what is the real meaning of life essay

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

The Meaning of Life: What’s the Point?

Author: Matthew Pianalto Categories: Ethics , Phenomenology and Existentialism , Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 1000

Editors’ note: this essay and its companion essay, Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful? both explore the concept of meaning in relation to human life. This essay focuses on the meaning of life as a whole, whereas the other addresses meaning in individual human lives.

At the height of his literary fame, the novelist Leo Tolstoy was gripped by suicidal despair. [1] He felt that life is meaningless because, in the long run, we’ll all be dead and forgotten. Tolstoy later rejected this pessimism in exchange for religious faith in life’s eternal, divine significance.

Tolstoy’s outlook—both before and after his conversion—raises many questions:

• Does life’s having meaning depend on a supernatural reality?
• Is death a threat to life’s meaning?
• Is life the sort of thing that can have a “meaning”? In what sense?

Here we will consider some approaches to questions about the meaning of life. [2]

1. Questioning the Question

Many philosophers begin thinking about the meaning of life by asking what the question itself means. [3] Life could refer to all lifeforms or to human life specifically. This essay focuses on human life, but it is worth considering how other things might have or lack meaning, too. [4] This can help illuminate the different meanings of meaning .

Sometimes, we use “meaning” to refer to the origin or cause of something’s existence. If I come home to a trashed house, I might wonder, “What is the meaning of this?” Similarly, we might wonder where life comes from or how it began; our origins may tell us something about other meanings, like our value or purpose.

We also use “meaning” to refer to something’s significance or value . Something can be valuable in various ways, such as by being useful, pleasing, or informative. We might call something meaningless if it is trivial or unimportant.

“Meaning” can also refer to something’s point or purpose . [5] Life could have some overarching purpose as part of a divine plan, or it might have no such purpose. Perhaps we can give our lives purpose that they did not previously possess.

Notice that even divine purposes may not always satisfy our desire for meaning: suppose our creator made us to serve as livestock for hyper-intelligent aliens who will soon arrive and begin to farm us. [6] We might protest that this is not the most meaningful use of our human potential! We may not want our life-story to end as a people-burger.

Indeed, a thing’s meaning can also be its story . The meaning of life might be the true story of life’s origins and significance. [7] In this sense, life cannot be meaningless, but its meaning might be pleasing or disappointing to us. When people like Tolstoy regard life as meaningless, they seem to be thinking that the truth about life is bad news. [8]

2. Supernaturalism

Supernaturalists hold that life has divine significance. [9] For example, from the perspective of the Abrahamic religions, life is valuable because everything in God’s creation is good . Our purpose is to love and glorify God. We are all part of something very important and enduring : God’s plan.

Much of the contemporary discussion about the meaning of life is provoked by skepticism about traditional religious answers. [10] The phrase “the meaning of life” came into common usage only in the last two centuries, as advances in science, especially evolutionary theory, led many to doubt that life is the product of intelligent, supernatural design. [11] The meaning of life might be an especially perplexing issue for those who reject religious answers.

3. Nihilism

Nihilists think that life, on balance, lacks positive meaning. [12] Nihilism often arises as a pessimistic reaction to religious skepticism: life without a divine origin or purpose has no enduring significance.

Although others might counter that life can have enduring significance that doesn’t depend on a supernatural origin, such as our cultural legacy, nihilists are skeptical. From a cosmic perspective, we are tiny specks in a vast universe–and often miserable to boot! Even our most important cultural icons and achievements will likely vanish with the eventual extinction of the species and the collapse of the solar system.

4. Naturalism

Naturalists suggest that the meaning of life is to be found within our earthly lives. Even if life possesses no supernatural meaning, life itself may have inherent significance. [13] Things are not as bad as nihilists claim.

Some naturalists argue that life—at least human life—has objectively valuable features, such as our intellectual, moral, and creative abilities. [14] The meaning of life may be to develop these capacities and put them to good use. [15]

Other naturalists are subjectivists about life’s meaning. [16] Existentialists , for example, argue that life has no meaning until we give it meaning by choosing to live for something that we find important. [17]

Critics (including nihilists and supernaturalists) argue that the naturalists are fooling themselves. What naturalists propose as sources of meaning in life are at best a distraction from life’s lack of ultimate or cosmic significance (if naturalism is true). What is the point of personal development and good works if we’ll all be dead sooner or later?

Naturalists may respond that the point is in how these activities affect our lives and relationships now rather than in some distant, inhuman future. [18] Feeling sad or distressed over our lack of cosmic importance might be a kind of vanity we should overcome. [19] Some also question whether living forever would necessarily add meaning to life; living forever might be boring! [20] Having limited time may be part of what makes some of our activities and experiences so precious. [21]

5. Conclusion

In Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , the supercomputer Deep Thought is prompted to discover “the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.” After 7 ½ million years of computation, Deep Thought determines that the answer is…

forty-two .

Reflecting on this bizarre result, Deep Thought muses, “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.” [22]

Adams may be wise to offer some comic relief. [23] Furthermore, given the various meanings of “meaning,” perhaps there is no single question to ask and thus no single correct answer.

Tolstoy’s crisis is a reminder that feelings of meaninglessness can be distressing and dangerous. [24] However, continuing to search for meaning in times of doubt may be one of the most meaningful things we can do. [25]

[1] Tolstoy (2005 [1882]). For discussion of Tolstoy’s rediscovery of meaning that extends his ideas beyond the specific religious outlook he adopted, see Preston-Roedder (2022).

[2] For more detailed overviews of the meaning of life, see Metz (2021) and the entries on the meaning of life by Joshua Seachris and Wendell O’Brien in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

[3] Ayer (2008) suspects the question is incoherent. For a response, see Nielsen (2008). For helpful discussion of the meanings of meaning, see Thomas (2019).

[4] For discussion of meaning beyond humans (and agents), see Stevenson (2022).

[5] Notice that purpose appears to be one type of value, as discussed in the preceding paragraph.

[6] Nozick (1981) develops this point about purpose; Nozick (2008) offers the key points, too. In a different spirit, the ancient Daoist philosophy of Zhuangzi (2013) provides some perspective on the advantages of being “useless” (having no purpose) and the dangers of being “useful.”

[7] On this proposal of the meaning of life as narrative, see Seachris (2009). A similar approach that emphasizes the notion of interpretation rather than story or narrative is proposed in Prinzing (2021).

[8] A starter list of life’s features that might lead one to tell such a story about life: war, poverty, physical and mental illness, natural disasters, addiction, labor exploitation and other injustices, and pollution. For more, see Benatar (2017).

[9] Some, like Craig (2013), argue vigorously that life can have meaning only if supernaturalism is true. For further discussion and examples, see discussions of supernaturalism in Seachris, “The Meaning of Life: Contemporary Analytic Perspectives” and Metz (2021).

[10] See Landau (1997) and Setiya (2022), Ch. 6, for discussion of the origin of the phrase.

[11] Nietzsche’s discussion of the “death of God” in The Gay Science (2001 [1882]) reflects these sorts of concerns.

[12] For recent defenses of this view, see Benatar (2017) and Weinberg (2021).

[13] See I. Singer (2009) for a wide-ranging naturalist approach. Wolf’s (2010, 2014) approach to meaning in life is one of the most widely accepted views amongst contemporary philosophers.

[14] For a helpful discussion of the idea that some things might be objectively valuable, see Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf.

[15] Metz (2013) and P. Singer (1993) defend this sort of view of meaning in life. Transhumanists would argue that the best uses of our abilities will be those that help us overcome the problems, like disease and mortality, that beset humans and may transform us in substantial ways: perhaps we can achieve a natural form of immortality through technology! On transhumanism, see Messerly (2022).

[16] Representative subjectivists include Taylor (2000) and Calhoun (2015). Susan Wolf’s works (2010 and 2014) develop a “hybrid” account of meaning that combines objective and subjective elements.

[17] For classic expressions of this existentialist view, see Sartre (2021 [1943]) and Beauvoir (2018 [1947]). For a brief overview of existentialist philosophy, see Existentialism by Addison Ellis. For a more detailed, contemporary overview, see Gosetti-Ferencei (2020).

[18] On this point, see Nagel (1971), Nagel (1989), and “The Meanings of Lives” in Wolf (2014). For further discussion see Kahane (2014).

[19] Marquard (1991); see Hosseini (2015) for additional discussion. Albert Camus makes a similar point, invoking the notion of “moderation,” at the end of The Rebel (1992 [1951]).

[20] Williams (1973) gives the classic expression of this idea. For a brief overview of Williams’ argument, see Is Immortality Desirable? , by Felipe Pereira.

[21] Of course, this outlook does mean that death can sometimes rob people of potential meaning, since death can be untimely. But death would not erase the meaningfulness of whatever one had already experienced or achieved. For arguments concerning whether death harms the individual who dies, see Is Death Bad? Epicurus and Lucretius on the Fear of Death by Frederik Kaufman.

[22] Adams (2017), Chapters 27-28. Asking a computer to give us the answer might also be a problem.

[23] For additional comic relief, see the film Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). Such playfulness may seem irreverent of these “deep” philosophical questions, but Schlick (2017 [1927]) argued that the meaning of life is to be found in play!

[24] For discussion of crises of meaning and an introduction to psychological research on meaning in life, see Smith (2017).

[25] William Winsdale relates that the existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was once asked to “express in one sentence the meaning of his own life” (in Frankl (2006), 164-5). After writing his answer, he asked his students to guess what he wrote. A student said, “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.” Frankl responded, “That is it exactly. Those are the very words I had written.”

Adams, Douglas (2017). The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . Del Rey. Originally published in 1979.

Ayer, A.J. (2008). “The Claims of Philosophy.” In: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Third Edition . Oxford University Press: 199-202.

Beauvoir, Simone de (2018). The Ethics of Ambiguity . Open Road Media. Originally published in French in 1947.

Benatar, David (2017). The Human Predicament . Oxford University Press.

Calhoun, Cheshire (2015). “Geographies of Meaningful Living,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 32(1): 15-34.

Camus, Albert (1992). The Rebel . Vintage. Originally published in French in 1951.

Craig, William Lane (2013). “The Absurdity of Life Without God.” In: Jason Seachris, ed. Exploring the Meaning of Life . Wiley-Blackwell: 153-172.

Frankl, Viktor E. (2006). Man’s Search for Meaning . Beacon Press.

Gosetti-Ferencei, Jennifer Anna (2020). On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life . Oxford University Press.

Hosseini, Reza (2015). Wittgenstein and Meaning in Life . Palgrave Macmillan.

Kahane, Guy (2014). “Our Cosmic Insignificance.” Noûs 48(4): 745–772.

Landau, Iddo (2017). Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World . Oxford University Press.

— (1997). “Why Has the Question of the Meaning of Life Arisen in the Last Two and a Half Centuries?” Philosophy Today 41(2): 263-269.

Marquard, Odo (1991). “On the Dietetics of the Expectation of Meaning.” In: In Defense of the Accidental . Translated by Robert M. Wallace. Oxford University Press: 29-49.

Messerly, John (2022). Short Essays on Life, Death, Meaning, and the Far Future .

Metz, Thaddeus (2013). Meaning in Life . Oxford University Press .

— (2021). “The Meaning of Life.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.).

Nagel, Thomas (1971). “The Absurd,” Journal of Philosophy 68(20): 716-727.

— (1989). The View From Nowhere . Oxford University Press.

Nielsen, Kai (2008). “Linguistic Philosophy and ‘The Meaning of Life.’” In: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Third Edition . Oxford University Press: 203-219.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (2001). The Gay Science . Translated by Josephine Nauckhoff. Cambridge University Press. Originally published in German in 1882.

Nozick, Robert (1981). Philosophical Explanations . Harvard University Press.

— (2018), “Philosophy and the Meaning of Life,” in: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Fourth Edition . Oxford University Press: 197-204.

O’Brien, Wendell. “The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Last Accessed 12/19/2022.

Preston-Roedder, Ryan (2022). “Living with absurdity: A Nobleman’s guide,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Early View) .

Prinzing, Michael M. (2021). “The Meaning of ‘Life’s Meaning,’” Philosopher’s Imprint 21(3).

Sartre, Jean-Paul (2021). Being and Nothingness . Washington Square Press. Originally published in French in 1943.

Schlick, Moritz (2017). “On the Meaning of Life,” in: In: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Third Edition . Oxford University Press: 56-65. Originally published in 1927.

Seachris, Joshua. “The Meaning of Life: Contemporary Analytic Perspectives.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Last Accessed 12/19/2022.

— (2009). “The Meaning of Life as Narrative.” Philo 12(1): 5-23.

Setiya, Kieran (2022). Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way . Riverhead Books.

Singer, Irving (2009). Meaning in Life, Vol. 1: The Creation of Value . MIT Press.

Singer, Peter (1993). How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest . Prometheus.

Smith, Emily E. (2017). The Power of Meaning . Crown.

Stevenson, Chad Mason (2022). “Anything Can Be Meaningful.” Philosophical Papers (forthcoming).

Taylor, Richard (2000). Good and Evil . Prometheus. Originally published in 1970.

Thomas, Joshua Lewis (2019). “Meaningfulness as Sensefulness,” Philosophia 47: 1555-1577.

Tolstoy, Leo (2005). A Confession . Translated by Aylmer Maude. Dover. Originally published in Russian in 1882.

Weinberg, Rivka (2021). “Ultimate Meaning: We Don’t Have It, We Can’t Get It, and We Should Be Very, Very Sad,” Journal of Controversial Ideas 1(1), 4.

Williams, Bernard (1973). “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality.” In: Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers, 1956-1972 . Cambridge University Press: 82-100.

Wolf, Susan (2010). Meaning in Life and Why It Matters . Princeton University Press. ( Wolf’s lecture is also available at the Tanner Lecture Series website ).

— (2014). The Variety of Values . Oxford University Press.

Zhuangzi (2013). The Complete Works of Zhuangzi . Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press.

Related Essays

Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful? by Matthew Pianalto

Existentialism by Addison Ellis

Camus on the Absurd: The Myth of Sisyphus by Erik Van Aken

Nietzsche and the Death of God by Justin Remhof

Is Death Bad? Epicurus and Lucretius on the Fear of Death by Frederik Kaufman

Ancient Cynicism: Rejecting Civilization and Returning to Nature by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.

The Badness of Death by Duncan Purves

Is Immortality Desirable? by Felipe Pereira

Hope by Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale

Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf

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About the Author

Matthew Pianalto is a Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of On Patience (2016) and several articles and book chapters on ethics. philosophy.eku.edu/pianalto

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The Question of the Meaning of Life: Answerable or Unanswerable?

Jeffrey gordon wonders what it would mean to have meaning..

“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer… The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the meaning of life became clear to them have been unable to say what constituted that meaning?)” Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

For all its apparent importance, the question of the meaning of life is most strange. For the vast majority of people outside academe, it is the defining concern of philosophy, the issue that provides philosophy’s raison d’etre . Academic philosophers should hesitate before dismissing this view with a smile of polite embarrassment, for there is surely a broad but defensible sense of the question in which all philosophy is, indeed, about nothing else. The defensible sense is the conception of philosophy as an attempt to understand the human condition and our place in the universe – the attempt, in short, to answer the three questions that Kant believed to comprise all philosophy: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? But the fact is, this putatively definitive philosophical problem had rarely been addressed explicitly by any thinker before the nineteenth century, when Nietzsche and Kierkegaard made it their preoccupation. And although it would seem foolhardy or perverse to deny the importance of the question, exactly what is being asked and what might constitute a compelling answer have been notoriously elusive of clarification. In addition, the problem of the meaning of life seems to generate a multitude of paradoxes. In Waiting for Godot , Samuel Beckett’s poignant metaphor of spiritual crisis, Gogo asks Didi what will happen to them when Godot at last arrives. It soon becomes clear that neither has any idea, that the sole focus of their relentless hope is shrouded in utter obscurity. Are we not precisely in their condition whenever we wonder how our lives will be changed once the meaning of life is revealed? The above quotation from Wittgenstein alerts us to a similar paradox. Having felt perhaps for years that his life is deprived of meaning, a person now feels the meaning restored. But when we inquire of him just what this newfound meaning is, he’s inevitably unable to say. Here is a kind of knowledge or wisdom we are inclined to regard as of the utmost importance, and yet we may well be at a loss to say what difference it will make to our lives once we acquire it, and we will be unable to express the knowledge when we possess it. What other enduring philosophical problem is so scuttled in paradox and confusion?

Does human life have a meaning? If so, what is that meaning? How should I change my life to comport myself toward it? My purpose in this article will be to understand what these sentences mean. First, I will set out the difficulties we encounter in dealing with ‘the problem of life’. Then I will try to uncover the experiential source of these problems, in order to account for the difficulties in resolving them and in order to clarify their sense.

Difficulties of the Question

“Does human life have a meaning?” It seems reasonable to assume that a meaningful question points in the direction of a promising line of inquiry. But it is far from clear what promising line of inquiry this question can initiate. It may be suggested that what I want to know in raising the question of life is whether there is some larger scheme of which human life is an essential part . This may be called the religious conception of the question, since arguably one of the greatest psychological assets of the theistic tradition is to provide exactly this grand schema, with the apparent intention of assuring us that our lives do indeed have meaning. Indeed, thinkers as philosophically far-flung as Kierkegaard, Tolstoy and William James have understood the quest for meaning in just this way. In this understanding of the problem of life, the question prompts exploration of a possible divine plan or some rational order immanent in the universe such as Hegel proposed, and the role of human life in that plan or order.

However, even before we consider what this plan or order might be and how we could be certain of it, we can see that from a strictly logical standpoint such an answer would be self-stultifying: if human life can be meaningful only if it is part of a larger pattern of meaning, then by parity of reason, that larger pattern must derive its significance from its place in a still larger scheme, and so on to hopeless infinity. Our search for the meaning of life would thus be eternally deferred. Even if we could know that another life awaited us in the hereafter, this knowledge could not resolve the problem, for the meaning of the afterlife would remain a mystery, which would have to be resolved before we could be certain of the ultimate meaning of this one. So this cannot be the fruitful line of inquiry the question would hope to initiate. (My paper in The Modern Schoolman , LX, 4, 1983, presents this argument in greater detail.)

Some may say that the infinite regress I am pointing out here is not nearly so damaging to the religious conception of the answer as I am claiming it is, for it does not follow from the fact that one can keep searching for a yet more comprehensive schema that one must do so in order to establish meaning: a religious believer may see no need to exceed the bounds of the hereafter in order to determine the meaningfulness of this earthly sojourn. Heavenly bliss may be meaningful enough.

But the fact that one may be content to stop the regress at a certain point does nothing to undermine its destructive logical force. That a great many people have found deep consolation in the idea of an afterlife cannot be denied. That these same people were satisfied to stop their search for meaning there is also undeniable. But the question of the meaningfulness of the afterlife remains despite the fact that they are content not to raise it. On the contrary, their satisfaction with this vision of the whole may give us insight into their aesthetic or emotional needs and commitments. Perhaps it is not meaning they seek, but a kind of emotional fulfillment – the sense that the world is hospitable, or the assurance that they are loved. But the fact that they end their quest with the afterlife does not get us any closer to understanding what would make the afterlife meaningful. As we observe the characters in Waiting for Godot it occurs to us that the failure of Godot to appear might well be a blessing to them, for were Godot at last to come, they would be forced to confront the question of precisely in what sense they are saved. If we can establish meaningfulness only by being part of a larger framework, then once presented with any such scheme, we have no logical recourse but to embark on a search without end.

If a larger schema does not logically end our quest, perhaps then, in asking the question of life, we are searching for the internal order of the whole , as we might do in trying to determine the meaning of a play, to borrow a thoughtful analogy from John Wisdom in The Meaning of Life , p.221. ‘What is the meaning of life?’ might, then, really mean, ‘What is the order in the drama of time?’ Is life a tragedy, or is it a comedy, or is it the sort of tragicomedy depicted in the works of Kafka and Beckett?

However there are also serious problems with this new candidate for the direction of our inquiry. Unlike this question of the meaning of the play, this question about life seems to be a request for a kind of knowledge . But what would it mean to know that human life is a comedy or a tragedy, or a random mixture of elements of both? And how would such knowledge be confirmed?

Perhaps someone will argue that we complicate matters unnecessarily by suggesting that our question is a search for knowledge. Perhaps it is not a certain, verifiable fact that we seek, but rather a plausible story, a persuasive and satisfying picture, a comprehensive interpretation, such as we would seek in searching for the meaning of the play. But suppose we contrive such a picture or arrive at such an interpretation – indeed, suppose we attain knowledge after all – why must my conviction that life is (say) tragic establish its meaningfulness ? Albert Camus judges human life to be absurd because of the incompatibility between the human desire for rational order and the silence of the world: “I said the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world.” ( The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays , 1958, p.21, translated by Justin O’Brien.) If this is an accurate rendering of our condition this is certainly tragic, for it makes of the human struggle an exercise in abject futility. But in this case, the tragedy of human life, far from establishing its meaningfulness , would derive from its absurdity .

So we must distinguish between making sense of life and uncovering the source of its meaning. To pronounce that human life is a tragedy would be to make a certain sense of it, but not necessarily to attest to its meaningfulness. As Wisdom admits, it is possible that there is no order in the drama of time, that the story of humanity is a disarray of tragic and comic elements. To see this would still be to make some sense of it all, to find ‘the meaning of life’ in Wisdom’s use of the term. But this demonstrates the limitations of his use of the term, for surely the absence of order would challenge rather than establish the meaningfulness of life.

It is not merely the genre we are searching for when we ask the question of the meaning of life. If we could discover that life is a tragedy or a comedy, we would still have a further question. We would still want to know whether the tragedy or the comedy has meaning, or whether, on the contrary, it is tragic or comic precisely because it is meaningless.

If a question is to be meaningful, it must be possible at least to conceive of an answer to it, Wittgenstein asserts: “If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.” ( Tractatus §6.5.) Even so, it soon becomes clear that the obstacles to our conceiving an answer about life do not end with those detailed above. For instance, if I feel the need for an answer, I must be convinced that this is not a matter that each person must decide on wholly subjective grounds; for if I thought it were merely a subjective question, I would have no cause for perplexity. I would understand that the meaning of life was as near to hand as my own resourcefulness allowed it to be – that is, whatever I chose to constitute the meaningfulness of life would by that token make life meaningful (for me). So my existential disquietude is a sign that I am searching for an answer susceptible to objective validation. But here our embarrassments multiply. For if I am fortunate enough to find an objectively justifiable source of meaningfulness, it can serve my purposes and silence my doubts only if it is a source of meaning I can appropriate as my own – in short, subjectively endorse . It will be altogether useless to me if the objectively sanctioned meaning is one that I cannot find personally fulfilling. Suppose, for example, that I were to learn that the objectively true purpose of human life, the pursuit of which alone can establish its meaningfulness, is to commune with God. But suppose further that the concept of God seems so abstract that the prospect of such communion is wholly empty for me. Of what possible value could knowledge of the objectively valid source of meaning have for me then? Kierkegaard puts this point well in his Journals : “What good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no deeper significance for me and for my life –what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognised her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion?” (p.44)

Perhaps then in asking the question of meaning I seek assurance that the significance with which I subjectively endow my commitments is objectively confirmed . As Sartre points out in Existentialism Is A Humanism , we all valorize something. Perhaps what I seek therefore is some affirmation that I have made the right choice – that what I take to be most important is, indeed, defensibly so. But still, the necessary condition of my accepting this objective confirmation is that it accord with my values . So the meaningfulness of my life, my belief in the worthwhileness of my commitments, is in no way enhanced by its having this objective sanction: far from reforming my subjective values in face of my discovery of the objective meaning of life, I will use my subjective values to test the cogency of that objective meaning. It seems, then, that I seek neither a subjective nor an objective meaning in raising the question of life. But in that case, what sort of answer will do?

Experiencing Meaninglessness

These many confusions are indications of a deeper perplexity, I think. We need to return to the origin of the question in our experience in order to uncover the source of these difficulties and to see the true nature of the problem of life in its original presentation, its primary meaning.

The question of the meaning of life is less likely to be conceived in wonder than in a mood of disquietude. It is not asked seriously in a spirit of disinterested intellectual curiosity or grateful life-affirmation. Rather it emerges when one’s sense of the meaningfulness of life has been deeply shaken – when one fears that life, or at least one’s own life, is without meaning. The typical intonation of the question may be more revealing than the words. “What can it all mean?” may have more in common with a sigh than with a grammatical question. It’s an announcement that the foundation of one’s sense of meaning has been undermined. The question declares that the bulwarks are crumbling, that they seem now to have been the fabrications of a remarkably comprehensive self-deception: How could I have believed that this repetitive, pallid daily routine had the slightest significance? What besides the mere fact that this life is mine had convinced me that its victories and losses counted for something? If the nihilistic condition becomes more severe, these questions cast a pall over every observation and every encounter. Why is that woman so elegantly dressed, so punctiliously made up? What foolish vanity possessed her in her elaborate preparations? Why is that man chasing the ball so intently? Can he really believe that any importance whatsoever attaches to his returning the serve? Why are those people laughing so gaily? Is there not something false, desperate, in those guttural eruptions?

Camus writes of a man in a telephone booth whose animated dumbshow he observes from a distance. Why, he asks, is this man alive? Is not the entire human scene undergirded by a thoroughgoing tacit conspiracy of interlocking deceptions? In Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962), das Man is the conspiracy of the nameless, the everyone and no one, to assure a universal tranquillized flight from the anguishing demands of authentic individuation. Is not the principal accomplishment of das Man this most fundamental social contract – the unspoken compact we enter into to protect ourselves from the isolating and crippling realization that there is no significance whatsoever in either our individual or our collective presence on this earth?

Granted, this mood sustained over days and weeks, or incorporated into one’s manner of being, is an extreme state. But is there anyone for whom this kind of alienation is wholly unfamiliar? Still, most of us most of the time dismiss such thoughts as expressions of a passing perversity. What, then, allows this mood to entrench itself when it does? What are the conditions for a preoccupation with emptiness and futility?

Our premonition of the meaninglessness of life is a case of our capacity for disinterested reflection serving a personal will for release. Weary with life, we wish to withdraw from it, and intellect furnishes an irrefutable justification for doing so. The significances with which we invest our daily agitation are of strictly human invention; they are not shared by the dog in the chair falling into the slumber of boredom, nor by the feverish soldier termite protecting its hive against assault, nor by the placid angel strumming its harp in the clouds. And my deeply felt personal significances begin with the birth of my consciousness and end with its dissolution – never to be shared, never to be repeated. It is also my distinctly human point of view that allows me to perceive what is pitiable in another’s situation, what is triumphant in a person’s self-overcoming, what is humorous in someone’s pretensions. And it is my individual subjectivity that enables me to experience without mediation the urgency of events in my own life.

But I am not confined to the borders of my familiar subjectivity, and I am not confined to the human perspective either: I can abandon the familiar co-ordinates of my inner life; and I can in imagination remove myself wholly from the human scene – experience the uncanny, in which the most natural human sympathy appears alien, unjustifiable, de trop . It is not only Hamlet who can inhabit a perspective from which all the uses of this world seem weary, stale, flat and unprofitable; and not only Macbeth for whom all human beings can seem fools on their way to dusty death. And when I am seeing the world as Hamlet sees it and people as Macbeth sees them, no argument can convince me to rejoin the everyday fold, for any such argument will presuppose some human values that remain for me in unresolved suspension. If I am told, for example, that in indulging these thoughts I allow my talents to rust, that I abrogate my opportunity to contribute positively to the welfare of society, I can only smile, for nothing has established for me the value of the society I would serve; and nothing could. David Hume wrote that when similar reflections depressed him, he’d leave his philosophy books and have a game of backgammon with his friends. An impulse to self-preservation may urge me to follow Hume to his backgammon board, but while this is a perfectly legitimate motive, it furnishes no reason for me to go. In summary, one day life was charged with meaning, and the next day meaning was sucked from events like sap from crippled trees. In both the fullness and the void, I myself seem to be the source. And for this reason no rescuing rope can be hurled from the rich, energetic external human world to the dry flat world of my disengagement: there is no one in the latter world who can conceive a reason to catch it.

But why would anyone become so disengaged in the first place? Surely the answer must vary from person to person. In any case, this is a question for psychologists. For us as philosophers it is enough that we recognize that once this disengagement is in place no case can be made against it, for any such case will pre suppose at least one of the values that have been put in question.

The question, “Does life have a meaning?” is an announcement of this condition of disengagement: it is an expression of disillusionment, a marking of loss. Events that had been shot through with charm and excitement are now as dry and colorless as winter grass. Doubts about the very meaningfulness of life are a most natural expression of this state of affairs. What I am proposing here is that the meaning of the question of meaning is exhausted in this expression of mourning for the purpose no longer felt. But since it is after all a question we are asking, we are bewitched into believing that we are seeking a kind of knowledge in asking it, although we remain at an embarrassing loss to say what this knowledge could be. We are mistakenly led to think of the meaning of life as a datum, a fact, a possible object of knowledge. Yet meaningfulness in relation to life connotes not a propositional content, but a manner of being .

We find ourselves in a similar linguistic situation when we use the quite natural expression, ‘a meaningful relationship’. Although we have no difficulty distinguishing meaningful relationships from those that are without this characteristic, we would be just as disconcerted as we are by the question of the meaning of life were someone to ask of our avowedly meaningful relationships just what their meaning is. This is because the word ‘meaningful’ in the phrase ‘a meaningful relationship’, as in the phrase ‘a meaningful life’, expresses a quality of experience , a sense of depth or richness, and nothing more .

If after being deprived for some time of life’s excitement, richness, and charm, these qualities return to our sense of life, swelling events again with their honey, it is as natural for us to mark this resurgence by speaking of the renewed meaningfulness of life, as it was to mark the deprivation by speaking of the loss of meaning. But since excitement, richness, and charm are not cognitive properties, we have nothing to say in answer to the question, “In what now does the meaning of your life consist?” All we could point to in face of this challenge are the very features of our life that had seemed before our conversion to be without meaning: the beauty of a beloved companion, the warm good humor of our friends, the brisk enlivening autumn air. The only difference is that we are once again inhabiting the life we had merely been observing from a dispassionate distance.

Truth is subjectivity, Kierkegaard taught (see Concluding Unscientific Postscript , 1846), and by that he meant that what is important in the commitments that define us is not the demonstrability of the objective truth of our beliefs, but the originality, passion, and depth with which we appropriate them. In this he provided an apt analogy to our present concern. As Kierkegaard forswore any interest in objective demonstrations of God’s existence, so are we now, with meaning restored, wholly indifferent to the fact that no objective proof validates the significance of our vital choices. Investing our life once again with our passion, we no longer have a motive to raise the question of its meaning. For the investment of passion is its meaningfulness.

Our engagement in life always dances astride the abyss of our possible fall. Meaning is a kind of grace. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the question.

© Prof. Jeffrey Gordon 2009

Jeffrey Gordon is Professor of Philosophy and NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities at Texas State University.

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Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, summary of moritz schlick, “on the meaning of life”.

Moritz Schlick (1882– 1936) was a German philosopher and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle . He was shot to death at the University of Vienna by a former student. In 1927 he penned an essay entitled “ On the Meaning of Life .”

According to Schlick the innocent or childlike never ask the question of the meaning of life; others, the weary, no longer ask the question because they have concluded that there is none. “In between are ourselves, the seekers.” [i] While some lament that they have not fulfilled the goals of youth and accept that their lives are meaningless, they nevertheless believe that life is meaningful for those who have fulfilled their goals. Others achieve their goals, only to find that this achievement has not provided meaning. So it is hard to see the meaning of life. We set goals and head toward them with hope, but their achievement does not bring meaning. The goals are reached but the desire for new goals follows. There is never satisfaction, and all this longing ends in death. How then to escape all this?

Nietzsche sought to escape this pessimism thru art and then through knowledge, but neither led to meaning. He concluded that if we think of the meaning of life as a purpose, we will never find meaning. If we ask people about their purpose, most persons would say that they are working to maintain life or to stay alive, but pure existence is valueless without content. So we are caught in a circle, working to stay alive, and staying alive to keep working. Work is generally a means to an end, never an end in itself; and though some activities are intrinsically meaningful, like pleasurable ones, they are too fleeting to give life meaning.

In response, Schlick argues that meaning is to be found in activities that are intrinsically valuable—where the means and the ends are united; where the means is the end. He quotes Schiller that play is an activity that carries its own purpose. Only when we have no purpose except to play will there be meaning. Work can be play if it is doing what you want to do; that is, play and creative work may coincide. Creative play is found clearly in the work of the artist or in the search for scientific or philosophical knowledge. Almost any activity can be turned into creative play and Schlick wants work to become artistic; he longs for a world in which individuals engage in meaningful, joyful, playful, work. But would such an idyllic life reduce humans to animal existence, since humans would be living for the moment rather than contemplating eternity as self-conscious beings should? Schlick says we don’t sacrifice by playing; life becomes meaningful if we do what we want to do. The result is joy, which is more than mere pleasure.

We should then be like children who are capable of joy in play (work). This passionate enthusiasm of youth, unconcerned with goals, devoted to the intrinsic nature of the play is true play. But does it seems strange that youth, the preparation for adulthood, is where the meaning of life is found? Not at all, says Schlick. Humans tend to think of every imperfect state as the mere prelude to another state, in the same way, they often think of this life as having completion in another. But the meaning of life, if it is to be found at all, must be found in this world. Meaning may be found in youth or adulthood or old age if one is engaged in creative play. “The more youth is realized in life, the more valuable it is, and if a person dies young, however long he may have lived, his life has had meaning.” [ii]

Summary – The meaning of life is found in joyful play, in doing what one really wants to do.

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[i] Mortiz Schlick, “On the Meaning of Life” in The Meaning of Life , ed. E.D. Klemke and Cahn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 62. [ii] Mortiz Schlick, “On the Meaning of Life,” 71.

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The malady of infinite aspiration (Durkheim’s anomie) is the meaning of life. Life extension as play, contra Pindar/Camus. Sisyphus’ grandson, Bellerophon’s infinite Olympian aspiration.

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Essays About Life: Top 5 Examples Plus 7 Prompts

Life envelops various meanings; if you are writing essays about life, discover our comprehensive guide with examples and prompts to help you with your essay.

What is life? You can ask anyone; I assure you, no two people will have the same answer. How we define life relies on our beliefs and priorities. One can say that life is the capacity for growth or the time between birth and death. Others can share that life is the constant pursuit of purpose and fulfillment. Life is a broad topic that inspires scholars, poets, and many others. It stimulates discussions that encourage diverse perspectives and interpretations. 

5 Essay Examples

1. essay on life by anonymous on toppr.com, 2. the theme of life, existence and consciousness by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 3. compassion can save life by anonymous on papersowl.com, 4. a life of consumption vs. a life of self-realization by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 5. you only live once: a motto for life by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 1. what is the true meaning of life, 2. my life purpose, 3. what makes life special, 4. how to appreciate life, 5. books about life, 6. how to live a healthy life, 7. my idea of a perfect life.

“…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.”

The author defines life as something that differentiates man from inorganic matter. It’s an aspect that processes and examines a person’s actions that develop through growth. For some, life is a pain because of failures and struggles, but it’s temporary. For the writer, life’s challenges help us move forward, be strong, and live to the fullest. You can also check out these essays about utopia .

“… Kafka defines the dangers of depending on art for life. The hunger artist expresses his dissatisfaction with the world by using himself and not an external canvas to create his artwork, forcing a lack of separation between the artist and his art. Therefore, instead of the art depending on the audience, the artist depends on the audience, meaning when the audience’s appreciation for work dwindles, their appreciation for the artist diminishes as well, leading to the hunger artist’s death.”

The essay talks about “ A Hunger Artist ” by Franz Kafka, who describes his views on life through art. The author analyzes Kafka’s fictional main character and his anxieties and frustrations about life and the world. This perception shows how much he suffered as an artist and how unhappy he was. Through the essay, the writer effectively explains Kafka’s conclusion that artists’ survival should not depend on their art.

“Compassion is that feeling that we’ve all experienced at some point in our lives. When we know that there is someone that really cares for us. Compassion comes from that moment when we can see the world through another person’s eyes.”

The author is a nurse who believes that to be professional, they need to be compassionate and treat their patients with respect, empathy, and dignity. One can show compassion through small actions such as talking and listening to patients’ grievances. In conclusion, compassion can save a person’s life by accepting everyone regardless of race, gender, etc.

“… A life of self-realization is more preferable and beneficial in comparison with a life on consumption. At the same time, this statement may be objected as person’s consumption leads to his or her happiness.”

The author examines Jon Elster’s theory to find out what makes a person happy and what people should think and feel about their material belongings. The essay mentions a list of common activities that make us feel happy and satisfied, such as buying new things. The writer explains that Elster’s statement about the prevalence of self-realization in consumption will always trigger intense debate.

“Appreciate the moment you’ve been given and appreciate the people you’ve been given to spend it with, because no matter how beautiful or tragic a moment is, it always ends. So hold on a little tighter, smile a little bigger, cry a little harder, laugh a little louder, forgive a little quicker, and love a whole lot deeper because these are the moments you will remember when you’re old and wishing you could rewind time.”

This essay explains that some things and events only happen once in a person’s life. The author encourages teenagers to enjoy the little things in their life and do what they love as much as they can. When they turn into adults, they will no longer have the luxury to do whatever they want.

The author suggests doing something meaningful as a stress reliever, trusting people, refusing to give up on the things that make you happy, and dying with beautiful memories. For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

7 Prompts for Essays About Life

Life encompasses many values and depends on one’s perception. For most, life is about reaching achievements to make themselves feel alive. Use this prompt to compile different meanings of life and provide a background on why a person defines life as they do.

Take Joseph Campbell’s, “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning, and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer,” for example. This quote pertains to his belief that an individual is responsible for giving life meaning. 

For this prompt, share with your readers your current purpose in life. It can be as simple as helping your siblings graduate or something grand, such as changing a national law to make a better world. You can ask others about their life purpose to include in your essay and give your opinion on why your answers are different or similar.

Life is a fascinating subject, as each person has a unique concept. How someone lives depends on many factors, such as opportunities, upbringing, and philosophies. All of these elements affect what we consider “special.”

Share what you think makes life special. For instance, talk about your relationships, such as your close-knit family or best friends. Write about the times when you thought life was worth living. You might also be interested in these essays about yourself .

Life in itself is a gift. However, most of us follow a routine of “wake up, work (or study), sleep, repeat.” Our constant need to survive makes us take things for granted. When we endlessly repeat a routine, life becomes mundane. For this prompt, offer tips on how to avoid a monotonous life, such as keeping a gratitude journal or traveling.

Many literary pieces use life as their subject. If you have a favorite book about life, recommend it to your readers by summarizing the content and sharing how the book influenced your outlook on life. You can suggest more than one book and explain why everyone should read them.

For example, Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” reminds its readers to live in the moment and never fear failure.

To be healthy doesn’t only pertain to our physical condition. It also refers to our mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being. To live a happy and full life, individuals must strive to be healthy in all areas. For this prompt, list ways to achieve a healthy life. Section your essay and present activities to improve health, such as eating healthy foods, talking with friends, etc.

No one has a perfect life, but describe what it’ll be like if you do. Start with the material things, such as your house, clothes, etc. Then, move to how you connect with others. In your conclusion, answer whether you’re willing to exchange your current life for the “perfect life” you described and why.  See our essay writing tips to learn more!

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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What Is the Purpose of Life?

Why are we here here's a reasonable answer..

Updated October 2, 2023 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

• Existence is a cosmic lottery we've won.
• There's no single "correct" answer to life's purpose.
• We are here to evolve, adapt, and grow.
• Happiness is a by-product of fulfilling our purpose.

Disclaimer: I don't claim that what I say is totally "true," because the truth is elusive in this complicated world . Rather, I'm offering some ideas to help perceive the world and ourselves in a manner that opens pathways for change and growth.

The Ultimate Question

As far as most of us know, we only have one life to live. The odds against our existence are, quite literally, beyond comprehension. Out of some cosmic miracle that we don’t appreciate enough, we are here. One chance event after another had to occur for each of us to born into this world. This starts with the Big Bang and includes the countless factors that had to line up for life to evolve on this planet to your great grandparents randomly bumping into one another at a country grocery store.

The fact that we are living and breathing on this big blue marble we call Earth is statistically inconceivable. It might not always feel that way, but if we step back, we can see that this is true. We are all the winners of the biggest … lottery … ever!

Given that we defied all odds to exist, that begs the most important question that philosophers, theologians, and countless others have attempted to answer. We might even consider this The Ultimate Question: What’s the purpose of life? On a related note, how are we to live in a way that fulfills our purpose? Another way to think of this is: if we are the winners of the cosmic lottery, how are we supposed to spend our winnings?

An Answer to the Ultimate Question

“Conan, what is good in life?” Conan: “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.” —Conan, from the movie “Conan the Barbarian”

While everyone is entitled to have an opinion about why we are here and what to do with our lives, I’ll go on the record as disagreeing with Conan’s answer. I, of course, don’t have the answer either. However, I promise that I'm not going to say The Answer to the Ultimate Question is 42 .

Your head might be spinning right now, because I just said that I am going to try to answer The Ultimate Question. However, I’m not arrogant enough to claim that I have The Answer. But I don’t think anyone has The Answer for that matter, although many people claim that they do.

Can you agree with me, even partially, that there are many ideas about the purpose of life? Even if you already believe in One Answer to The Ultimate Question, you still recognize that other people and groups have different answers to the same question. If there were just one, clear, unequivocal answer to The Ultimate Question, wouldn’t we all have the same one without any disagreements? In fact, would there even be an Ultimate Question if we all had the same answer to it? Assuming we can even agree upon the nature and wording of The Ultimate Question, the different answers can’t all be right…or can they? If you disagree with me, you actually agree with me because it proves that finding The Answer to The Ultimate Question is open to debate and different points of view!

I’m going to tell you a little secret about The Ultimate Question: There is no secret, "correct" answer to this question. How could I, or anyone else, have a secret answer to The Ultimate Question that few have stumbled upon? The “right” answer as to the purpose of life there is no single right answer. It would be more accurate to say that there are right “answers.”

Here’s what might really bake your noodle: You already know an answer to The Ultimate Question, but you might not know that you know it. Although I'm telling you what you already know, instead of that being a limitation, consider the possibility that this is where its power resides.

“All secrets are open secrets. Nothing is hidden. Nothing is revealed. People can only be told what they already know. Although they know, they may not be conscious of their knowledge.”—Camden Benares, from “Zen Without Zen Masters”

An Answer to the Purpose of Life

"Why are we here? Because we're here. Roll the bones. Roll the bones."—from the song "Roll the Bones" by Rush

We evolved so that we can live. Thus, we could also say that we live to evolve, so there's a circularity here. Evolution is the process that allowed organisms to survive and thrive. Humans, along with every living animal or plant, owe our existence to it. Our purpose is to "evolve" during our lifetime because that is consistent with our evolutionary purpose. Thus, an answer to The Ultimate Question of "What is the purpose of life?" is that we are here so that we can continue to live, adapt, learn, and grow. A purpose of life, and our purpose, is to continue to evolve.

We Evolved to Evolve

When we think of "evolution" as meaning as a process of learning, adapting, and growing to be more effective and efficient, we see evolution everywhere. Kids learn more advanced skills and concepts in school and this continues on through college and throughout their careers. Growth, in terms of profitability, is one of the primary goals of any business. Technology is always evolving—offering faster internet speeds, more powerful computers, better productivity tools, and more engaging and entertaining experiences. Athletes strive to improve their skills and performances through better nutrition and training methods. They aim to win more championships and set records. Musicians and artists want to become more technically proficient, creative, and successful. Communities and societies not only grow in number, but they try to serve the needs of the people to enable the citizens to live healthier, happier lives. Even with most religions, we seek to grow in our faith—to be a "better" Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jew.

On the biological level, learning recruits the reward systems in the brain so that the learning is reinforced. We evolved to grow and learn ... to become better than we were the day before so that we might survive and thrive. In general, we feel happy when we learn and grow . One could say that this happiness is a purpose of life as well, yet it could also be said to be the by-product of fulfilling our life purpose of learning and growing.

The Takeaway?

What is the purpose of life? An answer (as opposed to The Answer) to The Ultimate Question is that we exist to continue to exist. We evolved to evolve. This is fundamental to every living organism. Inherent to our existence is that we learn, adapt, and grow. Health, happiness, and longevity are the payoffs for this. Since our biological evolution is the foundation of our existence, a purpose of our lives is to continue to "evolve" during our lifetime by learning and growing. Each day, our purpose is to strive to be a little bit better than the day before and to continue this evolutionary process throughout our lifetime.

This purpose in life might sound like a simple, anti-climatic answer to The Ultimate Question, but there's more to this answer than at first glance. Our purpose in life to learn and grow throughout our lifetime also holds the key to how we should live our lives. If you'd like to take the "red pill" and join me as I explore this and other topics, you can follow me down the rabbit hole here: Finding Greater Peace and Joy in Our "Crazy" World.

Mike Brooks, Ph.D. , is a psychologist who specializes in helping parents and families find greater balance in an increasingly hyper-connected world.

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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. Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and morality, they are straightforwardly construed as accounts of which final ends a person ought to realize in order to have a significant existence. Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only in the last 50 years or so that something approaching a distinct field on the meaning of life has been established in analytic philosophy, and it is only in the last 25 years that debate with real depth has appeared. Concomitant with the demise of positivism and of utilitarianism in the post-war era has been the rise of analytical enquiry into non-hedonistic conceptions of value grounded on relatively uncontroversial (but not universally shared) judgments or “intuitions,” including conceptions of meaning in life. English-speaking philosophers can be expected to continue to find life's meaning of interest as they increasingly realize that it is a distinct line of enquiry that admits of rational enquiry to no less a degree than more familiar normative categories such as well-being, right action, and distributive justice.

This survey critically discusses approaches to meaning in life that are prominent in contemporary English-speaking philosophical literature. To provide context, sometimes it mentions other texts, e.g., in Continental philosophy or from before the 20 th century. However, the central aim is to acquaint the reader with recent analytic work on life's meaning and to pose questions about it that are currently worthy of consideration.

When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people often pose one of two questions: “So, what is the meaning of life?” and “What are you talking about?” The literature can be divided in terms of which question it seeks to answer. This discussion begins by addressing works that discuss the latter, abstract question regarding the sense of talk of “life's meaning,” i.e., that aim to clarify what we are asking when we pose the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful. Then it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question. Some accounts of what makes life meaningful provide particular ways to do so, e.g., by making certain achievements (James 2005), developing moral character (Thomas 2005), or learning from relationships with family members (Velleman 2005). However, most recent discussions of meaning in life are attempts to capture in a single principle all the variegated conditions that confer meaning on life. This survey focuses heavily on the articulation and evaluation of these theories of what makes life meaningful. It concludes by examining nihilist views that the conditions necessary for meaning in life do not obtain.

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

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

One part of the field on life's meaning consists of the systematic attempt to clarify what people mean when they ask in virtue of what life has meaning. This section addresses different accounts of the sense of talk of “life's meaning” (and of “significance,” “importance,” and other synonyms). A large majority of those writing on life's meaning deem talk of it centrally to indicate a positive final value that an individual's life can exhibit. So, few believe either that a meaningful life is a neutral quality or that what is of key interest is the meaning of all biological life or of the human species. Most ultimately want to know whether and how the existence of one of us over time has meaning, a certain property that is desirable for its own sake.

Beyond drawing the distinction between the life of an individual and that of a group, there has been very little discussion of life as the bearer of meaning. For instance, is the individual's life best understood biologically ( qua human) or not (person) (Flanagan 1996)?  And if an individual is loved from afar, can it affect the meaningfulness of her “life” (Brogaard and Smith 2005, 449)?

Returning to topics on which there is consensus, most writing on meaning believe that it comes in degrees such that some periods of life are more meaningful than others and that some lives as a whole are more meaningful than others (perhaps contra Britton 1969, 192). Note that one can coherently hold the view that some people's lives are less meaningful than others, or even meaningless, and still maintain that people have an equal moral status. Consider a consequentialist view according to which each individual counts for one in virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life (cf. Railton 1984), or a Kantian view that says that people have an intrinsic worth in virtue of their capacity for autonomous choices, where meaning is a function of the exercise of this capacity (Nozick 1974, ch. 3). On both views, morality could counsel an agent to help people with relatively meaningless lives, at least if the condition is not of their choosing.

Another uncontroversial element of the sense of “meaningfulness” is that it connotes a good that is conceptually distinct from happiness or rightness. First, to ask whether someone's life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is happy or well off. A life in an experience or virtual reality machine could conceivably be happy but is not a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness, and, furthermore, one's life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one's welfare, e.g., by helping others at the expense of oneself. Second, asking whether a person's existence is significant is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there seem to be ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with morality, for instance making a scientific discovery. Of course, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if (or even because) it were immoral or unhappy, particularly given Aristotelian conceptions of these disvalues. However, that is to posit a synthetic relationship between the concepts, and is far from indicating that speaking of “meaning in life” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding welfare or morality, which is what I am denying here. My point is that the question of what makes a life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the question of what makes a life well off or morally upright, even if it turns out that the best answer to the question of meaning appeals to an answer to one of these other evaluative questions.

If talk about meaning in life is not by definition talk about welfare or morality, then what is it about? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One answer is that a meaningful life is one that by definition has achieved choice-worthy purposes (Nielsen 1964) or involves satisfaction upon having done so (Wohlgennant 1981). However, this analysis seems too broad for being unable to distinguish the concept of a meaningful life from that of a moral life, which could equally involve attaining worthwhile ends and feeling good upon doing so. We seem to need an account of which purposes are relevant to meaning, with some suggesting they are purposes that not only have a positive value, but also render a life coherent (Markus 2003), make it intelligible (Thomson 2003, 8-13), or transcend one's animal nature (Levy 2005), all of which connote something different from morality and also happiness.

Now, it might be that a focus on any kind of purpose is too narrow for ruling out the logical possibility that meaning could inhere in certain actions, experiences, states, or relationships that have not been adopted as ends and willed and that perhaps even could not be, e.g., being an immortal offshoot of an unconscious, spiritual force that grounds the physical universe, as in Hinduism. In addition, the above purpose-based analyses exclude as not being about life's meaning some of the most widely read texts that purport to be about it, namely, Jean-Paul Sartre's (1948) existentialist account of meaning being constituted by whatever one chooses, and Richard Taylor's (1970, ch. 18) discussion of Sisyphus being able to acquire meaning in his life merely by having his strongest desires satisfied. These are prima facie accounts of meaning in life, but do not necessarily involve the attainment of purposes that foster coherence, intelligibility or transcendence.

The latter problem also faces the alternative suggestion that talk of “life's meaning” is not necessarily about purposes, but is rather just a matter of referring to goods that are qualitatively superior, worthy of love and devotion, and appropriately awed (Taylor 1989, ch. 1). It is implausible to think that whatever choices one ends up making or whichever desires one happens to rank highly fit these criteria.

Although relatively few have addressed the question of whether there exists a single, primary sense of “life's meaning,” the inability to find one so far might suggest that none exists. In that case, it could be that the field is united in virtue of addressing certain overlapping but not equivalent ideas that have family resemblances (Metz 2001). Perhaps when one of us speaks of “meaning in life,” we have in mind one of these ideas: certain conditions that are worthy of great pride or admiration, values that warrant devotion and love, qualities that make a life intelligible, or ends apart from subjective satisfaction and moral duty that are the most choice-worthy.

As the field reflects more on the sense of “life's meaning,” it should try to ascertain whether there is more unity to it than mere family resemblance. And when doing so it should be careful to differentiate the concept of life's meaning from other, closely related ideas. For instance, the concept of a worthwhile life is not identical to that of a meaningful one (Baier 1997, ch. 5). One would not be conceptually confused to claim that a meaningless life full of animal pleasures is most (or even alone) worth living. Furthermore, talk of a “meaningless life” does not simply connote the concept of an absurd (Nagel 1970; Feinberg 1980), unreasonable (Baier 1997, ch. 5), futile (Trisel 2002), or wasted (Kamm 2003, 210-14) life.

Fortunately the field does not need an extremely precise analysis of the concept of life's meaning (or definition of the phrase “life's meaning”) in order to make progress on the substantive question of what life's meaning is. Knowing that meaningfulness analytically concerns a variable and gradient final good in a person's life that is conceptually distinct from happiness, rightness, and worthwhileness provides a certain amount of common ground. The rest of this discussion addresses attempts to theoretically capture the nature of this good. 

2. Supernaturalism

Most English speaking philosophers writing on meaning in life are trying to develop and evaluate theories, i.e., fundamental and general principles that are meant to capture all the particular ways that a life could obtain meaning. These theories are standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, i.e., in terms of which kinds of properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are views that meaning in life must be constituted by a certain relationship with a spiritual realm. If God or a soul does not exist, or if they exist but one fails to have the right relationship with them, then supernaturalism—or the Western version of it (on which I focus)—entails that one's life is meaningless. In contrast, naturalist theories are views that meaning can obtain in a world as known solely by science. Here, although meaning could accrue from a divine realm, certain ways of living in a purely physical universe would be sufficient for it. Note that there is logical space for a non-naturalist theory that meaning is a function of abstract properties that are neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been paid to this possibility in the Anglo-American literature (Williams 1999; Audi 2005).

Supernaturalist thinkers in the monotheistic tradition are usefully divided into those with God-centered views and soul-centered views. The former take some kind of connection with God (understood to be a spiritual person who is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful and who is the ground of the physical universe) to constitute meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal, spiritual substance). The latter deem having a soul and putting it into a certain state to be what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Of course, many supernaturalists believe that certain relationships with God and a soul are jointly necessary and sufficient for a significant existence. However, the simpler view is common, and often arguments proffered for the more complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler view.

The most widely held and influential God-based account of meaning in life is that one's existence is more significant, the better one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one's life is meaningful to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in the particular way God wants one to do so. Fulfilling God's purpose (and doing so freely and intentionally) is the sole source of meaning, with the existence of an afterlife not necessary for it (Brown 1971; Levine 1987; Cottingham 2003). If a person failed to do what God intends him to do with his life, then, on the current view, his life would be meaningless.

“Purpose theorists” differ over what it is about God's purpose that makes it uniquely able to confer meaning on human lives. Some argue that God's purpose could be the sole source of invariant moral rules, where a lack of such would render our lives nonsensical (Craig 1994; Cottingham 2003, 2005, ch. 3). However, Euthyphro problems arguably plague this rationale; God's purpose for us must be of a particular sort for our lives to obtain meaning by fulfilling it (as is often pointed out, serving as food for intergalactic travelers won't do), which suggests that there is a standard external to God's purpose that determines what the content of God's purpose ought to be. In addition, critics argue that a universally applicable and binding moral code is not necessary for meaning in life, even if the act of helping others is. Other purpose theorists contend that having been created by God for a reason would be the only way that our lives could avoid being contingent (Craig 1994; cf. Haber 1997). But it is unclear whether God's arbitrary will would avoid contingency, or whether his non-arbitrary will would avoid contingency anymore than a deterministic physical world. Furthermore, the literature is still unclear what contingency is and why it is a deep problem. Still other purpose theorists maintain that our lives would have meaning only insofar as they were intentionally fashioned by a creator, thereby obtaining meaning of the sort that an art-object has (Gordon 1983). Here, though, freely choosing to do any particular thing would not be necessary for meaning, and everyone's life would have an equal degree of meaning, which are both counterintuitive implications. Are all these criticisms sound? Is there a promising reason for thinking that fulfilling God's (as opposed to any human's) purpose is what constitutes meaning in life?

Not only does each of these versions of the purpose theory have specific problems, but they all face this shared objection: if God assigned us a purpose, God would degrade us and hence undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the purpose (Baier 1957, 118-20; Murphy 1982, 14-15; Singer 1996, 29). This objection goes back at least to Jean-Paul Sartre (1948, p. 45), and there are many replies to it in the literature that have yet to be assessed (e.g., Hepburn 1965, 271-73; Brown 1971, 20-21; Davis 1986, 155-56; Hanfling 1987, 45-46; Moreland 1987, 129; Walker 1989; Metz 2000, 297-302; Jacquette 2001, 20-21).

Robert Nozick presents a God-centered theory that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite (Nozick 1981, ch. 6; Nozick 1989, chs. 15-16; see also Cooper 2005). The basic idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning. So, if one's life is meaningful, it might be so in virtue of being married to a person, who is important. And, being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. And this work must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful finite conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something infinite, a being so all-encompassing that it need not (indeed, cannot) go beyond itself to obtain meaning from anything else. And that is God. The standard objection to this rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition; perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, or obtain its meaning by being related to something beautiful, autonomous or otherwise valuable for its own sake (but not meaningful).

The purpose- and infinity-based rationales are the two most common instances of God-centered theory in the literature, and the naturalist can point out that they arguably share a common problem: a purely physical world seems able to do the job for which God is purportedly necessary. Nature seems able to ground a universal morality and the sort of final value from which meaning might spring. And other God-based views seem to suffer from this same problem. For two examples, some claim that God must exist in order for there to be a just world, where a world in which the bad do well and the good fare poorly would render our lives senseless (Craig 1994; cf. Cottingham 2003, pt. 3), and others maintain that God's remembering all of us with love is alone what would confer significance on our lives (Hartshorne 1984; Hartshorne 1996). However, the naturalist will point out that an impersonal Karmic force could justly distribute penalties and rewards in the way a retributive personal judge would, and that actually living together in loving relationships would seem to confer more meaning on life than a loving fond remembrance.

A second problem facing all God-based views is the existence of apparent counterexamples. If we think of the stereotypical lives of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Pablo Picasso, they seem meaningful even if we suppose there is no all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good spiritual person who is the ground of the physical world. Even religiously inclined philosophers find this hard to deny (Quinn 2000, 58; Audi 2005), though some of them suggest that a supernatural realm is necessary for a “deep” or “ultimate” meaning (Nozick 1981, 618; Craig 1994, 42). What is the difference between a deep meaning and a shallow one? And why think a spiritual existence is necessary for the former?

At this point, the supernaturalist could usefully step back and reflect on what it might be about God that would make Him uniquely able to confer meaning in life, perhaps as follows from the perfect being theological tradition. For God to be solely responsible for any significance in our lives, God must have certain qualities that cannot be found in the natural world, these qualities must be qualitatively superior to any goods possible in a physical universe, and they must be what ground meaning in it. Here, the supernaturalist could argue that meaning depends on the existence of a perfect being, where perfection requires properties such as atemporality, simplicity and immutability that are possible only in a spiritual realm (Metz 2000; cf. Morris 1992; contra Brown 1971 and Hartshorne 1996). Perhaps meaning would come from loving a perfect being or from orienting one's life toward it in other ways such as imitating it or perhaps even fulfilling its purpose.

Although this might be a promising strategy for a God-centered theory, it faces a serious dilemma. On the one hand, in order for God to be the sole source of meaning, God must be utterly unlike us; for the more God were like us, the more reason there would be to think we could obtain meaning from ourselves, absent God. On the other hand, the more God is utterly unlike us, the less clear it is how we could obtain meaning by relating to Him. How can one love a being that cannot change? How can one imitate such a being? Could an immutable, atemporal, simple being even have purposes? Could it truly be a person? And why think an utterly perfect being is necessary for meaning? Why would not a very good but imperfect being confer some meaning?

Recall that a soul-centered theory is the view that meaning in life comes from relating in a certain way to an immortal, spiritual substance that supervenes on one's body when it is alive and that will forever outlive its death. If one lacks a soul, or if one has a soul but relates to it in the wrong way, then one's life is meaningless. There are two prominent arguments for a soul-based perspective.

The first one is often expressed by laypeople and is suggested by the work of Leo Tolstoy (1884; see also Hanfling 1987, 22-24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Tolstoy argues that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that nothing is worth doing if nothing one does will make a permanent difference to the world, and that doing so requires having an immortal, spiritual self. Many of course question whether having an infinite effect is necessary for meaning (e.g., Schmidtz 2001; Audi 2005, 354-55). Others point out that one need not be immortal in order to have an infinite effect (Levine 1987, 462), for God's eternal remembrance of one's mortal existence would be sufficient for that. 

The other major rationale for a soul-based theory of life's meaning is that a soul is necessary for perfect justice, which, in turn, is necessary for a meaningful life. Life seems nonsensical when the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, at least supposing there is no other world in which these injustices will be rectified, whether by God or by Karma. Something like this argument can be found in the Biblical chapter Ecclesiastes , and it continues to be defended (Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, like the previous rationale, the inferential structure of this one seems weak; even if an afterlife were required for just outcomes, it is not obvious why an eternal afterlife should be thought necessary (Perrett 1986, 220).

Work has been done to try to make the inferences of these two arguments stronger, and the basic strategy has been to appeal to the value of perfection (Metz 2003a). Perhaps the Tolstoian reason why one must live forever in order to make the relevant permanent difference is an agent-relative need to honor an infinite value, something qualitatively higher than the worth of, say, pleasure. And maybe the reason why immortality is required in order to mete out just deserts is that rewarding the virtuous requires satisfying their highest free and informed desires, one of which would be for eternal flourishing of some kind. While far from obviously sound, these arguments at least provide some reason for thinking that immortality is necessary to satisfy the major premise about what is required for meaning.

However, both arguments are still plagued by a problem facing the original versions; even if they show that meaning depends on immortality, they do not yet show that it depends on having a soul. If one has a soul, then one is by definition immortal, but it is not true that if one is immortal, then one necessarily has a soul. Perhaps being able to upload one's consciousness into an infinite succession of different bodies in an everlasting universe would count as an instance of immortality without a soul. Such a possibility would not require an individual to have an immortal spiritual substance (imagine that when in between bodies, the information constitutive of one's consciousness were temporarily stored in a computer). What reason is there to think that one must have a soul in particular for life to be significant?

The most promising reason seems to be one that takes us beyond the simple version of soul-centered theory to the more complex view that both God and a soul constitute meaning. The best justification for thinking that one must have a soul in order for one's life to be significant seems to be that significance comes from uniting with God in a spiritual realm such as Heaven, a view espoused by Thomas Aquinas, Leo Tolstoy (1884), and contemporary religious thinkers (e.g., Craig 1994). Another possibility is that meaning comes from honoring what is divine within oneself, i.e., a soul (Swenson 1949).

As with God-based views, naturalist critics offer counterexamples to the claim that a soul or immortality of any kind is necessary for meaning. Great works, whether they be moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, would seem to confer meaning on one's life regardless of whether one will live forever. Critics maintain that soul-centered theorists are seeking too high a standard for appraising the meaning of people's lives (Baier 1957, 124-29; Baier 1997, chs. 4-5; Trisel 2002; Trisel 2004); they are requiring perfection, whether it be, as above, a perfect object to honor, a perfectly just reward to enjoy, or a perfect being with which to commune. However, if indeed soul-centered theory ultimately relies on claims about meaning turning on perfection, such a view is attractive at least for being simple, and rival views have yet to specify in a principled and thoroughly defended way where to draw the line at less than perfection. What less than ideal amount of value is sufficient for a life to count as “meaningful”?

Critics of soul-based views maintain not merely that immortality is not necessary for meaning in life, but also that it is sufficient for a meaningless life. One influential argument is that an immortal life, whether spiritual or physical, could not avoid becoming boring, rendering life pointless (Williams 1973; Ellin 1995, 311-12; Belshaw 2005, 82-91). The most common reply is that immortality need not get boring (Fischer 1994; Wisnewski 2005). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom or a lack of positive engagement in what one is doing is truly sufficient for meaningless (Metz 2003b, 63-67). Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make.

Another argument that being immortal would be sufficient to make our lives insignificant is that persons who cannot die could not exhibit certain virtues (Nussbaum 1989). For instance, they could not promote justice of any important sort, be benevolent to any significant degree, or exhibit courage of any kind that matters, since life and death issues would not be at stake. Critics reply that even if these virtues would not be possible, there are other virtues that could be. And of course it is not obvious that meaning-conferring justice, benevolence and courage would not be possible if we were immortal, perhaps if we were not always aware that we could not die or if our indestructible souls could still be harmed by virtue of intense pain, frustrated ends, and repetitive lives.

There are other, related arguments maintaining that awareness of immortality would have the effect of removing meaning from life, say, because our lives would lack a sense of preciousness and urgency (Lenman 2004) or because external rather than internal factors would then dictate their course (Wollheim 1984, 266). Note that the target here is belief in an eternal afterlife, and not immortality itself, and so I merely mention these rationales.

3. Naturalism

I now address views that even if there is no spiritual realm, meaning in life is possible, at least for many people. Among those who believe that a significant existence can be had in a world as known by science, there is debate about two things: the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are any standards for meaning that are invariant among human beings. Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subjective, i.e., depends on an individual's pro-attitudes such as desires, ends, and choices. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she believes it to be or seeks it out. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards of meaning because meaning is mind-independent, i.e., is a real property that exists regardless of being the object of anyone's mental states. Here, something is meaningful at least in part because of its intrinsic nature, independent of whether it is believed to be meaningful or sought. There is logical space for an intersubjective theory according to which there are invariant standards of meaning that are constituted by what all human beings would agree upon from a communal standpoint (Darwall 1983, chs. 11-12), but it is not much of a player in the field and so I set it aside in what follows.

According to this view, meaning in life varies from person to person, depending on each one's variable mental states. Common instances are views that one's life is more meaningful, the more one gets what one happens to want strongly, the more one achieves one's highly ranked goals, or the more one does what one believes to be really important. Lately, one influential subjectivist has maintained that the relevant mental state is caring or loving, so that life is meaningful just to the extent that one cares about or loves something (Frankfurt 1982; Frankfurt 2002; Frankfurt 2004).

Subjectivism was dominant for much of the 20 th century when pragmatism, positivism, existentialism, noncognitivism, and Humeanism were quite influential (James 1900; Ayer 1947; Sartre 1948; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Hare 1972; Williams 1976; Klemke 1981). However, in the last quarter of the century, “reflective equilibrium” became a widely accepted argumentative procedure, whereby more controversial normative claims are justified by virtue of entailing and explaining less controversial normative claims that do not command universal acceptance. Such a method has been used to defend the existence of objective value, and, as a result, subjectivism about meaning has lost its dominance over the past thirty years.

Those who continue to hold subjectivism remain suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Frankfurt 2002, 250; Trisel 2002, 73, 79; Trisel 2004, 378-79). Theorists are primarily moved to accept subjectivism because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are sure that value in general and meaning in particular exists, but do not see how it could be grounded in something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural, the non-natural, or the supernatural. In contrast to these possibilities, it appears straightforward to account for what is meaningful in terms of what people find meaningful or what people want out of life. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There are two other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism. One is that subjectivism is plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one (Frankfurt 1982). If a person's life is significant insofar as she is true to herself or her deepest nature, then we have some reason to believe that meaning simply is a function of satisfying certain desires held by the individual or realizing certain ends of hers. Another argument is that meaning intuitively comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in an activity or experience (Frankfurt 1982). Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective element involved, that is, because of the concentration and engrossment. However, critics maintain that both of these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value both in realizing oneself and in losing oneself (Taylor 1992, esp. ch. 4). One is not really being true to oneself if one intentionally harms others (Dahl 1987, 12), successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one's head (Taylor 1992, 36), or lives in an experience machine (Nozick 1974, 42-45), and one is also not losing oneself in a meaning-conferring way if one is consumed by these things. There seem to be certain actions, relationships, states, and experiences that one ought to concentrate on or be engrossed in, if meaning is to accrue.

So says the objectivist, but many subjectivists also feel the pull of the point. Paralleling replies in the literature on well-being, subjectivists often respond by contending that no or very few individuals would desire to do such intuitively trivial things, at least after a certain idealized process of reflection (e.g., Griffin 1981). More promising, perhaps, is the attempt to ground value not in the responses of an individual, but in those of a community (Brogaard and Smith 2005) or in those of all human persons from a certain standpoint (Darwall 1983, chs. 11-12). Do these intersubjective moves avoid the counterexamples? If so, do they do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning is constituted by something physical independent of the mind about which we can have correct or incorrect beliefs. Obtaining the object of some variable pro-attitude is not sufficient for meaning, on this view. Instead, there are certain inherently worthwhile or finally valuable conditions that confer meaning for anyone, neither merely because they are wanted, chosen, or believed to be meaningful, nor because they somehow are grounded in God.

Morality and creativity are widely held instances of actions that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow are not. Objectivism is thought to be the best explanation for these respective kinds of judgments: the former are actions that are meaningful regardless of whether any arbitrary agent (including God) believes them to be or seeks to engage in them, while the latter actions simply lack this kind of value and cannot obtain it if someone believes them to have it or engages in them. To obtain meaning in one's life, one ought to pursue the former actions and avoid the latter ones. Of course, meta-ethical debates about the nature of value are again relevant here.

A “pure” objectivist is someone who thinks that being the object of a person's mental states plays no role in making that person's life meaningful. Relatively few objectivists are pure, so construed. That is, a large majority of them believe that a life is more meaningful not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of subjective ones such as cognition, affection, and emotion. Most commonly held is the hybrid view captured by Susan Wolf's pithy slogan: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf 1997a, 211; see also Hepburn 1965; Kekes 1986; Wiggins 1988; Wolf 1997b; Dworkin 2000, ch. 6; Kekes 2000; Raz 2001, ch. 1; Schmidtz 2001; Wolf 2002; Brogaard and Smith 2005; Starkey 2006). This theory implies that no meaning accrues to one's life if one believes in, is satisfied by, or cares about a project that is not worthwhile, or if one takes up a worthwhile project but fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, or care about it. Different versions of this theory will have different accounts of the appropriate mental states and of worthwhileness.

Pure objectivists will of course question whether subjective attraction plays any role in conferring meaning on life. For instance, utilitarians with respect to meaning (as opposed to morality) are pure objectivists, for they claim that certain actions confer meaning on life regardless of the agent's reactions to them. On this view, the more one benefits others, the more meaningful one's life, regardless of whether one enjoys benefiting them, believes they should be aided, works particularly hard to help them, etc. (Singer 1993, ch. 12; Singer 1995, chs. 10-11; Singer 1996, ch. 4). Midway between pure objectivism and the hybrid theory is the view that having certain propositional attitudes toward finally good activities would enhance the meaning of life without being necessary for it (Metz 2003b, 63-67; Audi 2005, 344). For instance, would a stereotypical Mother Teresa who is bored by her charity work have a significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she were excited by it?

There have been several attempts to theoretically capture what all objectively attractive, inherently worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they bear on meaning. Some believe that they can all be captured as actions that are creative (Taylor 1987), while others maintain that they are all morally right or exhibit virtue (Kant 1791, pt. 2; cf. Pogge 1997). Most objectivists deem these respective aesthetic and ethical theories to be too narrow. It seems to many not only that creativity and morality are independent sources of meaning, but also that there are sources in addition to these two. For just a few examples, consider making an intellectual discovery, rearing children with love, playing music, and developing superior athletic ability.

So, in the literature one finds a variety of principles that aim to capture all these and other (apparent) objective grounds of meaning. One can read the perfectionist tradition as including objective theories of what a significant existence is, even if their proponents do not frequently use contemporary terminology to express this. Consider Aristotle's account of the good life for a human being as one that fulfills its natural purpose qua rational, Marx's vision of a distinctly human history characterized by less alienation and more autonomy, culture, and community, and Nietzsche's ideal of a being with a superlative degree of power, creativity, and complexity. More recently, some have maintained that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that: transcend the limits of the self (Nozick 1981, ch. 6; Nozick 1989, chs. 15-16); comprise human excellences (Bond 1983, chs. 6, 8); maximally promote non-hedonist goods such as friendship, beauty, and knowledge (Railton 1984); exercise or develop rational nature in exceptional ways (Hurka 1993; Gewirth 1998, ch. 5); substantially improve the quality of life of people and animals (Singer 1993, ch. 12; Singer 1995, chs. 10-11; Singer 1996, ch. 4); overcome challenges that one recognizes to be important at one's stage of history (Dworkin 2000, ch. 6); are positively oriented toward final value beyond one's animal self (Metz 2003b; Levy 2005); or constitute rewarding experiences in the life of the agent or the lives of others the agent affects (Audi 2005).

One major test of these theories is whether they capture all experiences, states, relationships, and actions that intuitively make life meaningful. The more counterexamples of apparently meaningful conditions that a principle entails lack meaning, the less justified the principle. The field lacks any consensus about which principle, if any, accounts for commonsensical judgments about meaning to an adequate, convincing degree. Indeed, some believe the search for such a principle to be pointless (Wolf 1997b, 12-13; Kekes 2000; Schmidtz 2001). Are these pluralists correct, or does the field have a good chance of discovering a single, general idea that grounds all the particular ways to acquire meaning in life?

Another important way to criticize these theories is more comprehensive: all are aggregative or additive, objectionably reducing life to a “container” of meaningful conditions (Brännmark 2003, 330). As with the growth of “organic unity” views in the context of debates about intrinsic value, it is becoming common to think that life as a whole (or at least stretches of it) can affect its meaning apart from the amount of meaning in its parts. For instance, a life that has lots of beneficent and otherwise intuitively meaning-conferring conditions but that is also extremely repetitive (à la the movie Groundhog Day ) is less than maximally meaningful (Taylor 1987). Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2003, 210-14). And a life in which its meaningless parts cause its meaningful parts to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue of this causal pattern or being a “good story” (Fischer 2005). Some even maintain the extreme view that the only bearer of meaning is life as a whole, so that there are strictly speaking no parts that are meaningful in themselves (Brännmark 2003; Levinson 2004). What are the ultimate bearers of meaning? What are all the fundamentally different ways (if any) that holism can affect meaning? Are they all a function of narrativity, life-stories, and artistic self-expression, or are there holistic facets of life's meaning that are not a matter of such literary concepts?

So far, I have addressed theoretical accounts of what confers meaning on life, which obviously assume that some lives are in fact meaningful. However, there are nihilistic perspectives that question this assumption.

One straightforward rationale for nihilism is the combination of supernaturalism about what makes life meaningful and atheism about whether God exists. If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither exists, then you are a nihilist, someone who denies that life has meaning. Albert Camus is famous for expressing this kind of perspective, suggesting that the lack of an afterlife and of a rational, divinely ordered universe undercuts the possibility of meaning (Camus 1955; cf. Ecclesiastes ).

Interestingly, the most common rationales for nihilism do not appeal to supernaturalism, at least not explicitly. The idea shared among many nihilists is that there is something inherent to the human condition that prevents meaning from arising, even if God exists. For instance, some nihilists make the Schopenhauerian claim that our lives lack meaning because we are invariably dissatisfied; either we have not yet obtained what we seek, or we have obtained it and are bored (Martin 1993). Critics tend to reply that at least a number of human lives do have the requisite amount of satisfaction required for meaning, supposing some is (Blackburn 2001, 74-77).

Other nihilists claim that life would be meaningless if there were no invariant moral rules that could be fully justified—the world would be nonsensical if, in Dostoyevskian terms, “everything were permitted”—and that such rules cannot exist for persons who can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, ch. 1). While a number of philosophers agree that a universally binding and warranted morality is necessary for meaning in life (Kant 1791; Tännsjö 1988; Jacquette 2001, ch. 1; Cottingham 2003; Cottingham 2005, ch. 3), some do not (Margolis 1990; Ellin 1995, 325-27). Furthermore, contemporary work in meta-ethics has led many to believe that such a moral system exists.

The most influential rationale for nihilism is Thomas Nagel's invocation of the external standpoint that purportedly reveals our lives to be unimportant (Nagel 1986; cf. Dworkin 2000, ch. 6). According to Nagel, we are capable of comprehending the world from a variety of standpoints that are either internal or external. The most internal perspective would be a particular human being's desire at a given instant, with a somewhat less internal perspective being one's interests over a life-time, and an even less internal perspective being the interests of one's family or community. In contrast, the most external perspective, an encompassing standpoint utterly independent of one's particularity, would be, to use Henry Sidgwick's phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is, the standpoint that considers the interests of all sentient beings at all times and in all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one's finite—and even downright puny—impact on the world, little of one's life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth over an approximately 70 year span just does not amount to much, when considering the billions of years and likely trillions of beings that are a part of space-time.

Very few accept the authority of the (most) external standpoint (Ellin 1995, 316-17; Blackburn 2001, 79-80; Schmidtz 2001) or the implications that Nagel believes it has for the meaning of our lives (Quinn 2000, 65-66; Singer 1993, 333-34; Wolf 1997b, 19-21). However, the field could use much more discussion of this rationale, given its persistence in human thought. It is plausible to think, with Nagel, that part of what it is to be a person is to be able to take up an external standpoint. However, what precisely is a standpoint? Must we invariably adopt one standpoint or the other, or is it possible not to take one up at all? Is there a reliable way to ascertain which standpoint is normatively more authoritative than others? These and the other questions posed in this survey still lack conclusive answers, making the field of life's meaning tantalizingly open for substantial contributions.

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The Meaning of Life, Essay Example

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The meaning of life is one of the fundamental questions of philosophy. But what are the presuppositions that frame this question? On the one hand, the very question “what is the meaning of life?” means that life poses us with a problem about its meaning. This is to say that even if we accept a nihilistic position and state that life has no meaning, there is still the appearance of this question of meaning within a meaningless existence. This ties into a second presupposition at stake in this question: what do we intend by the concept of meaning and what do we intend by the concept of life? It would seem that on an intuitive level, when we talk about life, we are talking about any living thing. But is a living thing only something material, or can we consider immaterial phenomena, such as souls, as also living? From another perspective, when we talk about the meaning of life, are we therefore talking about the meaning of all life, such as plants and animals, or are we just talking about human beings? Are we discussing a multitude of meanings, for example, a specific meaning for a plant and a specific meaning for a human being, or are we discussing a singular meaning to which we belong?

In order to provide an entrance-way into these questions, I would like to use this opening discussion to set the framework for my approach: I would like to use the scientific tool of Ockham’s razor to minimize the number of propositions. When we are talking about meaning, therefore, we are talking about a singular meaning for everything. To say that everyone has their own meaning, in other words, is a rejection of the concept of meaning, because it takes on so many possible definitions that the particularity of the concept loses its force. At the same time, when we use the term life, I would like to mention all forms of life, human, plant, animal, and even possible immaterial forms of life, such as the soul. In other words, the meaning of life is one of the big questions of philosophy and therefore should have a universal answer, precisely because the extent of this question itself is one that is universal: in other words, the very power of this question lies in its apparent universality. My meaning of life cannot be different from your meaning of life, in other words, for the question to not merely be trivial: we need to think about a common meaning for all life to avoid this problem of triviality.

The question of meaning is often related to purpose. Why are we here? There is a reason for this presupposed in the question. From one perspective, I would like to believe that there is a purpose and a meaning, precisely for the reason stated above: even if we accept a nihilistic world in which there is no meaning and there is no purpose, we still have to accept that the question of meaning and purpose exists. In other words, if life is meaningless, where does the question of the meaning of life even come from? Is it merely an error of our consciousness? Is it merely a linguistic mistake, an illusion? If we cannot explain how the question emerges against a meaningless backdrop of nihilism, I think then we have to assume that the meaningless backdrop is flawed, and we have to pursue the question of meaning itself.

If our concept of the question of meaning and purpose therefore infers a meaning or purpose because of the very possibility of asking the question, and, furthermore, if this question must be universal, considering the totality of life, for the question itself to have any meaning, we must look for equally universal answers to this question. Here, I believe that the concept of happiness can play an important role. Happiness, of course, is also a notoriously difficult term to define. But we can approach it from its negative element: there are people who are unhappy, who are suffering. Certainly, there may be also some people who think they are happy but are not – in this case, they may be happy because they live in an illusion. But if we accept that the meaning of life is the same for all, that it is universal, then we can also make the proposition that happiness is also universal – namely, if unhappiness exists in the world and the meaning of life is universal then life as a whole must be driven towards happiness as opposed to the happiness of individuals.

This helps elucidate a possible definition of the meaning and purpose of life. We accept that we all have the same purpose and meaning for this question itself to have any meaning. Therefore, the concept of meaning holds for us all. Happiness is something desired, but not possessed by all. Accordingly, the meaning of life would be the movement to this universal happiness, the happiness of the creation as a whole. This is not an absurd idea and finds analogues in religious and secular thought. For example, in Christian philosophy as well as Islamic philosophy, we find the idea of the resurrection of the world and the justice for all. In Marxist philosophy, we find the common task of eliminating inequality in the world to create a happiness for all. In other words, our meaning of life is a process, a type of goal that we move towards that must be universal in its scope, since it addresses the fate of the universe as such and an attempt to improve life in all its forms.

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