the Sea Island oil terminal in Kuwait were opened on purpose after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991. The oil was intended to stop a landing by U.S. Marines, but the oil drifted south to the shores of Saudi Arabia. A study of the Gulf War oil spill (conducted by the United Nations, several countries in the Middle East and the United States) found that most of the spilled oil evaporated and caused little damage to the environment.

Ocean Seas The floors of the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea are more like the ocean than other seas they do not rest on a continent, but directly on the ocean's basalt crust.

Early Ocean Explorers Polynesian people navigated a region of the Pacific Ocean now known as the Polynesian Triangle by 700 C.E. The corners of the Polynesian Triangle are islands: the American state of Hawai'i, the country of New Zealand, and the Chilean territory of Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui). The distance between Easter Island and New Zealand, the longest length of the Polynesian Triangle, is one-quarter of Earth's circumference, more than 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles). Polynesians successfully traveled these distances in canoes. It would be hundreds of years before another culture explored the ocean to this extent.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Responsibility — Characteristics Of Responsibility In Life

Characteristics of Responsibility in Life

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Published: Mar 19, 2024

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I. introduction, ii. personal accountability, iii. time management skills, iv. decision-making abilities, v. adaptability and flexibility, vi. communication skills, vii. conclusion.

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