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CHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE MEANING OF LIFECHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE MEANING OF LIFE
P H I L O S O P H YP H I L O S O P H Y
A TEXT WITH READINGSA TEXT WITH READINGS
1212thth
EDITIONEDITION
Manual VelasquezManual Velasquez
Chapter 9:Chapter 9:
“Postscript: The Meaning of Life”“Postscript: The Meaning of Life”

Outline of Topics in Chapter 9Outline of Topics in Chapter 9
• 9.1 Does Life Have Meaning?
• 9.2 The Theistic Response to Meaning
• 9.3 Meaning and Human Progress
• 9.4 The Nihilist Rejection of Meaning
• 9.5 Meaning as a Self-Chosen
Commitment

Does Life Have a Meaning?Does Life Have a Meaning?
• This question can be raised by many things:
– The death of a loved one or friend;
– Our sense of our own death;
– External events that force us to ask eventually
whether the things we have devoted our lives to
achieving have any real meaning.
• When in your life have you raised this question?

Does Life Have a Meaning?Does Life Have a Meaning?
• The philosopher and novelist Albert Camus,
argued that the question of the meaning of life is
the only important philosophical question:
– “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem,
and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not
worth living amounts to answering the fundamental
question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not
the world has three dimensions, whether the mind
has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.
These are games; one must first answer [the
fundamental question].”

The Loss of MeaningThe Loss of Meaning
• The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-
1910), living what most people would consider to
be an ideal life, came to feel his life was
pointless and had no meaning.
– In his despair, his rich family life, his art and all else
that served to support his sense of meaning, no
longer felt meaningful.
– “I felt that what I was standing on had given way, that
I had no foundation to stand on, that that which I lived
by no longer existed, and that I had nothing to live
by.”

The Meaning of the QuestionThe Meaning of the Question
• Logical positivists, such as A.J. Ayer and Rudolf
Carnap have argued that the question itself is
literally meaningless.
– They argue that aside from tautologies, the only
meaningful questions are factual questions whose
answers can be found through sense observation.
– Questions about the meaning of life, they claim,
cannot be resolved by sense perception and so have
no meaning.
– But most people today believe that the logical
positivists are mistaken.

Seeking a Larger PurposeSeeking a Larger Purpose
• Of course, many of our most pressing social,
religious, and moral questions seem to make
perfectly good sense yet cannot be resolved
through our senses.
– Thus, the question of the meaning of life could still be
meaningful despite its non-empirical nature.
• Many philosopher have chosen to interpret the
question as asking whether there life has some
larger purpose than merely living.
CHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE MEANINGOF LIFECHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE MEANINGOF LIFE

9.29.2 The TheisticThe Theistic
Response to MeaningResponse to Meaning
• A very common “larger purpose” response to the
question is the theistic response.
– On this view, human life has meaning because
humans are part of a larger plan or order devised by
God.
– Within that plan, all things in the universe have
purpose and value. The purpose of human beings, in
particular, is to know God and be perfectly united with
Him. Thus, one’s life has a meaning because it fits
into that plan.
– How was this view exhibited in Tolstoy’s life?
CHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE MEANINGOF LIFECHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE MEANINGOF LIFE

Many Religious ResponsesMany Religious Responses
• There is, of course, not just one theistic
response: each of the world’s religions provides
its own interpretation of the larger cosmic whole
of which humans are but a part and in terms of
which human life has meaning.
– Some, like Islam, infuse life with meaning in a way
that is much like the theist response of Christianity.
– Other religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, relate
human life to a view of the universe that is very
different from the universe of Christianity.
CHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE OF LIFEMEANINGCHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: THE OF LIFEMEANING

Criticisms of theCriticisms of the
Theistic ResponseTheistic Response
• Critics of the theistic response raise a number of
objections:
1. The response depends on belief in God, which is
rationally contestable;
2. The response seems to reduce humans to object-
like entities, assigned a purpose by an external
agent: this is morally repugnant;
3. The response take an illogical leap when it is
claimed that because God has a purpose for my life,
my life has meaning: the second part of this
statement does not follow from the first.

9.39.3 Meaning and HumanMeaning and Human
ProgressProgress
• Other philosophers have accepted the “part of a
larger whole” assumption, but insisted that this
larger whole can be some this-worldly reality of
contributing to human progress.
– For example, Hegel argues that the larger reality that
gives an individual life meaning is the historical
progress of the world toward an ever greater
consciousness of freedom.
– The individual’s life has meaning to the extent that he
or she takes part in this progressive movement of
history by participating in it.

Many View of ProgressMany View of Progress
• There are numerous conceptions of what it
means to contribute to human progress.
– Karl Marx, for example, argues that human progress
which we can contribute to the evolution of just
economic and social-political structures.
– Others have suggested that as scientific knowledge
progresses, life acquires meaning for the scientist
through the contributions that he or she makes to this
progress.
CHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT:: THE MEANING OF LIFECHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT:: THE MEANING OF LIFE

How Meaningful is Progress?How Meaningful is Progress?
• Do these ideas of progress make sense today?
– Does history really reveal any kind of progress toward
a goal?
– Even if it does, why is this goal valuable?
– Why should we accept the idea that greater freedom
or a “classless society” or any other goal is worth
seeking?
– Why should such goals matter to me? Even if such
goals are valuable?
– How does Francis Fukuyama’s viewpoint on history
affect this notion of meaning?

9.4 The Nihilist Rejection9.4 The Nihilist Rejection
of Meaningof Meaning
• For many people the ideas of being part of
God's plan or of contributing to human progress
no longer make sense.
– Unable to find meaning in God or human progress,
many philosophers have argued that life has no
meaning.
– Arthur Schopenhauer argued that everything passes
away and “that which in the next moment exists no
more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never
be worth a serious effort” and that “life [is] a business
which does not cover its expenses.”

Like BubblesLike Bubbles
• Richard Taylor has also argued that the
transitory nature of all our achievements shows
that living has no meaning.
– “We toil after goals, most of them—indeed every
single one of them—of transitory significance and,
having gained one of them, we immediately set forth
for the next, as if that one had never been, with this
next one being essentially more of the same…. Our
achievements, even though they are often beautiful,
are mostly bubbles; and those that do last, like the
sand-swept pyramids, soon become mere curiosities.”

What Nihilism MeansWhat Nihilism Means
• Schopenhauer and Taylor articulate the
philosophy of nihilism:
– This is the view that there is now no larger whole or
plan to which we can contribute: neither God nor the
idea of progress no longer make sense.
– Moreover, human life and all that humans produce
are too insignificant and fleeting to be a source of
meaning.
– Human life is just an endless repetition of the same
meaningless events that came before.
– What then is left?

9.5 Meaning as a Self-Chosen9.5 Meaning as a Self-Chosen
CommitmentCommitment
• A number of philosophers, including R. M Hare,
have argued against nihilism.
– They claim that nihilists fail to see that a person’s life
can have meaning if the person chooses goals that
give direction to the person’s life and the person
believes that these goals matter, that they are
valuable and worth pursuing.
– By choosing or pursing any of a number of goods or
ways of life --Family, country, religion, friends—one
can give one’s life meaning and value.

What Am I Willing to Die For?What Am I Willing to Die For?
• Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) claimed that the
starting point in life is choosing something for
which one is willing to live or die:
– “What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to
do, not what I am to know, except insofar as a certain
understanding must precede every action. The thing is
to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me
to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to
find the idea for which I can live and die.”
– He described three life styles, or “stages of life:”
aesthetic, ethical and religious.

The Aesthetic and EthicalThe Aesthetic and Ethical
StagesStages
• In the aesthetic stage of life, we choose to pursue wealth
or honor, or to enjoy our talents. Pleasure becomes the
meaning of life. Such a life is limited, and the individual
may eventually feel that it is not a true existence.
• The commitment to the ethical stage of life involves
embracing internally the rational universal moral
obligation to restrain one’s desire for pleasure.
– Moral integrity and honesty become the meaning of life.
– At first, one confidently assumes that one can live up to the
moral law.
– But eventually the individual comes to see that he cannot do all
that morality requires, and he experiences guilt or sin.

The Religious StageThe Religious Stage
• The move to the third, religious stage, is filled
with uncertainty because it is a commitment not
to a rational principle, but to a subjective
relationship with a person, God, who cannot be
rationally understood.
– This move requires a “leap of faith” like Abraham’s
decision to trust God, a leap that is made alone,
without any guarantee of being right, a leap made in
“fear and trembling.”
– This suggests that authentic choices of meaning are
always risky and without guarantees.

Sartre and the ChoiceSartre and the Choice
to Make Meaningto Make Meaning
• The French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre,
agreed with Kierkegaard that the meaning of life
is the result of a choice.
• It is a subjective meaning, and does not exist
prior to our choice.
– Neither God nor the idea of progress can provide us
with purpose and meaning unless we choose to
commit ourselves to these.
– Then, it is our choice itself that makes them
meaningful and a source of value.
CHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: : THE MEANING OF LIFECHAPTER NINE: POSTSCRIPT: : THE MEANING OF LIFE

No Moral CompassNo Moral Compass
• Sartre leaves us without a compass as we
struggle to find meaning in our lives.
– Nothing has more value than another thing – until we
choose it.
– But we clearly do not believe this: a person cannot
think that her life has meaning if she decides to
devote it to making tiny little piles of sand on the
beach.
– If we are to believe that our life has meaning, we have
to devote ourselves to goals or causes that we think
have value and are worth devoting ourselves to.

What is the Meaning of Life?What is the Meaning of Life?
• For many people, life does have meaning
because they believe that they have a part to
play in a larger valuable whole that gives their
life value, purpose, and a goal.
• Others reject God and the idea of human
progress; still others reject both, leaving them
with the conclusion: life has no meaning.
• A few philosophers have argued that whatever
meaning life has is what we create, through our
through honest and authentic choices.

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