"The Meaning of Life is the preeminent anthology of classic and contemporary readings on the meaning of life and the philosophy of death. It offers a rich and profound discussion of some of the most fundamental questions of humanistic inquiry. What was already a stellar collection of essays is now even better in this new edition."—Lawrence Nolan, California State University, Long Beach
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We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only transient phenomena in a vast universe. Our lives are more or less meaningful in this sense due to the difference in value for ourselves and others we intentionally create while leading them. These inequalities are morally unjustifiable because they are ultimately due to factors beyond our responsibility and control. But from the point of view of eternity these differences in meaningfulness and value dwindle to insignificance, and this offers some consolation for the unjustifiable inequalities.
While human beings have puzzled over the meaning of their lives for thousands of years, the issue became more challenging in the Western world as Christianity lost ground to modern science and philosophy. According to a traditional Christian view of the world, our lives are embedded in a divine scheme in which they are mere preparation for an eternal afterlife. A human being is Imago Dei, made in the image of the creator of the universe, and the Earth is taken to be the centre of the universe. According to modern science and philosophy, we are instead as mortal as the non-human animals from which we have descended and with which we share the world, and this planet is a vanishingly small, perishable speck in an infinite universe. Eventually, this planet will be gone without a trace.
When people are forced to spend most of their time doing boring work in order to earn their livelihood, they might find their lives meaningless in comparison to the lives of people who are fortunate enough to be in a position to spend a lot of their time on interesting or pleasant pursuits. But when many people ask the general question whether any human life can have meaning, we suggest that what they ask for is what role or purpose their lives have in a cosmic plan or drama. This is however a question that presupposes that there is some superhuman intelligence devising such a cosmic plan or drama. On a scientific and secular view, our lives can have no meaning in this sense.
According to science, planet Earth is indeed a vanishingly small speck in a huge universe. The conclusion is inescapable that whatever we do, or whatever happens to us, will have virtually no impact on this universe (cf. Nagel 1986: 11.2). We are oblivious to this cosmic perspective while we engage in the pursuits of everyday life, but when we sit back and contemplate our lives sub specie aeternitatis, this vast vista opens up and makes our lives appear transient and futile. However successful we are in our undertakings, however fulfilled and influential they make us, we along with all our achievements are ephemeral on a cosmic time-scale; eventually all traces of us will be erased. Thus, it seems that from this detached point of view from above our lives cannot but be meaningless. We can suppress this insight by indulging headlong in what our earthly lives have to offer but, if we are reflective enough, it will now and then creep in on us, and a sense of meaningless is prone to take possession of us. Our ordinary state of mind with all its anxieties and pleasures will then seem like a state of intoxication from which we are sobering up to a cold and bleak reality.
There is a considerable amount of truth in these reflections in light of the cosmic picture, but they are exaggerated. They tend to make the mistaken assumption that the meaning of life is an all-or-nothing matter: either life has meaning or it is meaningless. We instead take up the common suggestion (see e.g. Metz 2013: 4) that there are degrees of meaning: human lives can have more or less meaning. The meaning of life is a scalar notion.
The cosmic perspective which threatens to be wholly destructive of the meaning of human life can then be seen to have a redeeming aspect. Against a boundless eternal backdrop, it will appear that even the most successful human beings achieve comparatively little. Even the most lasting and profound achievements shrink to insignificance in a cosmos which is infinite in space and time. Thus, although it remains true that some human lives are more meaningful than others, the difference in meaning will shrink to next to nothing against the backdrop of a cosmic setting; eternity will almost equalize the differences in meaning between human lives. So, the unjustifiable inequality in respect of meaningfulness will be less glaring, though it will still exist, and the remaining small differences are not a matter of indifference.
The lives of individuals can have such meaning only if they lead (biographical) lives which contain actions and attitudes that have such meaning. In the actual world, these activities must include the activity of keeping themselves biologically alive because individuals cannot conduct any other activities that are meaningful to them unless they have consciousness for which biological life is necessary. This is so because we suggest that an activity that you engage in could have meaning for you only if it intentionally produces some good. The personal meaning your life can have is then dependent on your capacity to have intentions.
However, the condition of an activity intentionally producing goodness cannot be sufficient for it to be meaningful. For an activity might bring about the good effects intended, but in addition intended or unintended bad effects that outweigh them.Footnote 3 We would then be disinclined to say that the activity had meaning. So, to obtain a condition which is both necessary and sufficient for the meaningfulness of a life, we have to maintain something like this: your life can have personal meaning only if you spend your life intentionally producing a net balance of goodness.
Since we cannot see that Wolf has any satisfactory answer to this kind of query, we take it that spending our lives intentionally promoting what is of value to ourselves is sufficient to provide it with personal meaning for ourselves. Spending it intentionally promoting what is of value only to others would also make our lives meaningful. This situation is however barely conceivable, for if we intentionally satisfy our desire to provide what has value for others, we are likely to be aware of this fact to some extent, and feel the pleasure of satisfaction. But our feeling pleasure is probably something we desire; so we also accomplish something that is good for ourselves. In principle, it is however possible for us to lead a life that has personal meaning only in virtue of the value for others it intentionally creates, for example, if we mistakenly believe that our actions have failed to promote the intended value to others. On the other hand, if we spend our lives trying to create what is good only for others, but fail to do so, while being grossly deceived and believing that we have succeeded, our lives could have meaning for us in virtue of the pleasurable satisfaction they contain as the result of our false beliefs.
What about the lives of satanically wicked people who intentionally cause a lot of misery for others? It is possible to distinguish between good and bad meaning, depending on whether the relevant intentions are good or bad, i.e. are directed at goodness or badness for beings (though what we ordinarily mean by the meaning of life is good meaning). This distinction enables us to say that if wicked people intentionally cause some goodness for themselves, but more badness for others, their lives have a personal meaning which is (predominantly) bad.
The value that gives personal meaning to life, then, consists in the intentional fulfilment of desires: value for ourselves if it is the fulfilment of our desires that we ourselves obtain something, and value for others if it is the fulfilment of their desires that they obtain something. But many affirm that in order for the fulfilment of a desire to be of value the desire must satisfy some requirement of correctness. There are different ways of understanding such a requirement. According to one account, a desire is correct and worth satisfying if it is not based on any factual mistakes. This account implies that if you form a desire in light of knowledge of all relevant facts (available), the fulfilment of this desire is of value. According to a stronger account, there are additional, objective norms of conative correctness that a desire must pass in order to be correct. Then even if a desire is formed in light of knowledge of all relevant (available) facts, the fulfilment of it might not be of value.
We have distinguished between the personal meaning your life can have for you in terms of what your activities intentionally produce that is of value to you, and the personal meaning your life can have for others in terms of your intentional contributions to what is of value to others. The meaning of a life for both reasons is a matter of degree. Naturally, differences in the degrees of the meaning of a life in virtue of the value for others it can intentionally produce are much greater than the differences in the degree of the meaning it can have in virtue of the value it intentionally produces for the person leading the life, since the surplus of the good for others that agents can intentionally produce can be so much greater than the good for themselves that they can intentionally produce. 2ff7e9595c
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