the meaning of life is to give life meaning essay

Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, jean paul sartre on the meaning of life.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary and philosophical existentialism. Sartre was also noted for his long personal relationship with the feminist author and social theorist Simone de Beauvoir . He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature which he refused.

In his famous public lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” (1946) Sartre set out the basic ideas of his existential philosophy and its relationship to the question of the meaning of life. He begins by noting that the communists have criticized his philosophy as bourgeois; Christians have rejected it as morally relative; and others have described it as sordid, unappreciative of beauty, and subjective. In response Sartre explains that existentialism is based upon the doctrine that existence precedes essence ; that our concrete subjective existence comes before whatever essence we develop.

To help us understand this idea Sartre considers an artifact such as a letter opener. In this case its essence—to open letters—precedes its existence. The artisan had this essence in mind before it existed. When we think of God as creator of human beings we are reasoning similarly. God had our essence in mind first, and then created us in accord with that human nature. Sartre’s atheistic existentialism implies the reverse. For human beings our existence precedes our essence, since there is no God to give us an essence, and we freely choose what we will become. Unlike chairs and tables we have to make ourselves, and in so doing we alone are responsible for the essence we create.

Along with this responsibility comes the anguish that accompanies our decisions. We never know which action we should perform, but perform them we must. Furthermore, as there are no gods or objective moral guidelines, we alone must choose, be responsible for our choices, and accept the accompanying anguish that choice brings. We cannot escape our freedom, Sartre says, and we should offer no excuses for them. When deciding between staying with our mother or going off and fighting the Nazis, in Sartre’s example, no theory of human nature or objective moral values help. We must simply exercise our freedom, choose, and accept the responsibility and anguish that follows.

The benefits of an existential view are first, that it begins with individual consciousness, the only certain beginning for any philosophy; and second, it is compatible with human dignity, as it respects humans as subjects rather than making them manipulated objects. Individuals are artists or moral agents who have no a priori rules to guide them in creating art or living moral lives. And we should not judge others for the choices they make, unless they hide behind a doctrine and dogma. To do that is to deny one’s freedom.

In the end to be human means precisely to recognize oneself as sole legislator of values and meaning, which for Sartre is the logical conclusion of his atheistic position. But even if there were gods it would make no difference, human beings would still have to create their own values and meanings for their lives to be valuable and meaningful.

Summary – Human beings are not artifacts with a pre-existing essence; they are subjects who must freely choose to create their own meaning.

4 philosophical answers to the meaning of life

A woman standing on top of a metal railing above a mountain range.

Finding meaning in the face of what can feel like a meaningless universe is a daunting challenge.
Many philosophical thinkers spent their careers finding a path to a meaningful life.
While philosophers may disagree on the solution to the problem, they all offer interesting routes to a more meaningful existence.

A common question posed to philosophers and hermit gurus is, “What is the meaning of life?” It’s an important question. Having a sense of purpose in life is associated with positive health outcomes ; conversely, not having one can leave a person feeling listless and lost. Friedrich Nietzsche even feared that a lack of meaning would plunge the world toward nihilism, a transition he believed would prove disastrous.

Several philosophers have proposed answers to the age-old question. Here, we will consider four. The list is not exhaustive, however, as many thinkers from many different schools have considered the problem and proposed potential solutions.

A black and white photo of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Existentialism

Existentialism is an approach to philosophy that focuses on the questions of human existence, including how to live a meaningful life in the face of a meaningless universe. Many thinkers and writers are associated with the movement, including Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. But perhaps the most prominent of the 20th-century existentialists was Jean-Paul Sartre .

In Existentialism Is a Humanism , Sartre lays out the fundamentals of the philosophy. He explains, “Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.” In other words, for humans, e xistence precedes essence. Humans have to decide what it means to be human through their actions and thereby give their lives meaning.

Those choices also define humanity as a whole. As such, Sartre argues that some variation of the categorical imperative — the moral rule that states you should only act in a way that everyone could logically act in — is a vital part of decision-making. Those afraid of existentialists choosing values that would ruin society might also breathe a little easier with this knowledge.

A painting of Sisyphus carrying his boulder uphill.

Absurdism is a philosophy created by Sartre’s one-time friend and later intellectual rival Albert Camus . It is based on the idea that existence is fundamentally absurd and cannot be fully understood through reason. It is related to, but not the same as, existentialism.

Camus argues that absurdity arises when humans try to impose order and meaning on an inherently irrational and meaningless world. However, the irrationality of the world and the inevitability of the end of our time in it always come together to mock our best attempts at meaning. This is the struggle we all face.

For Camus, the answer lies in embracing the meaninglessness. He points to Sisyphus, the character from Greek mythology who Zeus sentences to push a bolder uphill. Sisyphus can make no progress because whenever he’s near the top, the boulder rolls downhill. His task is ultimately meaningless and must be repeated for all eternity. Despite this, Camus asks us to “imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Like us, he faces an absurd situation with no hope of escape. All the order he imposes on the world will eventually come rolling down again. However, Camus tells us that Sisyphus can rebel against the meaninglessness of the situation by embracing the absurdity. He can assert the value of his life and embrace the meaninglessness of his task. By doing so, he can find meaning in the absurdity — even if his work comes to naught in the end. Sisyphus is Camus’s absurdist hero.

Religious existentialism

While the primary existentialist thinkers were all atheists — Nietzsche raised the alarm on nihilism when he declared “ God is dead ” — the founder of the school was an extremely religious thinker by the name of S ø ren Kierkegaard . A Danish philosopher working in the first half of the 19th century, he turned his rather angsty disposition into a major philosophy.

Kierkegaard is concerned with actually living one’s life, not just thinking about it. But in every life, there comes a point where reason runs dry. At that point, passion can help, but Kierkegaard argues that faith is required to really find meaning. That requires a “leap of faith,” and he finds an example of such a leap in the biblical figure of Abraham. As Camus has Sisyphus, so Kierkegaard has Abraham.

In his book Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard argues that Abraham simultaneously knew that sacrificing Isaac was murder, that God was to be obeyed, and that Issac would be alive and well. For his faith and for voluntarily going through with God’s demands, he was rewarded. Abraham embraced the absurd through belief. Rationality was of little use to him, but faith was. In Either/Or , Kierkegaard also praises Diogenes as a “Knight of Faith” who earned the title through more mundane activities.

Another religious take can be found in the works of Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani . Nishitani studied early existentialism under Martin Heidegger, himself a leading existentialist thinker, but provided a Zen Buddhist approach to many of the same problems the existentialists addressed.

Nishitani saw the modern problem of nihilism as everywhere and tied closely with the tendency for technology to allow us to become more self-centered. While we often encounter “nihility” during major life events like the death of a loved one, it can arise at any time — making the question of how to handle it all the more important.

He describes human life as taking place in three fields : consciousness, nihility, and emptiness (or śūnyatā, as it is often named in Buddhist thought). We live in the first field most of the time, and it is where we get ideas like dualism or that there is a self. However, nearly everyone eventually encounters the nihility and has to face up to the idea of death, meaninglessness, and the void inherent in our ideas. Stopping here is what causes problems . Nishitani argues we must push through to the third field. Emptiness surrounds the other two. It allows the individual to understand the true self, how nihility is just as grounded in emptiness as consciousness, and the interrelation of all beings.

On a more practical level, he suggests Zen meditation as a tool to understand the emptiness inherent in reality. While this is actionable, he does not think it a cure-all to addressing the problem of nihilism as it existed in Japan.

the meaning of life is to give life meaning essay

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.

You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

Question of the Month

What is the meaning of life, the following answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. sorry if your answer doesn’t appear: we received enough to fill twelve pages….

Why are we here? Do we serve a greater purpose beyond the pleasure or satisfaction we get from our daily activities – however mundane or heroic they may be? Is the meaning of life internal to life, to be found inherently in life’s many activities, or is it external, to be found in a realm somehow outside of life, but to which life leads? In the internal view it’s the satisfaction and happiness we gain from our actions that justify life. This does not necessarily imply a selfish code of conduct. The external interpretation commonly makes the claim that there is a realm to which life leads after death. Our life on earth is evaluated by a supernatural being some call God, who will assign to us some reward or punishment after death. The meaning of our life, its purpose and justification, is to fulfill the expectations of God, and then to receive our final reward. But within the internal view of meaning, we can argue that meaning is best found in activities that benefit others, the community, or the Earth as a whole. It’s just that the reward for these activities has to be found here, in the satisfactions that they afford within this life, instead of in some external spirit realm.

An interesting way to contrast the internal and external views is to imagine walking through a beautiful landscape. Your purpose in walking may be just to get somewhere else – you may think there’s a better place off in the distance. In this case the meaning of your journey through the landscape is external to the experience of the landscape itself. On the other hand, you may be intensely interested in what the landscape holds. It may be a forest, or it may contain farms, villages. You may stop along the way, study, learn, converse, with little thought about why you are doing these things other than the pleasure they give you. You may stop to help someone who is sick: in fact, you may stay many years, and found a hospital. What then is the meaning of your journey? Is it satisfying or worthwhile only if you have satisfied an external purpose – only if it gets you somewhere else? Why, indeed, cannot the satisfactions and pleasures of the landscape, and of your deeds, be enough?

Greg Studen, Novelty, Ohio

A problem with this question is that it is not clear what sort of answer is being looked for. One common rephrasing is “What is it that makes life worth living?”. There are any number of subjective answers to this question. Think of all the reasons why you are glad you are alive (assuming you are), and there is the meaning of your life. Some have attempted to answer this question in a more objective way: that is to have an idea of what constitutes the good life . It seems reasonable to say that some ways of living are not conducive to human flourishing. However, I am not convinced that there is one right way to live. To suggest that there is demonstrates not so much arrogance as a lack of imagination.

Another way of rephrasing the question is “What is the purpose of life?” Again we all have our own subjective purposes but some would like to think there is a higher purpose provided for us, perhaps by a creator. It is a matter of debate whether this would make life a thing of greater value or turn us into the equivalent of rats in a laboratory experiment. Gloster’s statement in King Lear comes to mind: “As flies to wanton boys we are to the gods – they kill us for their sport.” But why does there have to be a purpose to life separate from those purposes generated within it? The idea that life needs no external justification has been described movingly by Richard Taylor. Our efforts may ultimately come to nothing but “the day was sufficient to itself, and so was the life.” ( Good and Evil , 1970) In the “why are we here?” sense of the question there is no answer. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that life is meaningless. Life is meaningful to humans, therefore it has meaning.

Rebecca Linton, Leicester

When the question is in the singular we search for that which ties all values together in one unity, traditionally called ‘the good’. Current consideration of the good demands a recognition of the survival crises which confront mankind. The threats of nuclear war, environmental poisoning and other possible disasters make it necessary for us to get it right. For if Hannah Arendt was correct concerning the ‘banality of evil’ which affected so many Nazi converts and contaminated the German population by extension, we may agree with her that both Western rational philosophy and Christian teaching let the side down badly in the 20th century.

If we then turn away from Plato’s philosophy, balanced in justice, courage, moderation and wisdom; from Jewish justice and Christian self-denial; if we recognize Kant’s failure to convince populations to keep his three universal principles, then shall we look to the moral relativism of the Western secular minds which admired Nietzsche? Stalin’s purges of his own constituents in the USSR tainted this relativist approach to the search for the good. Besides, if nothing is absolute, but things have value only relative to other things, how do we get a consensus on the best or the worst? What makes your social mores superior to mine – and why should I not seek to destroy your way? We must also reject any hermit, monastic, sect or other loner criteria for the good life. Isolation will not lead to any long-term harmony or peace in the Global Village.

If with Nietzsche we ponder on the need for power in one’s life, but turn in the opposite direction from his ‘superman’ ideal, we will come to some form of the Golden Rule [‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’]. However, we must know this as an experiential reality. There is life-changing power in putting oneself in the place of the other person and feeling for and with them. We call this feeling empathy .

Persons who concentrate on empathy should develop emotional intelligence. When intellectual intelligence does not stand in the way of this kind of personal growth, but contributes to it, we can call this balance maturity . Surely the goal or meaning of human life is therefore none other than finding oneself becoming a mature adult free to make one’s own decisions, yet wanting everyone in the world to have this same advantage. This is good!

Ernie Johns, Owen Sound, Ontario

‘Meaning’ is a word referring to what we have in mind as ‘signification’, and it relates to intention and purpose. ‘Life’ is applied to the state of being alive; conscious existence. Mind, consciousness, words and what they signify, are thus the focus for the answer to the question. What seems inescapable is that there is no meaning associated with life other than that acquired by our consciousness, inherited via genes, developed and given content through memes (units of culture). The meanings we believe life to have are then culturally and individually diverse. They may be imposed through hegemony; religious or secular, benign or malign; or identified through deliberate choice, where this is available. The range is vast and diverse; from straightforward to highly complex. Meaning for one person may entail supporting a football team; for another, climbing higher and higher mountains; for another, being a parent; for another, being moved by music, poetry, literature, dance or painting; for another the pursuit of truth through philosophy; for another through religious devotions, etc. But characteristic of all these examples is a consciousness that is positively and constructively absorbed, engaged, involved, fascinated, enhanced and fulfilled. I would exclude negative and destructive desires; for example of a brutal dictator who may find torturing others absorbing and engaging and thus meaningful. Such cases would be too perverse and morally repugnant to regard as anything other than pathological.

The meaning of life for individuals may diminish or fade as a consequence of decline or difficult or tragic circumstances. Here it might, sadly, be difficult to see any meaning of life at all. The meaning is also likely to change from one phase of life to another, due to personal development, new interests, contexts, commitments and maturity.

Colin Brookes, Woodhouse Eaves, Leicestershire

It is clearly internet shopping, franchised fast food and surgically-enhanced boobs. No, this is not true. I think the only answer is to strip back every layer of the physical world, every learnt piece of knowledge, almost everything that seems important in our modern lives. All that’s left is simply existence. Life is existence: it seems ‘good’ to be part of life. But really that’s your lot! We should just be thankful that our lifespan is longer than, say, a spider, or your household mog.

Our over-evolved human minds want more, but unfortunately there is nothing more. And if there is some deity or malignant devil, then you can be sure they’ve hidden any meaning pretty well and we won’t see it in our mortal lives. So, enjoy yourself; be nice to people, if you like; but there’s no more meaning than someone with surgically-enhanced boobs, shopping on the net while eating a Big Mac.

Simon Maltman, By email

To ask ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is a poor choice of words and leads to obfuscation rather than clarity. Why so?

To phrase the question in this fashion implies that meaning is something that inheres in an object or experience – that it is a quality which is as discernible as the height of a door or the solidity of matter. That is not what meaning is like. It is not a feature of a particular thing, but rather the relationship between a perceiver and a thing, a subject and an object, and so requires both. There is no one meaning of, say, a poem, because meaning is generated by it being read and thought about by a subject. As subjects differ so does the meaning: different people evaluate ideas and concepts in different ways, as can be seen from ethical dilemmas. But it would be wrong to say that all these meanings are completely different, as there are similarities between individuals, not least because we belong to the same species and are constructed and programmed in basically the same way. We all have feelings of fear, attachment, insecurity and passion, etc.

So to speak of ‘the meaning of life’, is an error. It would be more correct to refer to the ‘meanings of life’, but as there are currently around six billion humans on Earth, and new psychological and cultural variations coming into being all the time, to list and describe all of these meanings would be a nigh on impossible task.

To ‘find meaning in life’ is a better way of approaching the issue, ie, whilst there is no single meaning of life, every person can live their life in a way which brings them as much fulfilment and contentment as possible. To use utilitarian language, the best that one can hope for is a life which contains as great an excess of pleasure over pain as possible, or alternatively, a life in which as least time as possible is devoted to activities which do not stimulate, or which do nothing to promote the goals one has set for oneself.

Steve Else, Swadlincote, Derbyshire

The meaning of life is not being dead.

Tim Bale, London

The question is tricky because of its hidden premise that life has meaning per se . A perfectly rational if discomforting position is given by Nietzsche, that someone in the midst of living is not in a position to discern whether it has meaning or not, and since we cannot step outside of the process of living to assess it, this is therefore not a question that bears attention.

However, if we choose to ignore the difficulties of evaluating a condition while inside it, perhaps one has to ask the prior question, what is the meaning of meaning ? Is ‘meaning’ given by the greater cosmos? Or do we in our freedom construct the category ‘meaning’ and then fill in the contours and colours? Is meaning always identical with purpose? I might decide to dedicate my life to answering this particular question, granting myself an autonomously devised purpose. But is this identical with the meaning of my life? Or can I live a meaningless life with purpose? Or shall meaning be defined by purpose? Some metaphysics offer exactly this corollary – that in pursuing one’s proper good, and thus one’s meaning, one is pursuing one’s telos or purpose. The point of these two very brief summaries of approaches to the question is to show the hazards in this construction of the question.

Karen Zoppa, The University of Winnipeg

One thing one can hardly fail to notice about life is that it is self-perpetuating. Palaeontology tells us that life has been perpetuating itself for billions of years. What is the secret of this stunning success? Through natural selection, life forms adapt to their environment, and in the process they acquire, one might say they become , knowledge about that environment, the world in which they live and of which they are part. As Konrad Lorenz put it, “Life itself is a process of acquiring knowledge.” According to this interpretation of evolution, the very essence of life (its meaning?) is the pursuit of knowledge : knowledge about the real world that is constantly tested against that world. What works and is in that sense ‘true’, is perpetuated. Life is tried and proven knowledge that has withstood the test of geological time. From this perspective, adopting the pursuit of knowledge as a possible meaning of one’s life seems, literally, a natural choice. The history of science and philosophy is full of examples of people who have done just that, and in doing so they have helped human beings to earn the self-given title of Homo sapiens – man of knowledge.

Axel Winter, Wynnum, Queensland

Life is a stage and we are the actors, said William Shakespeare, possibly recognizing that life quite automatically tells a story just as any play tells a story. But we are more than just actors; we are the playwright too, creating new script with our imaginations as we act in the ongoing play. Life is therefore storytelling. So the meaning of life is like the meaning of ‘the play’ in principle: not a single play with its plot and underlying values and information, but the meaning behind the reason for there being plays with playwright, stage, actors, props, audience, and theatre. The purpose of the play is self-expression , the playwright’s effort to tell a story. Life, a grand play written with mankind’s grand imagination, has this same purpose.

But besides being the playwright, you are the audience too, the recipient of the playwrights’ messages. As playwright, actor, and audience you are an heir to both growth and self-expression. Your potential for acquiring knowledge and applying it creatively is unlimited. These two concepts may be housed under one roof: Liberty. Liberty is the freedom to think and to create. “Give me liberty or give me death,” said Patrick Henry, for without liberty life has no meaningful purpose. But with liberty life is a joy. Therefore liberty is the meaning of life.

Ronald Bacci, Napa, CA

The meaning of life is understood according to the beliefs that people adhere to. However, all human belief systems are accurate or inaccurate to varying degrees in their description of the world. Moreover, belief systems change over time: from generation to generation; from culture to culture; and era to era. Beliefs that are held today, even by large segments of the population, did not exist yesterday and may not exist tomorrow. Belief systems, be they religious or secular, are therefore arbitrary. If the meaning of life is wanted, a meaning that will transcend the test of time or the particulars of individual beliefs, then an effort to arrive at a truly objective determination must be made. So in order to eliminate the arbitrary, belief systems must be set aside. Otherwise, the meaning of life could not be determined.

Objectively however, life has no meaning because meaning or significance cannot be obtained without reference to some (arbitrary) belief system. Absent a subjective belief system to lend significance to life, one is left with the ‘stuff’ of life, which, however offers no testimony as to its meaning. Without beliefs to draw meaning from, life has no meaning, but is merely a thing ; a set of facts that, in and of themselves, are silent as to what they mean. Life consists of a series of occurrences in an infinite now, divorced of meaning except for what may be ascribed by constructed belief systems. Without such beliefs, for many the meaning of life is nothing .

Surely, however, life means something . And indeed it does when an individual willfully directs his/her consciousness at an aspect of life, deriving from it an individual interpretation, and then giving this interpretation creative expression. Thus the meaning in the act of giving creative expression to what may be ephemeral insights. Stated another way, the meaning of life is an individual’s acts of creation . What, exactly is created, be it artistic or scientific, may speak to the masses, or to nobody, and may differ from individual to individual. The meaning of life, however, is not the thing created, but the creative act itself ; namely, that of willfully imposing an interpretation onto the stuff of life, and projecting a creative expression from it.

Raul Casso, Laredo, Texas

Rather than prattle on and then discover that I am merely deciding what ‘meaning’ means, I will start out with the assumption that by ‘meaning’ we mean ‘purpose.’ And because I fear that ‘purpose’ implies a Creator, I will say ‘best purpose.’ So what is the best purpose for which I can live my life? The best purpose for which I can live my life is, refusing all the easy ways to destroy. This is not as simple as it sounds. Refusing to destroy life – to murder – wouldn’t just depend on our lack of homicidal impulses, but also on our willingness to devote our time to finding out which companies have murdered union uprisers; to finding out whether animals are killed out of need or greed or ease; to finding the best way to refuse to fund military murder, if we find our military to be murdering rather than merely protecting. Refusing to destroy resources, to destroy loves, to destroy rights, turns out to be a full-time job. Oh sure, we can get cocky and say “Well, oughtn’t we destroy injustice? Or bigotry? Or hatred?” But we would be only fooling ourselves. They’re all already negatives: to destroy injustice, bigotry, and hatred is to refuse the destruction of justice, understanding, and love. So, it turns out, we finally say “Yes” to life, when we come out with a resounding, throat-wrecking “NO!”

Carrie Snider, By email

I propose that the knowledge we have now accumulated about life discloses quite emphatically that we are entirely a function of certain basic laws as they operate in the probably unique conditions prevailing here on Earth.

The behaviour of the most elementary forms of matter we know, subatomic particles, seems to be guided by four fundamental forces, of which electromagnetism is probably the most significant here, in that through the attraction and repulsion of charged particles it allows an almost infinite variation of bonding: it allows atoms to form molecules, up the chain to the molecules of enormous length and complexity we call as nucleic acids, and proteins. All these are involved in a constant interaction with surrounding chemicals through constant exchanges of energy. From these behaviour patterns we can deduce certain prime drives or purposes of basic matter, namely:

1. Combination (bonding).

2. Survival of the combination, and of any resulting organism.

3. Extension of the organism, usually by means of replication.

4. Acquisition of energy.

Since these basic drives motivate everything that we’re made of, all the energy, molecules and chemistry that form our bodies, our brains and nervous systems, then whatever we think, say and do is a function of the operation of those basic laws Therefore everything we think, say and do will be directed towards our survival, our replication and our demand for energy to fuel these basic drives. All our emotions and our rational thinking, our loves and hates, our art, science and engineering are refinements of these basic drives. The underlying drive for bonding inspires our need for interaction with other organisms, particularly other human beings, as we seek ever wider and stronger links conducive to our better survival. Protection and extension of our organic integrity necessitates our dependence on and interaction with everything on Earth.

Our consciousness is also necessarily a function of these basic drives, and when the chemistry of our cells can no longer operate due to disease, ageing or trauma, we lose consciousness and die. Since I believe we are nothing more than physics and chemistry, death terminates our life once and for all. There is no God, there is no eternal life. But optimistically, there is the joy of realising that we have the power of nature within us, and that by co-operating with our fellow man, by nurturing the resources of the world, by fighting disease, starvation, poverty and environmental degradation, we can all conspire to improve life and celebrate not only its survival on this planet, but also its proliferation. So the purpose of life is just that: to involve all living things in the common purpose of promoting and enjoying what we are – a wondrous expression of the laws of Nature, the power of the Universe.

Peter F. Searle, Topsham, Devon

“What is the meaning of life?” is hard to get a solid grip on. One possible translation of it is “What does it all mean?” One might spend a lifetime trying to answer such a heady question. Answering it requires providing an account of the ultimate nature of the world, our minds, value and how all these natures interrelate. I’d prefer to offer a rather simplistic answer to a possible interpretation of our question. When someone asks “What is the meaning of life?,” they may mean “What makes life meaningful?” This is a question I believe one can get a grip on without developing a systematic philosophy.

The answer I propose is actually an old one. What makes a human life have meaning or significance is not the mere living of a life, but reflecting on the living of a life.

Even the most reflective among us get caught up in pursuing ends and goals. We want to become fitter; we want to read more books; we want to make more money. These goal-oriented pursuits are not meaningful or significant in themselves. What makes a life filled with them either significant or insignificant is reflecting on why one pursues those goals. This is second-order reflection; reflection on why one lives the way one does. But it puts one in a position to say that one’s life has meaning or does not.

One discovers this meaning or significance by evaluating one’s life and meditating on it; by taking a step back from the everyday and thinking about one’s life in a different way. If one doesn’t do this, then one’s life has no meaning or significance. And that isn’t because one has the wrong sorts of goals or ends, but rather has failed to take up the right sort of reflective perspective on one’s life. This comes close to Socrates’ famous saying that the unexamined life is not worth living. I would venture to say that the unexamined life has no meaning.

Casey Woodling, Gainesville, FL

For the sake of argument, let’s restrict the scope of the discussion to the human species, and narrow down the choices to

1) There is no meaning of life, we simply exist;

2) To search for the meaning of life; and

3) To share an intimate connection with humankind: the notion of love.

Humans are animals with an instinct for survival. At a basic level, this survival requires food, drink, rest and procreation. In this way, the meaning of life could be to continue the process of evolution. This is manifested in the modern world as the daily grind.

Humans also have the opportunity and responsibility of consciousness. With our intellect comes curiosity, combined with the means to understand complex problems. Most humans have, at some point, contemplated the meaning of life. Some make it a life’s work to explore this topic. For them and those like them, the question may be the answer.

Humans are a social species. We typically seek out the opposite sex to procreate. Besides the biological urge or desire, there is an interest in understanding others. We might simply gain pleasure in connecting with someone in an intimate way. Whatever the specific motivation, there is something that we crave, and that is to love and be loved.

The meaning of life may never be definitively known. The meaning of life may be different for each individual and/or each species. The truth of the meaning of life is likely in the eye of the beholder. There were three choices given at the beginning of this essay, and for me, the answer is all of the above.

Jason Hucsek, San Antonio, TX

Next Question of the Month

The next question is: What Is The Nature Of Reality? Answers should be less than 400 words. Subject lines or envelopes should be marked ‘Question Of The Month’. You will be edited.

This site uses cookies to recognize users and allow us to analyse site usage. By continuing to browse the site with cookies enabled in your browser, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy . X

Table of Contents
New in this Archive
Chronological
Editorial Information
About the SEP
Editorial Board
How to Cite the SEP
Special Characters
Support the SEP
PDFs for SEP Friends
Make a Donation
SEPIA for Libraries
Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

Friends PDF Preview
Author and Citation Info
Back to Top

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 life that matters. 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 Anglo-American philosophy, and it is only in the last 30 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, including conceptions of meaning in life, grounded on relatively uncontroversial (but not certain or universally shared) judgments of cases, often called “intuitions.” English-speaking philosophers can be expected to continue to find life's meaning of interest as they increasingly realize that it is a distinct topic that admits of rational enquiry to no less a degree than more familiar ethical categories such as well-being, virtuous character, and right action.

This survey critically discusses approaches to meaning in life that are prominent in contemporary Anglo-American 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 starts off with works that address 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. Afterward, it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question about the nature of meaning as a property. Some accounts of what make 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 can confer meaning on life. This survey focuses heavily on the articulation and evaluation of these theories of what would make life meaningful. It concludes by examining nihilist views that the conditions necessary for meaning in life do not obtain for any of us, i.e., that all our lives are meaningless.

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 of 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. That is, comparatively few believe either that a meaningful life is a merely neutral quality, or that what is of key interest is the meaning of the human species or universe as a whole (for discussions focused on the latter, see Edwards 1972; Munitz 1986; Seachris 2009). Most in the field have ultimately wanted 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 whole, there has been very little discussion of life as the logical bearer of meaning. For instance, is the individual's life best understood biologically, qua human being, or instead as the existence of a person that may or may not be human (Flanagan 1996)? And if an individual is loved from afar, can it logically 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 (something emphasized in Wolf 2010). First, to ask whether someone's life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is happy or pleasant. A life in an experience or virtual reality machine could conceivably be happy but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, many would say that talk of “meaning” by definition excludes the possibility of it coming from time spent in an experience machine (although there have been a small handful who disagree and contend that a meaningful life just is a pleasant life. Goetz 2012, in particular, bites many bullets.) Furthermore, one's life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one's happiness, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one's self-interest.

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, at least impartially conceived, for instance, making a scientific discovery.

Of course, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if (or even because) it were unhappy or immoral, particularly given Aristotelian conceptions of these disvalues. However, that is to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, and is far from indicating that speaking of “meaning in life” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness, 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 happy or moral, 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 happiness or rightness, 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 (Hepburn 1965; Wohlgennant 1981). However, for such an analysis to clearly demarcate meaningfulness from happiness, it would be useful to modify it to indicate which purposes are germane to the former. On this score, some suggest that conceptual candidates for grounding meaning 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 animal nature (Levy 2005).

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 essentially 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 these criteria are satisfied by subjectivist appeals to whatever choices one ends up making or to whichever desires happen to be strongest for a given person.

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 2013, ch. 2). Perhaps when we speak of “meaning in life,” we have in mind one or more of these related 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 base pleasure that are particularly choice-worthy. Another possibility is that talk of “meaning in life” fails to exhibit even this degree of unity, and is instead a grab-bag of heterogenous ideas (Mawson 2010; Oakley 2010).

As the field reflects more on the sense of “life's meaning,” it should not only try to ascertain in what respect it admits of unity, but also try to differentiate the concept of life's meaning from other, closely related ideas. For instance, the concept of a worthwhile life is probably not identical to that of a meaningful one (Baier 1997, ch. 5; Metz 2012). For instance, one would not be conceptually confused to claim that a meaningless life full of animal pleasures would be worth living. Furthermore, it seems that talk of a “meaningless life” does not simply connote the concept of an absurd (Nagel 1970; Feinberg 1980), unreasonable (Baier 1997, ch. 5), futile (Trisel 2002), or wasted (Kamm 2003, 210–14) life.

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

2. Supernaturalism

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

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

2.1 God-centered Views

The most widely held and influential God-based account of meaning in life is that one's existence is more significant, the better one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one's life is meaningful to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in the particular way God wants one to do so (Affolter 2007). Fulfilling God's purpose by choice 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.

What I call “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). 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 (but see Cottingham 2005, ch. 3). In addition, some 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 (Ellin 1995, 327).

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 (see Trisel 2012 for additional criticisms). Are all these objections 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, then God would degrade us and thereby 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, 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; 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, 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 (Thomson 2003, 25–26, 48).

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 face 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). However, the naturalist will point out that an impersonal, Karmic-like force of nature conceivably 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 much 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 realm 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 2013, chs. 6–7; cf. Morris 1992; contra Brown 1971 and Hartshorne 1996). Meaning might come from loving a perfect being or orienting one's life toward it in other ways such as imitating it or even fulfilling its purpose, perhaps a purpose tailor-made for each individual (as per Affolter 2007).

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

2.2 Soul-centered Views

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 2013, ch. 7). Perhaps the Tolstoian reason why one must live forever in order to make the relevant permanent difference is an agent-relative need for one 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 (Goetz 2012). 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 . By definition, if one has a soul, then one is immortal, but it is not clearly true that if one is immortal, then one 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). Appeals to a soul require 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 (perhaps a start is Metz 2013, ch. 8). 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; Smuts 2011). The most common reply is that immortality need not get boring (Fischer 1994; Wisnewski 2005; Bortolotti and Nagasawa 2009; Chappell 2009; Quigley and Harris 2009, 75–78). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom is truly sufficient for meaninglessness. Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be bored; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make.

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; Kass 2001). 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 1995; Kass 2001; James 2009) 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 (for additional, revealing criticism, see Bortolotti 2010).

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 purely physical world as known by science, there is debate about two things: the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings.

Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i.e., depends on an individual's pro-attitudes such as 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 for meaning because meaning is (at least partly) mind-independent, i.e., is a real property that exists regardless of being the object of anyone's mental states. Here, something is meaningful (to some degree) in virtue 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 for human beings that are constituted by what they would all agree upon from a certain communal standpoint (Darwall 1983, chs. 11–12). However, this orthogonal approach 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 (Trisel 2002; Hooker 2008; Alexis 2011). 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, 2002, 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 20 th 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.

Those who continue to hold subjectivism often are suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Frankfurt 2002, 250; Trisel 2002, 73, 79, 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, well, eats one's own excrement (Wielenberg 2005, 22), and one is also not losing oneself in a meaning-conferring way if one is consumed by these activities. 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 valuer, but in those of a particular group (Brogaard and Smith 2005; Wong 2008). Would such an intersubjective move avoid the counterexamples? If so, would it do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning is constituted (at least in part) 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 (and the other counterexamples to subjectivism above) 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 (whether it be an individual,her society, or even God) judges them to be meaningful or seeks to engage in them, while the latter actions simply lack significance 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 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, 2000; Wiggins 1988; Wolf 1997b, 2002, 2010; Dworkin 2000, ch. 6; Raz 2001, ch. 1; Schmidtz 2001; Starkey 2006; Mintoff 2008). 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, care about it or otherwise identify with it. Different versions of this theory will have different accounts of the appropriate mental states and of worthwhileness.

Pure objectivists deny that subjective attraction plays any constitutive 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, etc. (Singer 1993, ch. 12, 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 (Audi 2005, 344). For instance, might a Mother Teresa who is bored by her substantial 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 exhibit rightness or virtue and perhaps also involve reward proportionate to morality (Kant 1791, pt. 2; cf. Pogge 1997). Most objectivists, however, deem these respective aesthetic and ethical theories to be too narrow, even if living a moral life is necessary for a meaningful one (Landau 2011). It seems to most in the field 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 proffering 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 involve: transcending the limits of the self to connect with organic unity (Nozick 1981, ch. 6, 1989, chs. 15–16); realizing human excellence in oneself (Bond 1983, chs. 6, 8); maximally promoting non-hedonist goods such as friendship, beauty, and knowledge (Railton 1984); exercising or promoting rational nature in exceptional ways (Hurka 1993; Smith 1997, 179–221; Gewirth 1998, ch. 5); substantially improving the quality of life of people and animals (Singer 1993, ch. 12, 1995, chs. 10–11; Singer 1996, ch. 4); overcoming challenges that one recognizes to be important at one's stage of history (Dworkin 2000, ch. 6); constituting rewarding experiences in the life of the agent or the lives of others the agent affects (Audi 2005); making progress toward ends that in principle can never be completely realized because one's knowledge of them changes as one approaches them (Levy 2005); realizing goals that are transcendent for being long-lasting in duration and broad in scope (Mintoff 2008); or contouring intelligence toward fundamental conditions of human life (Metz 2013).

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. There is as yet no convergence in the field on any one principle or even cluster as accounting 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, basic property that grounds all the particular ways to acquire meaning in life?

Another important way to criticize these theories is more comprehensive: for all that has been said so far, the objective theories 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 long stretches of it) can substantially 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 life-story” (Velleman 1991; Fischer 2005).

Extreme versions of holism are also present in the literature. For example, some maintain that the only bearer of final value is life as a whole, which entails that there are strictly speaking no parts or segments of a life that can be meaningful in themselves (Tabensky 2003; Levinson 2004). For another example, some accept that both parts of a life and a life as a whole can be independent bearers of meaning, but maintain that the latter has something like a lexical priority over the former when it comes to what to pursue or otherwise to prize (Blumenfeld 2009).

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 (as per Kauppinen 2012), or are there holistic facets of life's meaning that are not a matter of such literary concepts? How much importance should they be accorded by an agent seeking meaning in her life?

So far, I have addressed theoretical accounts that have been naturally understood to be about what confers meaning on life, which obviously assumes that some lives are in fact meaningful. However, there are nihilistic perspectives that question this assumption. According to nihilism (or pessimism), what would make a life meaningful either cannot obtain or as a matter of fact simply never does.

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 these days do not appeal to supernaturalism. The idea shared among many contemporary nihilists is that there is something inherent to the human condition that prevents meaning from arising, even granting that 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 that 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 (allegedly) 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, 2005, ch. 3), some do not (Margolis 1990; Ellin 1995, 325–27). Furthermore, contemporary rationalist and realist work in meta-ethics has led many to believe that such a moral system exists.

In the past 10 years, some interesting new defences of nihilism have arisen that merit careful consideration. According to one rationale, for our lives to matter, we must in a position to add value to the world, which we are not since the value of the world is already infinite (Smith 2003). The key premises for this view are that every bit of space-time (or at least the stars in the physical universe) have some positive value, that these values can be added up, and that space is infinite. If the physical world at present contains an infinite degree of value, nothing we do can make a difference in terms of meaning, for infinity plus any amount of value must be infinity.

One way to question this argument is to suggest that even if one cannot add to the value of the universe, meaning plausibly obtains merely by being the source of value. Consider that one does not merely want one's child to be reared with love, but wants to be the one who rears one's child with love. And this desire remains even knowing that others would have reared one's child with love in one's absence, so that one's actions are not increasing the goodness of the state of the universe relative to what it would have had without them. Similar remarks might apply to cases of meaning more generally (for additional, and technical, discussion of whether an infinite universe entails nihilism, see Almeida 2010; Vohánka and Vohánková n.d.).

Another fresh argument for nihilism is forthcoming from certain defenses of anti-natalism, the view that it is immoral to bring new people into existence because doing so would be a harm to them. There are now a variety of rationales for anti-natalism, but most relevant to debates about whether life is meaningful is probably the following argument from David Benatar (2006, 18–59). According to him, the bads of existing (e.g., pains) are real disadvantages relative to not existing, while the goods of existing (pleasures) are not real advantages relative to not existing, since there is in the latter state no one to be deprived of them. If indeed the state of not existing is no worse than that of experiencing the benefits of existence, then, since existing invariably brings harm in its wake, existing is always a net harm compared to not existing. Although this argument is about goods such as pleasures in the first instance, it seems generalizable to non-experiential goods, including that of meaning in life.

The criticisms of Benatar that promise to cut most deep are those that question his rationale for the above judgments of good and bad. He maintains that these appraisals best explain, e.g., why it would be wrong for one to create someone whom one knows would suffer a torturous existence, and why it would not be wrong for one not to create someone whom one knows would enjoy a wonderful existence. The former would be wrong and the latter would not be wrong, for Benatar, because no pain in non-existence is better than pain in existence, and because no pleasure in non-existence is no worse than pleasure in existence. Critics usually grant the judgments of wrongness, but provide explanations of them that do not invoke Benatar's judgments of good and bad that apparently lead to anti-natalism (e.g., Boonin 2012; Weinberg 2012).

This survey closes by discussing the most well-known rationale for nihilism, namely, Thomas Nagel's (1986) invocation of the external standpoint that purportedly reveals our lives to be unimportant (see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Benatar 2006, 60–92; 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 75 years 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, another respect in which the field of life's meaning is tantalizingly open for substantial contributions.

Affolter, J., 2007, “Human Nature as God's Purpose”, Religious Studies , 43: 443–55.
Alexis., A., 2011, The Meaning of Life: A Modern Secular Answer to the Age-Old Fundamental Question , CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Almeida, M., 2010, “Two Challenges to Moral Nihilism”, The Monist , 93: 96–105.
Audi, R., 2005, “Intrinsic Value and Meaningful Life”, Philosophical Papers , 34: 331–55.
Ayer, A. J., 1947, “The Claims of Philosophy”, repr. in The Meaning of Life, 2 nd Ed. , E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 219–32.
Baier, K., 1957, “The Meaning of Life”, repr. in The Meaning of Life, 2 nd Ed. , E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 101–32.
–––, 1997, Problems of Life and Death: A Humanist Perspective , Amherst: Prometheus Books.
Barnes, H., 1967, An Existentialist Ethics , New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Belshaw, C., 2005, 10 Good Questions about Life and Death , Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Benatar, D., 2006, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence , New York: Oxford University Press.
Blackburn, S., 2001, Being Good , New York: Oxford University Press.
Blumenfeld, D., 2009, “Living Life Over Again”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 79: 357–86.
Bond, E. J., 1983, Reason and Value , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boonin, D., 2012, “Better to Be”, South African Journal of Philosophy , 31: 10–25.
Bortolotti, L., 2010, “Agency, Life Extension, and the Meaning of Life”, The Monist , 92: 38–56.
Bortolotti, L. and Nagasawa, Y., 2009, “Immortality Without Boredom”, Ratio , 22: 261–77.
Brännmark, J., 2003, “Leading Lives”, Philosophical Papers , 32: 321–43.
Britton, K., 1969, Philosophy and the Meaning of Life , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brogaard, B. and Smith, B., 2005, “On Luck, Responsibility, and the Meaning of Life”, Philosophical Papers , 34: 443–58.
Brown, D., 1971, “Process Philosophy and the Question of Life's Meaning”, Religious Studies , 7: 13–29.
Camus, A., 1955, The Myth of Sisyphus , J. O'Brian (tr.), London: H. Hamilton.
Chappell, T., 2009, “Infinity Goes Up on Trial: Must Immortality Be Meaningless?”, European Journal of Philosophy , 17: 30–44.
Cooper, D., 2005, “Life and Meaning”, Ratio , 18: 125–37.
Cottingham, J., 2003, On the Meaning of Life , London: Routledge.
–––, 2005, The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Craig, W., 1994, “The Absurdity of Life Without God”, repr. in The Meaning of Life, 2 nd Ed. , E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 40–56.
Dahl, N., 1987, “Morality and the Meaning of Life”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 17: 1–22.
Darwall, S., 1983, Impartial Reason , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Davis, W., 1986, “The Creation of Meaning”, Philosophy Today , 30: 151–67.
–––, 1987, “The Meaning of Life”, Metaphilosophy , 18: 288–305.
Dworkin, R., 2000, Sovereign Virtue , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Edwards, P., 1972, “Why”, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volumes 7– 8 , P. Edwards (ed.), New York: Macmillan Publishing Company: 296–302.
Ellin, J., 1995. Morality and the Meaning of Life , Ft. Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
Feinberg, J., 1980, “Absurd Self-Fulfillment,” repr. in Freedom and Fulfillment: Philosophical Essays , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992: 297–330.
Fischer, J. M., 1994, “Why Immortality is Not So Bad”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies , 2: 257–70.
–––, 2005, “Free Will, Death, and Immortality: The Role of Narrative”, Philosophical Papers , 34: 379–403.
Flanagan, O., 1996, Self-Expressions: Mind, Morals, and the Meaning of Life , New York: Oxford University Press.
Frankfurt, H., 1982, “The Importance of What We Care About”, Synthese , 53: 257–72.
–––, 2002, “Reply to Susan Wolf”, in The Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt , S. Buss and L. Overton (eds.), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press: 245–52.
–––, 2004, The Reasons of Love , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gewirth, A., 1998, Self-Fulfillment , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Goetz, S., 2012, The Purpose of Life: A Theistic Perspective , New York: Continuum.
Gordon, J., 1983, “Is the Existence of God Relevant to the Meaning of Life?” The Modern Schoolman , 60: 227–46.
Griffin, J., 1981, “On Life's Being Valuable”, Dialectics and Humanism , 8: 51–62.
Haber, J., 1997, “Contingency and the Meaning of Life”, Philosophical Writings , 5: 32–44.
Hanfling, O., 1987, The Quest for Meaning , New York: Basil Blackwell Inc.
Hare, R. M., 1957, “Nothing Matters”, repr. in Applications of Moral Philosophy , London: Macmillan, 1972: 32–47.
Hartshorne, C., 1984, “God and the Meaning of Life”, in Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Volume 6: On Nature , L. Rouner (ed.), Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press: 154–68.
–––, 1996, “The Meaning of Life”, Process Studies , 25: 10–18.
Hepburn, R., 1965, “Questions About the Meaning of Life”, repr. in The Meaning of Life, 2 nd Ed. , E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 261–76.
Hooker, B., 2008, “The Meaning of Life: Subjectivism, Objectivism, and Divine Support”, in The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham , N. Athanassoulis and S. Vice (eds.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 184–200.
Hurka, T., 1993, Perfectionism , New York: Oxford University Press.
Jacquette, D., 2001, Six Philosophical Appetizers , Boston: McGraw-Hill.
James, L., 2005, “Achievement and the Meaningfulness of Life”, Philosophical Papers , 34: 429–42.
–––, 2009, “Shape and the Meaningfulness of Life”, in Philosophy and Happiness , L. Bortolotti (ed.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 54–67.
James, W., 1900, “What Makes a Life Significant?”, in On Some of Life's Ideals , New York: Henry Holt and Company: 49–94.
Kamm, F. M., 2003, “Rescuing Ivan Ilych: How We Live and How We Die”, Ethics , 113: 202–33.
Kant, I., 1791, Critique of Judgment .
Kass, L., 2001, “ L'Chaim and Its Limits: Why not Immortality?”, First Things , 113: 17–24.
Kauppinen, A., 2012, “Meaningfulness and Time”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 82: 345–77.
Kekes, J., 1986, “The Informed Will and the Meaning of Life”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 47: 75–90.
–––, 2000, “The Meaning of Life”, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume 24; Life and Death: Metaphysics and Ethics , P. French and H. Wettstein (eds.), Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers: 17–34.
Klemke, E. D., 1981, “Living Without Appeal”, in The Meaning of Life, E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press.
Landau, I., 2011, “Immorality and the Meaning of Life”, The Journal of Value Inquiry , 45: 309–17.
Lenman, J., 1995, “Immortality: A Letter”, Cogito , 9: 164–69.
Levine, M., 1987, “What Does Death Have to Do with the Meaning of Life?” Religious Studies , 23: 457–65.
Levinson, J., 2004, “Intrinsic Value and the Notion of a Life”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , 62: 319–29.
Levy, N., 2005, “Downshifting and Meaning in Life”, Ratio , 18: 176–89.
Margolis, J., 1990, “Moral Realism and the Meaning of Life”, The Philosophical Forum , 22: 19–48.
Markus, A., 2003, “Assessing Views of Life, A Subjective Affair?”, Religious Studies , 39: 125–43.
Martin, R., 1993, “A Fast Car and a Good Woman”, in The Experience of Philosophy, 2 nd Ed. , D. Kolak and R. Martin (eds.), Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company: 589–95.
Mawson, T., 2010, “Sources of Dissatisfaction with Answers to the Question of the Meaning of Life”, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 2: 19–41.
Metz, T., 2012, “The Meaningful and the Worthwhile: Clarifying the Relationships”, The Philosophical Forum , 43: 435–48.
–––, 2013, Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mintoff, J., 2008, “Transcending Absurdity”, Ratio , 21: 64–84.
Moreland, J. P., 1987, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity , Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
Morris, T., 1992, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life , Grand Rapids: Willliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Munitz, M., 1986, Cosmic Understanding , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Murphy, J., 1982, Evolution, Morality, and the Meaning of Life , Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield.
Nagel, T., 1970, “The Absurd”, Journal of Philosophy , 68: 716–27.
–––, 1986, The View from Nowhere , New York: Oxford University Press.
Nielsen, K., 1964, “Linguistic Philosophy and ‘The Meaning of Life’”, rev. ed. in The Meaning of Life, E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1981: 177–204.
Nozick, R., 1974, Anarchy, State and Utopia , New York: Basic Books.
–––, 1981, Philosophical Explanations , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
–––, 1989, The Examined Life , New York: Simon & Schuster.
Nussbaum, M., 1989, “Mortal Immortals: Lucretius on Death and the Voice of Nature”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 50: 303–51.
Oakley, T., 2010, “The Issue is Meaninglessness”, The Monist , 93: 106–22.
Perrett, R., 1986, “Regarding Immortality”, Religious Studies , 22: 219–33.
Pogge, T., 1997, “Kant on Ends and the Meaning of Life”, in Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls , A. Reath et al. (eds.), New York: Cambridge University Press: 361–87.
Quigley, M. and Harris, J., 2009, “Immortal Happiness”, in Philosophy and Happiness , L. Bortolotti (ed.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 68–81.
Quinn, P., 2000, “How Christianity Secures Life's Meanings”, in The Meaning of Life in the World Religions , J. Runzo and N. Martin (eds.), Oxford: Oneworld Publications: 53–68.
Railton, P., 1984, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality”, repr. in Consequentialism and Its Critics , S. Scheffler (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 1988: 93–133.
Raz, J., 2001, Value, Respect, and Attachment , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sartre, J.-P., 1948, Existentialism is a Humanism , P. Mairet (tr.), London: Methuen & Co.
Schmidtz, D., 2001, “The Meanings of Life”, in Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Volume 22; If I Should Die: Life, Death, and Immortality , L. Rouner (ed.), Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press: 170–88.
Seachris, J., 2009, “The Meaning of Life as Narrative: A New Proposal for Interpreting Philosophy's ‘Primary’ Question”, Philo , 12: 5–23.
Singer, I., 1996, Meaning in Life, Volume 1: The Creation of Value , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Singer, P., 1993, Practical Ethics, 2 nd Ed ., New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1995, How are We to Live? Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books.
Smith, Q., 1997, Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytic Philosophy of Language , New Haven: Yale University Press.
–––, 2003, “Moral Realism and Infinite Spacetime Imply Moral Nihilism”, in Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection , H. Dyke (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 43–54.
Smuts, A., 2011, “Immortality and Significance”, Philosophy and Literature , 35: 134–49.
Starkey, C., 2006, “Meaning and Affect”, The Pluralist , 1: 88–103.
Swenson, D., 1949, “The Dignity of Human Life”, repr. in The Meaning of Life, 2 nd Ed. , E. D. Klemke (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 21–30.
Tabensky, P., 2003, “Parallels Between Living and Painting”, The Journal of Value Inquiry , 37: 59–68.
Tännsjö, T., 1988, “The Moral Significance of Moral Realism”, The Southern Journal of Philosophy , 26: 247–61.
Taylor, C., 1989, Sources of the Self , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
–––, 1992, The Ethics of Authenticity , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, R., 1970, Good and Evil , New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.
–––, 1987, “Time and Life's Meaning”, The Review of Metaphysics , 40: 675–86.
Thomas, L., 2005, “Morality and a Meaningful Life”, Philosophical Papers , 34: 405–27.
Thomson, G., 2003, On the Meaning of Life , South Melbourne: Wadsworth.
Tolstoy, L., 1884, A Confession .
Trisel, B. A., 2002, “Futility and the Meaning of Life Debate”, Sorites , 70–84.
–––, 2004, “Human Extinction and the Value of Our Efforts”, The Philosophical Forum , 35: 371–91.
–––, 2012, “Intended and Unintended Life”, The Philosophical Forum , 43: 395–403.
Velleman, J. D., 1991, “Well-Being and Time”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 72: 48–77.
Velleman, J. D., 2005, “Family History”, Philosophical Papers , 34: 357–78.
Walker, L., 1989, “Religion and the Meaning of Life and Death”, in Philosophy: The Quest for Truth , L. Pojman (ed.), Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co: 167–71.
Weinberg, R., 2012, “Is Having Children Always Wrong?”, South African Journal of Philosophy , 31: 26–37.
Wielenberg, E., 2005, Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wiggins, D., 1988, “Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life”, rev. ed. in Essays on Moral Realism , G. Sayre-McCord (ed.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 127-65.
Williams, B., 1973, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality”, in Problems of the Self , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 82–100.
–––, 1976, “Persons, Character and Morality”, in The Identities of Persons , A. O. Rorty (ed.), Berkeley: University of California Press: 197–216.
Williams, G., 1999, “Kant and the Question of Meaning”, The Philosophical Forum , 30: 115–31.
Wisnewski, J. J., 2005, “Is the Immortal Life Worth Living?”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 58: 27–36.
Wohlgennant, R., 1981, “Has the Question About the Meaning of Life Any Meaning?” repr. in Life and Meaning: A Reader , O. Hanfling (ed.), Cambridge: Basic Blackwell Inc., 1987: 34–38.
Wolf, S., 1997a, “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life”, Social Philosophy and Policy , 14: 207–25.
–––, 1997b, “Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World”, Quaestiones Infinitae , Volume 19 , Utrecht: Utrecht University: 1–22.
–––, 2002, “The True, the Good, and the Lovable: Frankfurt's Avoidance of Objectivity”, in The Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt , S. Buss and L. Overton (eds.), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press: 227–44.
–––, 2010, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wollheim, R., 1984, The Thread of Life , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wong, W., 2008, “Meaningfulness and Identities”, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 11: 123–48.
Benatar, D. (ed.), 2004, Life, Death & Meaning , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Cottingham, J. (ed.), 2007, Western Philosophy: An Anthology , Oxford: Blackwell: pt. 12.
Hanfling, O. (ed.), 1987, Life and Meaning: A Reader , Cambridge: Basic Blackwell Inc.
Klemke, E. D. and Cahn, S. M. (eds.), 2007, The Meaning of Life: A Reader, 3 rd Ed. , New York: Oxford University Press.
Metz, T. (ed.), 2005, Special Issue: Meaning in Life, Philosophical Papers , 34: 330–463.
Runzo, J. and Martin, N. (eds.), 2000, The Meaning of Life in the World Religions , Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
Sanders, S. and Cheney, D. (eds.), 1980, The Meaning of Life: Questions, Answers, and Analysis , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Seachris, J. (ed.), 2012, Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Smith, Q. (ed.), 2010, Special Issue: The Meaning of Life, The Monist , 93: 3–165.
Westphal, J. and Levenson, C. A. (eds.), 1993, Life and Death , Indianapolis: Hackett.
Baggini, J., 2004, What's It All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life , London: Granta Books.
Belliotti, R., 2001, What Is the Meaning of Life? , Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Eagleton, T., 2007, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ford, D., 2007, The Search for Meaning: A Short History , Berkeley: University of California Press.
Martin, M., 2002, Atheism, Morality, and Meaning , Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Messerly, J., 2012, The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Transhumanist, and Scientific Approaches , Seattle: Darwin and Hume Publishers.
Young, J., 2003, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life , New York: Routledge.

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

Seachris, J., 2011, “ Meaning of Life: The Analytic Perspective ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.)
Vohánka, V. and Vohánková, P., n.d., “ On Nihilism Driven by the Magnitude of the Universe ”.

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

Info about mirror sites

Stanford Center for the Study of Language and Information

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

The meaning of life is one of the questions that have attracted the attention of many philosophers as well as writers. Two different views on this issue are expressed by Richard Taylor and Susan Wolf.

According to Richard Taylor, a person can subjectively determine whether his/her life is meaningful. In this case, perceived enjoyment and satisfaction can be the main criteria that an individual should consider. In contrast, Susan Wolf disagrees with this statement and calls for a more objective interpretation of meaningfulness. So, it is necessary to compare and evaluate these approaches.

Richard Taylor believes that a certain activity can be called meaningful if a person finds it satisfying or engaging. Additionally, an individual should focus on his/her subjective experiences in order to evaluate the quality of his/her life. In order to illustrate this argument, the author refers to the famous myth of Sisyphus, who perpetually rolls a stone up the hill. To a great extent, this myth symbolizes meaningless and endless labor, which does not bring any results.

However, this interpretation can change dramatically if one assumes that Sisyphus finds this activity satisfying or desirable in any way (Taylor 323). Additionally, the author urges the readers to remember that in many cases, people’s lives can be compared to the labor of Sisyphus. For example, one can speak about people who designed and constructed ancient temples or palaces that eventually turned into ruins (Taylor 332). It is rather difficult to suppose that they perceived their lives as something meaningless.

More likely, they assumed that they created paragons of beauty, and the meaningfulness of their actions could hardly be questioned. In this way, the author wants to show that the source of meaning lies within the individual perception of a person. These are the main details that can be distinguished.

In turn, Susan Wolf adopts a different approach to this question. According to her, a person’s life can be called meaningful if he/she actively and successfully engages in projects that promote “positive values” (Wolf 8). In this context, the word “project” can be described as any goal-directed behavior (Wolf 8). In turn, the word

“positive” implies that a certain value is recognized and accepted by other people (Wolf 10). In other words, the activities of a person should bring certain benefits to other people.

Therefore, unlike Richard Taylor, Susan Wolf believes that one should look for a more objective evaluation of a person’s life. Additionally, according to her interpretation, meaningfulness does not necessarily imply that an individual is happy. Moreover, in many cases, his/her actions can be questioned from an ethical viewpoint. These are the main elements of her approach.

Overall, I tend to support Richard Taylor’s views on this issue. In my opinion, the meaningfulness of a person’s life should be based on subjective interpretation. At first, it is important to mention that in many cases, a person can suffer from frustration and depression provided that his/her behavior does not reach the accepted standards of success. This is one of the problems that originate from Susan Wolf’s approach. Admittedly, people should be engaged in activities that promote the welfare of other individuals.

In this way, a person can make his/her life much more fulfilling. Nevertheless, it is not permissible to set the standards of meaningfulness. The approach developed by Susan Wolf is based on the premise that a person can accurately estimate the effects of his/her actions. This task is critical for determining if a certain activity promotes positive values. However, sometimes, a person cannot easily do it. Furthermore, other people may fail to appreciate the value of a person’s work.

For example, the attempts to develop non-Euclidian geometry were deemed to be useless at the least at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, mathematicians engaged in such activities were often regarded as insane because very few people could see the implications of their work (Restivo 103). If they tried to follow the line of reasoning proposed by Susan Wolf, they would have come to the conclusion that their life and work had been meaningless.

However, later, it turned out that hyperbolic geometry could benefit various areas of science, especially physics. Apart from that, the approach adopted by Susan Wolf does not include such a notion as happiness, which seems to be critical for the meaningfulness of any life. This is another reason why Richard Taylor’s interpretation seems to be more plausible. Finally, such a notion as success is often subjective, and it is difficult to measure it.

On the whole, this discussion shows that there are different approaches to the questions about the meaning of life. It is more appropriate to consider the subjective interpretation of this issue because this approach helps a person discover happiness. Admittedly, other people may not agree with this subjective assessment.

However, this evaluation has to be accepted if a person’s activities do not adversely affect the lives of other individuals. In contrast, Susan Wolf’s approach implies that there are certain objective standards. However, there are many cases when these standards are not applicable. These are the main aspects that can be singled out.

Works Cited

Restivo, Sal. Red, Black, and Objective: Science, Sociology, and Anarchism , New York: Ashgate Publishin, 2011. Print.

Taylor, Richard. Good and Evil , New York: Prometheus Books, 2000. Print.

Wolf, Susan. “The Meaning of Lives.” Philosophy UMass . Web.

The Effects of the Environment on Human Beliefs and Actions
Socrates' Views on Life
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus: The Philosophy of Absurdism
Resistance in Bilal: A New Breed of Hero and in the Myth of Sisyphus
Meaning in Life by Susan Wolf: Essay Reflection
Human Behavior and the Best Principles to Follow
Creating the Meaning of Life
A Choice of Life and the Price of Being Different
Individual Perspective on Responsibility
Loss of Species and Its Impact on the Human Spirit
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, May 2). The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-life-philosophical-approaches/

"The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches." IvyPanda , 2 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-life-philosophical-approaches/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches'. 2 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches." May 2, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-life-philosophical-approaches/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches." May 2, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-life-philosophical-approaches/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches." May 2, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-meaning-of-life-philosophical-approaches/.

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful?

Author: Matthew Pianalto Category: Ethics , Phenomenology and Existentialism , Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 997

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

Imagine becoming so fed up with your job and home life that you decide to give it all up. Now you spend your days lounging on a beach.

One day, your friend Alex finds you on the beach and questions your new lifestyle: “You’re wasting your life!” says Alex. You tell Alex that you were unhappy and explain that you are much happier now.

However, Alex responds: “There’s more to life than happiness. You aren’t doing anything meaningful with your life!” [1]

But what is a meaningful life?

Here we will review some influential answers to this question.

A group of people doing yoga on a beach, at sunset.

1. Cosmic Pessimism vs. Everyday Meaning

Pessimists might say that life has no ultimate or cosmic meaning and thus that a beach bum’s life is no more or less meaningful—in the grand scheme of things—than the lives of Beethoven, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Marie Curie. [2]

However, many philosophers argue that even if there is no ultimate meaning of life, there can be meaning in life. Our lives can be meaningful in ordinary ways, ways that don’t require that we play a special role in some kind of grand cosmic narrative. Call this everyday meaning . [3] What might give our lives this kind of meaning?

2. Subjectivism

Subjectivists say that someone’s life is meaningful if it is deeply fulfilling, engaging, or satisfying. [4] And different people find different things meaningful; a challenging career might be engaging and fulfilling for others, but boring and unsatisfying to you: you may find life on a beach much more fulfilling.

Some subjectivists distinguish between the judgment that one is fulfilled and actually being fulfilled. Fulfillment feels good, but it seems possible to be mistaken about whether we are fulfilled. Perhaps, as you lounge on the beach, you confuse being merely content with fulfillment. [5] If you tried other things like writing poetry, volunteering, or starting a business, they might end up being more fulfilling, and hence more meaningful for you. [6]

Subjectivism, however, has counterintuitive implications. Suppose someone found it fulfilling to spend all their time gazing at the sand. This may seem too bizarre, aimless, or trivial to credit as meaningful. And what if someone found meaning in ethically monstrous activities, like torturing babies or puppies? Vicious projects like these don’t seem to add positive meaning to someone’s life. [7]

Someone would have to be a rather atypical sort of human being to be truly fulfilled by sand-gazing or puppy-torturing. Could such strange lives count as meaningful? Subjectivists may say yes, but many would reject that answer and conclude that subjectivism is false.

3. Objective Meaning

Objective accounts hold that meaningful lives involve projects of positive value, such as improving our character, exercising our creativity, and making the world a better place by pursuing and promoting truth, justice, and beauty. [8]

Being a beach bum doesn’t really make the world worse , but it doesn’t make much of a positive contribution either. Your friend Alex is concerned that you are squandering your potential and thereby failing to make something meaningful of your life.

However, your decision to become a beach bum could be a way of rebelling against the “rat race” of a workaholic and overly competitive society. Perhaps you are choosing to cultivate a life of mindfulness and aesthetic contemplation of natural beauty, in protest against superficial or soul-crushing social norms. Framed that way, your life seems to align with important, enduring, objective values.

Objective accounts of meaning, however, must explain why some activities are objectively more meaningful than others.

The difficulty is that what seems frivolous or pointless from one point of view may seem valuable and worthwhile from another. For some, climbing Mount Everest might count as an admirable exercise of physical and mental endurance, an inspiring achievement. Others may think it is stupid to climb big rocks, risking death and wasting resources that could be directed toward other more valuable causes.

But perhaps such people are just being narrow-minded. The meaningfulness of being a beach bum, a mountain-climber, or anything else might depend on our motives or options and not just on what the activity involves. [9]

4. Hybrid Theory

The hybrid theory of meaning in life combines insights from subjectivism and objective accounts: a meaningful life provides fulfillment and does so through devotion to objectively valuable projects. [10]

Hybrid theory differs from objective accounts because it insists that a meaningful life must also be fulfilling for the person living it. There are many such projects available to us, since there are many fulfilling ways, given our distinctive personalities and abilities, that we can engage with values like truth, justice, and beauty.

However, just as a subjectively fulfilling life might seem trivial or despicable, perhaps a meaningful life doesn’t always feel fulfilling. [11]

Consider George Bailey in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life . [12] George thinks his life has been wasted and wishes that he’d never been born. Luckily, his guardian angel Clarence rescues George from a suicide attempt and helps George understand how meaningful his life choices have been. Hybrid theory implies that George’s life now becomes meaningful because he is finally fulfilled by all his good works, but objective accounts suggest that George’s life was meaningful all along even though he didn’t realize it! [13]

Recall the opening scenario: did you ditch a meaningful (but sometimes frustrating) life for the beach?

5. Conclusion

The psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl held that the search for meaning is the fundamental human drive. [14] He claimed that a sense of meaning in life gives people the strength to persevere and even thrive despite the adversity and injustice we must sometimes confront. [15]

Questions about meaning in life often arise when we suspect that something is missing from our lives. Despite their differences, the theories surveyed above seem to agree that there are many things we might do—or try—that would be meaningful. Talking about it with your friend Alex may be a good place to start. [16] Why? Because good relationships frequently rank as important sources of meaning: perhaps meaning is often made—or discovered—together.

[1] Emily Esfahani Smith (2017) uses this distinction between happiness and meaning in life in her survey of psychological research on meaning in life. See also her TED Talk, “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy.”

[2] See, e.g., Benatar (2017) and Weinberg (2021) for defenses of the pessimistic outlook. At least one theist agrees with the pessimists that if life has no divine meaning or purpose, then nothing we do or become has any lasting significance and that our lives are all equally absurd: see Craig (2013).

[3] Many philosophers who propose theories of meaning in life are either agnostic or skeptical of the idea that life as a whole has any divine meaning or purpose. See, e.g., Wolf (2010). Of course, if one does think life as a whole has divine meaning or purpose, then having meaning in one’s life might well involve living in accord with the supernatural point of existence. Some of the accounts of meaning in life are consistent with religious ideas about the meaning of life; I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out which views will or will not cohere with their own religious convictions.

[4] This idea is developed in the final chapter of Taylor (2000).

[5] John Stuart Mill issues a similar warning against conflating happiness and contentment in Utilitarianism , Chapter 2.

[6] This point is developed in more sophisticated subjectivist accounts of meaning in life. See, e.g. Calhoun (2015) and Parmer (2021).

[7] See Campbell and Nyholm (2015) or their contribution in Landau (2022) for discussion of “anti-meaning”: activities, projects, and lives that have negative and destructive significance.

[8] See Metz (2013) for discussion of several different accounts of this sort; Metz defends his own version in the final chapter. On creativity, see Taylor (1987) and Matheson (2018).

[9] Examples like the beach bum are often under-described–including in this essay! It is worth taking such examples and considering variations of intentions, motives, circumstances, and so forth in order to consider how changes in these various elements may alter our assessment of the meaningfulness of the life or activity. Whole lives are usually, if not always, more complex than these brief examples. Philosophers who endorse narrative theories of meaning in life would suggest that the focus on particular activities and roles fails to consider that a meaningful life might also need to make holistic sense as a meaningful story. See Kauppinen (2012).

[10] The term “project” here includes not just completable activities like painting a picture but also open-ended activities such as maintaining strong relationships with friends and family. This approach is developed by Susan Wolf in Meaning in Life and Why It Matters , and in three essays collected in Wolf (2014): see the essays in Part II: “The Meanings of Lives,” “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life,” and “Happiness and Morality.” The text of Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is available at the Tanner Lectures website. See the print edition for excellent commentaries on Wolf’s position and a response by Wolf. A similar view is developed by Peter Singer in How Are We to Live? (1993), Chapter 10.

[11] Another potential problem is that while hybrid theory aims to take the attractive features of subjective fulfillment and objective accounts of meaning in life, it inherits the possible problems with both views, too. Furthermore, if subjective and objective accounts contradict each other, hybrid theory might be inconsistent.

[12] This point is developed, using the example of George Bailey, in Smuts (2013).

[13] For a similar study in a life that seems very meaningful from the outside (a successful career, prosperity, and a happy family), but is wracked by unhappiness, existential dread, and moral guilt within, see Leo Tolstoy’s My Confession (2005). Tolstoy’s crisis of meaning is often discussed in the literature on meaning in life, both for the gripping way in which he describes his fear of death and his feeling that life is meaningless, and for his discussion of the solution to the problem to be found in religious faith.

[14] Frankl (2006).

[15] Of course, this does not justify the actions of those who have put others in despicable situations. For Frankl, the point is about motivation rather than justification. Revolting against oppressors, for example, may be a highly meaningful project for those who are oppressed. See also Camus (2018).

[16] On relationships and other sources of meaning in life, see Smith (2017). Further recommended reading: Landau (2017), Landau (2022), and Singer (2009). For discussion of how ordinary “folk” intuitions about meaning relate to various philosophical theories of meaning in life, see Fuhrer and Cova (2022).

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

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

Campbell, Stephen M. and Sven Nyholm (2015). “Anti-Meaning and Why It Matters,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1(4): 694-711.

Camus, Albert (2018). The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays . Trans. Justin O’Brien. Vintage.

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. Originally published in 1946.

Fuhrer, Joffrey and Florian Cova (2022). “What makes a life meaningful? Folk intuitions about the content and shape of meaningful lives,” Philosophical Psychology.

Kauppinen, Antti (2012). “Meaningfulness and Time,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84(2): 345-377.

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

Landau, Iddo (2022). The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life . Oxford University Press.

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

Mill, John Stuart (1863). Utilitarianism .

Parmer, W. Jared (2021). “Meaning in Life and Becoming More Fulfilled,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 20(1): 1-29.

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.

Smith, Emily E. (2017). “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy.” TED.com.

Smuts, Aaron (2013). “The Good Cause Account of the Meaning of Life,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 41(4): 536-562.

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

Taylor, Richard (1987). “Time and Life’s Meaning,” The Review of Metaphysics 40(4): 675-686.

Tolstoy, Leo (2005). My Confession . Translated by Aylmer Maude. 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.

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.

Related Essays

Happiness: What is it to be Happy? by Kiki Berk

The Philosophy of Humor: What Makes Something Funny? by Chris A. Kramer

Existentialism by Addison Ellis

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

Moral Education: Teaching Students to Become Better People by Dominik Balg

John Stuart Mill on the Good Life: Higher-Quality Pleasures by Dale E. Miller

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

What Is It to Love Someone? by Felipe Pereira

Ethical Egoism: The Morality of Selfishness : by Nathan Nobis

Ethics and Absolute Poverty: Peter Singer and Effective Altruism by Brandon Boesch

Is Immortality Desirable? by Felipe Pereira

Hope by Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale

Nietzsche and the Death of God by Justin Remhof

Translations

Turkish , Turkish , Thai

PDF Download

Download this essay in PDF .

About the Author

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

Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at 1000WordPhilosophy.com .

Share this:, 32 thoughts on “ meaning in life: what makes our lives meaningful ”.

Pingback: ความหมายชีวิต: ประเด็นคืออะไร? – ผมเป็นคนจริงจังเกินไปสินะครับ
Pingback: ความหมายในชีวิต: อะไรทำให้ชีวิตเรามีความหมาย – ผมเป็นคนจริงจังเกินไปสินะครับ
Pingback: Philosophy as a Way of Life – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Qual o sentido da vida? (S03E06) – Esclarecimento
Pingback: Ancient Cynicism: Rejecting Civilization and Returning to Nature – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Aristotle on Friendship: What Does It Take to Be a Good Friend? – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: The Meaning of Life: What’s the Point? – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: The Philosophy of Humor: What Makes Something Funny? – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update - Philosophy News
Pingback: Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update | Daily Nous
Pingback: Ethical Egoism: The Morality of Selfishness – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Ethics and Absolute Poverty: Peter Singer and Effective Altruism – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: “God is dead”: Nietzsche and the Death of God – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Hope – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Is Immortality Desirable? – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Existentialism – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Camus on the Absurd: The Myth of Sisyphus – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Pingback: Happiness: What is it to be Happy? – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Comments are closed.

Quote Investigator®

Tracing Quotations

The Purpose of Life Is to Discover Your Gift. The Meaning of Life Is to Give Your Gift Away

William Shakespeare? Pablo Picasso? David Viscott? Joy Golliver? Emilio Santini? Anonymous?

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

This statement is often attributed to the famed playwright William Shakespeare or the influential painter Pablo Picasso on social networks like Facebook and Pinterest. I know that means absolutely nothing about who really said it. Would you please trace this quotation?

Quote Investigator: QI has found no substantive evidence linking this expression to William Shakespeare or Pablo Picasso. The earliest strong match located by QI appeared in a 1993 book by the radio personality David S. Viscott. This citation is detailed further below.

An interesting thematically related statement was included in an 1843 essay titled “Gifts” by the prominent lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson who argued that a gift is only worthwhile if it is integrally related to the gift-giver [1] 1843 July, The Dial, Volume IV, Number I, Gifts (Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson), Start Page 93, Quote Page 93, Column 1, Published by James Munroe and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Google Books … Continue reading

Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a stone; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.

In 1993 the volume “Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations” by David Viscott was published. The author was a psychiatrist who hosted a pioneering radio talk show in the 1980s and 1990s during which he provided counseling to callers. Viscott’s statement was composed of three parts instead of two: [2] 1993, Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations by David S. Viscott, Life, Quote Page 87, Contemporary Books of Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans)

The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In January 1994 a column in the religion section of “The Seattle Times” included a simplified instance of the passage above. The columnist had been collecting statements that he considered insightful or profound, and he shared several in his article. No attribution was given, and this version omitted the middle element. Boldface has been added to excerpts: [3] 1994 January 1, The Seattle Times, Section: Religion, Other’s Insights Can Help as We Look Ahead to New Year by Dale Turner, Quote Page A14, Seattle, Washington. (NewsBank Access World News)

As the new year begins, I will share with you some of my collection. Some items were recorded 50 years ago and others just this week. I hope one or more of them will be interesting or useful to you. … — The purpose of life is to discover your gift and the meaning of life is in giving it away.

A year later the same columnist, Dale Turner, published additional sayings from his personal assemblage in “The Seattle Times”. The concise instance of the adage was further disseminated when it was printed again: [4] 1995 January 7, The Seattle Times, Section: Religion, A Positive Thought Can Go a Long Way in Halting Despair by Dale Turner, Quote Page A12, Seattle, Washington. (NewsBank Access World News)

Today, I am responding to requests that have come to me to share more items from my collection. I hope one or more will be interesting or useful to you this first week of a new year: … — The purpose of life is to discover your gift, and the meaning of life is in giving it away.

In May 1995 the keynote speaker at a meeting in New Jersey designed to encourage young people to enter the teaching profession employed an instance of the dictum: [5] 1995 May 10, The Press of Atlantic City, Edition: Cumberland, Section: Region, Young Teachers / Program Encourages Teenagers To Go Into Teaching, Diane D’Amico (Staff Writer), Quote Page C1, … Continue reading

“Keep growing professionally,” she emphasized. “The purpose of life is to discover your gift; the meaning of life is giving it away.”

The connection to Viscott was not forgotten. In 1997 an article in the “Chattanooga Times Free Press” of Tennessee placed the adage at the beginning of an article about a successful painter: [6] 1997 February 16, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Taking A Look Back by Ann Nichols (Free Press Arts Writer), Quote Page J1, Chattanooga, Tennessee. (NewsBank Access World News)

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift; the work of life is to develop it; and the meaning of life is to give your gift away.” — David Viscott.

In March 2006 the “San Francisco Chronicle” published a profile of a mathematician working at a Hewlett Packard laboratory. The journalist noticed an instance of the saying was posted on a wall. No ascription was given, and the words “meaning” and “purpose” were swapped. Also, the word “find” was used instead of “discover”: [7] 2006 March 19, San Francisco Chronicle, Section: Business, “Challenges — and solutions – HP mathematician cited for years of work helping others” by Benjamin Pimentel … Continue reading

A note on the wall says, “The meaning of life is to find your gift; the purpose of life is to give it away.”

In May 2006 an article in a Newport News, Virginia newspaper described a scene in a documentary called “Master of the Flame” about a local glass artist named Emilio Santini. The artist mentioned the adage: [8] 2006 May 14, Daily Press, Section: Sports, “An Eclectic and Versatile Player” by Marty O’Brien (Daily Press), Quote Page C1, Newport News, Virginia. (NewsBank Access World News)

At one point, Santini summarizes his philosophy: The meaning of life is to find your gift, and the purpose of life is to give it away.

Also in 2006 a book titled “Just Do It!: The Power of Positive Living” used the saying as an epigraph for a chapter. The words were ascribed to Joy Golliver who has written and lectured about community service and care giving: [9] 2006, Just Do It!: The Power of Positive Living by Eray Honeycutt, (Epigraph of Chapter 16: Hindsight & Hope), Quote Page 201, AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana. (Google Books Preview)

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. Joy J. Golliver Author

In conclusion, David Viscott published an instance of the saying in 1993, and QI believes he should receive credit for originating the adage. This ascription is based on current knowledge, and it may change in the future as databases expand. The most popular modern instance is a simplified version of Viscott’s three part statement. Others employed the adage after it was in circulation.

Image Notes: Globe gift from Nemo at Pixabay. Wrapped gifts from OpenClipart-Vectors at Pixabay. Images have been edited and resized.

(Great thanks to Lucinda Critchley, Laurelyn Collins, and Obsidian Eagle whose inquires led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.)

References
↑1	1843 July, The Dial, Volume IV, Number I, Gifts (Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson), Start Page 93, Quote Page 93, Column 1, Published by James Munroe and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Google Books Full View)
↑2	1993, Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations by David S. Viscott, Life, Quote Page 87, Contemporary Books of Chicago, Illinois. (Verified with scans)
↑3	1994 January 1, The Seattle Times, Section: Religion, Other’s Insights Can Help as We Look Ahead to New Year by Dale Turner, Quote Page A14, Seattle, Washington. (NewsBank Access World News)
↑4	1995 January 7, The Seattle Times, Section: Religion, A Positive Thought Can Go a Long Way in Halting Despair by Dale Turner, Quote Page A12, Seattle, Washington. (NewsBank Access World News)
↑5	1995 May 10, The Press of Atlantic City, Edition: Cumberland, Section: Region, Young Teachers / Program Encourages Teenagers To Go Into Teaching, Diane D’Amico (Staff Writer), Quote Page C1, Atlantic City, New Jersey. (NewsBank Access World News)
↑6	1997 February 16, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Taking A Look Back by Ann Nichols (Free Press Arts Writer), Quote Page J1, Chattanooga, Tennessee. (NewsBank Access World News)
↑7	2006 March 19, San Francisco Chronicle, Section: Business, “Challenges — and solutions – HP mathematician cited for years of work helping others” by Benjamin Pimentel (Chronicle Staff Writer), Quote Page J1, San Francisco, California. (NewsBank Access World News)
↑8	2006 May 14, Daily Press, Section: Sports, “An Eclectic and Versatile Player” by Marty O’Brien (Daily Press), Quote Page C1, Newport News, Virginia. (NewsBank Access World News)
↑9	2006, Just Do It!: The Power of Positive Living by Eray Honeycutt, (Epigraph of Chapter 16: Hindsight & Hope), Quote Page 201, AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana. (Google Books Preview)

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.

IMAGE	PRODUCT
	Grammarly
	ProWritingAid

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

Essays About Life: What is the true meaning of 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.

Essays About Life: How to live a healthy life?

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!

What 3 Famous Thinkers Said About the Meaning of Life

Let’s get philosophical.

“What is the meaning of life?” is simultaneously one of the oldest questions in philosophy and a relatively new concept: While the quest for purpose stretches back farther than the ancient Greek thinkers, it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that Arthur Schopenhauer really started asking the question of der Sinn des Lebens (“the meaning of life” in his native German). He concluded that it is the “will to life,” or the instinctive striving, and that peace comes from eradicating that will. Many thinkers have addressed the question of the meaning of life to various ends, and their work can help us confront the same problem ourselves—though their conclusions are rarely straightforward.

Immanuel Kant

Friedrich nietzsche, albert camus.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) earned himself the title of the “father of modern ethics” while living what is widely accepted as an exceptionally boring life. So boring, in fact, that according to legend, his neighbors claimed to be able to set their watches by his daily walk.

Because his work came before Schopenhauer’s, Kant didn’t specifically address the question “what is the meaning of life,” but his work engaged with the theme directly, and is so seminal that it’s worth addressing. It’s likely that Kant would have answered one of two ways.

Kant wanted to create a moral system that would allow a person to derive the content of their moral actions (what ought to be done in any individual instance) from the definition of morality (the very essence of the word ought ). He felt that this would allow us to formulate a morality based entirely on rationality, which would in turn allow us to discover synthetic a priori knowledge —knowledge derived purely from reason, as opposed to experience that tells us something previously unknown about the world—regarding the moral value of our actions. The result is his “ categorical imperative ,” which he outlines in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals :

“I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”

According to Kant’s view, an action can be deemed acceptable only if the underlying motivating principle, or maxim, could be applied universally without contradiction. The classic example is lying: If everybody lied, then nobody would believe anybody, making it impossible to lie. This only tells us what not to do, but it has profound implications: If we consider ourselves and the world we live in hard enough, we can derive objective standards by which to live.

Kant’s second possible response can be found in his Critique of Pure Reason , in which he attempted to respond to ideas posited by Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776). Kant outlined what he believed were the conditions under which experience is possible, arguing that all knowledge is the result of a dual process: “Intuition and concepts therefore constitute the elements of all our cognition, so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding to them in some way nor intuition without concepts can yield a cognition. Both are either pure or empirical.” In other words, thought is a combination of sense data gained through what Kant called our “Intuition” and interpretive frameworks called “Concepts.”

But Kant didn’t believe that we could receive all of our sense data or our concepts unfiltered. He felt that there were a priori forms of these faculties that shaped how we could experience the world—and that one form that concepts take is cause and effect.

So when Kant said “the pure or universal laws of nature, which, without being based on particular perceptions, contain merely the conditions of their necessary union in experience,” he was making the case that universal laws (like cause and effect) are actually the product of our minds at work, allowing us to have comprehensible experience. By this reasoning, cause and effect (and space and time) don’t necessarily exist outside of our minds. The upshot of this is that life, an effect, might not have any meaning, a cause, outside of the processes of our minds.

Kant reconciles these views with the ultimate philosophical cop out—he turns to God—but these strands are picked up and expanded on by other great thinkers.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is one of our most misunderstood philosophers thanks to the way his sister and literary executor, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, twisted his works after his death. Per Britannica , she “edited them without scruple or understanding” and “gained a wide audience for her misinterpretations.” Even so, he was a deeply troubled thinker whose work would go on to influence millions.

Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer’s idea that all life is driven by a “will to live,” noting that some beings die for their goals. Instead, he suggested a “will to power” in which living beings want to “ vent ” their strength (in other words, affirm and actualize their unique individual potential).

But what is our individual strength? Nietzsche rejected Kant’s preference for pure reason, instead turning to psychology to solve the problem: “For psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems,” he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil . According to Nietzsche, you must cast off societal, religious, and historical expectations in order to become a “free spirit” or one who thinks for themselves (a philosopher). Only this will allow you to move “beyond good and evil,” or the morality that the world imposes upon us. Instead, he writes , we must search for what is “at the bottom of our souls, quite ‘down below,’ there is certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable ‘I am this’; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully—he can only follow to the end what is ‘fixed’ about them in himself.”

In Nietzsche’s view, with enough psychological introspection (although he notes that this may not always be enough, or perfectly accurate, on its own), we can find our own unique purpose—buried under layers of society and convention—that we should then strive to actualize at any cost.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French-Algerian philosopher, author of The Stranger , and a leading thinker of the group associated with the philosophical movement existentialism (though Camus rejected the association, and his position in relation to the movement remains an area of active discussion). His ideas about the meaning of life can be seen as a successor to Kant’s second potential conclusion. Camus realized that it’s human nature when seeing an effect to look for a cause. He also accepted as a premise that all previous attempts at finding an objective “meaning” of life had failed. Existentialist philosophers call this gap —between our need for an explanation and reality’s inherent lack of one—“the absurd.”

Camus likened human existence in the face of the absurd to that of the Greek myth of Sisyphus, a man punished by the gods to roll a rock up a hill for all eternity … only to have it roll back down just before he succeeds. Camus’s response to this situation is to live lucidly in defiance of reality. As he wrote in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” By realizing that meaning is there to be made instead of handed to us, we actually gain the ability to find things meaningful—and are therefore better off for it.

Essay on Life for Students and Children

500+ words essay on life.

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

Why is Life Important?

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

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

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

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

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

How to Improve Quality of Life?

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

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

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

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

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

Travelling Essay
Picnic Essay
Our Country Essay
My Parents Essay
Essay on Favourite Personality
Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
Essay on Knowledge is Power
Essay on Gurpurab
Essay on My Favourite Season
Essay on Types of Sports

Download the App

Undergraduate
High School
Architecture
American History
Asian History
Antique Literature
American Literature
Asian Literature
Classic English Literature
World Literature
Creative Writing
Linguistics
Criminal Justice
Legal Issues
Anthropology
Archaeology
Political Science
World Affairs
African-American Studies
East European Studies
Latin-American Studies
Native-American Studies
West European Studies
Family and Consumer Science
Social Issues
Women and Gender Studies
Social Work
Natural Sciences
Pharmacology
Earth science
Agriculture
Agricultural Studies
Computer Science
IT Management
Mathematics
Investments
Engineering and Technology
Engineering
Aeronautics
Medicine and Health
Alternative Medicine
Communications and Media
Advertising
Communication Strategies
Public Relations
Educational Theories
Teacher's Career
Chicago/Turabian
Company Analysis
Education Theories
Shakespeare
Canadian Studies
Food Safety
Relation of Global Warming and Extreme Weather Condition
Movie Review
Admission Essay
Annotated Bibliography
Application Essay
Article Critique
Article Review
Article Writing
Book Review
Business Plan
Business Proposal
Capstone Project
Cover Letter
Creative Essay
Dissertation
Dissertation - Abstract
Dissertation - Conclusion
Dissertation - Discussion
Dissertation - Hypothesis
Dissertation - Introduction
Dissertation - Literature
Dissertation - Methodology
Dissertation - Results
GCSE Coursework
Grant Proposal
Marketing Plan
Multiple Choice Quiz
Personal Statement
Power Point Presentation
Power Point Presentation With Speaker Notes
Questionnaire
Reaction Paper
Research Paper
Research Proposal
SWOT analysis
Thesis Paper
Online Quiz
Literature Review
Movie Analysis
Statistics problem
Math Problem
All papers examples
How It Works
Money Back Policy
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
We Are Hiring

The Meaning of Life, Essay Example

Pages: 3

Words: 939

Hire a Writer for Custom Essay

Use 10% Off Discount: "custom10" in 1 Click 👇

You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work.

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.

Stuck with your Essay?

Get in touch with one of our experts for instant help!

The Conduct of Monetary Policy, Essay Example

Effects of a Mobile Web-Based Pregnancy, Essay Example

Time is precious

don’t waste it!

Plagiarism-free guarantee

Privacy guarantee

Secure checkout

Money back guarantee

Related Essay Samples & Examples

Voting as a civic responsibility, essay example.

Pages: 1

Words: 287

Utilitarianism and Its Applications, Essay Example

Words: 356

The Age-Related Changes of the Older Person, Essay Example

Pages: 2

Words: 448

The Problems ESOL Teachers Face, Essay Example

Pages: 8

Words: 2293

Should English Be the Primary Language? Essay Example

Pages: 4

Words: 999

The Term “Social Construction of Reality”, Essay Example

Words: 371

Rhea Ripley Reveals The Meaning Behind Her Tattoos

Even more on the arrest of artem chigvintsev (husband of nikki garcia/nikki bella), breaking news – nikki garcia’s husband arrested for felony domestic battery.

On a recent edition of “WWE Tattooed,” former WWE Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley revealed the meaning behind her tattoos.

You can check out some highlights from the interview below:

On her first tattoo being the date of WWE Evolution: “It was a really special day. It really was the start of my awesome career here within the WWE and my gradual change into The Nightmare, The Eradicator, the absolute brutality that you see today. Being in the tattoo chair was really thrilling. It definitely stung and I was a little bit thrown off with that, but I was also so excited to start this tattoo journey.”

On her tattoo representing her bond with her younger sister Calista: “We’re sisters for life. It doesn’t matter how far we go in life or what the distance is between us. We’re always going to be there for each other and we’re always going to love each other. So we just wanted to have some sort of memento of our love, pretty much.”

On the crown on the head of her sugar skull tattoos: “I added the crown to it at WrestleMania 39 because I was being cheeky. I was like, ‘I’m gonna get a crown because I’m going to take Charlotte Flair’s crown,’ so now I have a crown, and that’s exactly what I did.”

Rhea Ripley

Latest news, who should answer la knight’s open challenge tonight | question of the day, report – nikki cross signs new multi-year deal with wwe, ronda rousey says wwe didn’t give her enough time to prepare.

Demi Bennett

She was also the inaugural NXT UK Women’s Champion as well as a former NXT Women’s Champion, a former Raw Women’s Champion ...

Liv morgan – ‘i secretly never felt good enough for wwe’.

Terms of Service
Privacy Policy
Community Rules

eWrestlingNews was founded in 1999 and has been covering wrestling news 24/7 ever since. With a strong team of writers, editorialists, and social managers, we strive to provide to you the most up-to-date wrestling news and information around the web.

Trump Reposts Crude Sexual Remark About Harris on Truth Social

Though the former president has a history of making crass insults about opponents, the reposts signal his willingness to continue to shatter longstanding political norms.

Share full article

Former President Donald J. Trump framed by American flags.

By Michael Gold

Aug. 28, 2024

Former President Donald J. Trump used his social-media website on Wednesday to amplify a crude remark about Vice President Kamala Harris that suggested Ms. Harris traded sexual favors to help her political career.

The post, by another user on Truth Social, was an image of Ms. Harris and Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s opponent in 2016. The text read: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”

The remark was a reference to Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and a right-wing contention that Ms. Harris’s romantic relationship with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco whom she dated in the mid-1990s while he was speaker of the California State Assembly, fueled her political rise.

Mr. Trump’s repost was the second time in 10 days that the former president shared content from his personal account making sexually oriented attacks on Ms. Harris. Though he has a history of making crass insults about his opponents, the reposts signal Mr. Trump’s willingness to continue to shatter longstanding norms of political speech.

The image Mr. Trump shared on Wednesday morning was another user’s screenshot of a post on X, and it was a reply to an unrelated video clip Mr. Trump had posted on Tuesday night.

Mr. Trump reposted the image as part of a series of 30 reposts he made on Truth Social between 8:02 and 8:32 a.m. on Wednesday, including several posts with references to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and its slogan. Mr. Trump also reposted photos that called for the prosecution or imprisoning of top Democrats and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The former president has vowed to direct federal prosecutors to investigate his political enemies if elected.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

Want all of The Times? Subscribe .

IMAGES

The Meaning Of Life Philosophy Free Essay Example
Victor Frankl Quote: “The meaning of life is to give life a meaning.”
Essay on Life
Philosophy the Meaning of Life Free Essay Example
≫ To Live a Life of Meaning and Purpose Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com
Reflections of Daily Life through a Window Free Essay Example

VIDEO

Meaning in Life
Challenges Give Life Meaning #howtobattle #shorts
Motivational Quote 216
The meaning of life is to give life meaning 🥰🧑‍⚕️(5)
Give life meaning #foryou #edits #wheelie #snowboard #fotball #football #love #youtubeshorts
The meaning of life is to give life meaning

COMMENTS

Albert Einstein's Surprising Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
This theme of liberating the self to glimpse life's true meaning is also echoed by Einstein later on, in a 1950 letter to console a grieving father Robert S. Marcus: "A human being is a part ...
The Meaning of Life: Personal Essay
The external meaning of life is something that is imposed upon us from an outside source. This could be anything from a religious belief system to a set of societal norms and expectations. For example, some people may believe that the meaning of life is to serve God, while others may think that the meaning of life is to be successful in their ...
Jean Paul Sartre on the Meaning of Life
In response Sartre explains that existentialism is based upon the doctrine that existence precedes essence; that our concrete subjective existence comes before whatever essence we develop. To help us understand this idea Sartre considers an artifact such as a letter opener. In this case its essence—to open letters—precedes its existence.
The Meaning of Life
3. Naturalism. Recall that naturalism is the view that a physical life is central to life's meaning, that even if there is no spiritual realm, a substantially meaningful life is possible. Like supernaturalism, contemporary naturalism admits of two distinguishable variants, moderate and extreme (Metz 2019).
The Meaning of Life: What's the Point?
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.
Life Essay: What is The Meaning of Life
For some, the meaning of life is intricately linked to religious beliefs and the idea of a higher power or divine purpose. In this view, life is regarded as a sacred gift meant to be lived in accordance with the will of a higher being. On the other hand, some believe the meaning of life is more secular, focusing on personal fulfillment ...
4 philosophical answers to the meaning of life
He explains, "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.". In other words, for humans, e xistence precedes essence. Humans have to ...
What Is The Meaning Of Life?
The meaning of life may never be definitively known. The meaning of life may be different for each individual and/or each species. The truth of the meaning of life is likely in the eye of the beholder. There were three choices given at the beginning of this essay, and for me, the answer is all of the above. Jason Hucsek, San Antonio, TX
PDF The Meaning of Life is the Pursuit of Love
The motivation for thinking that love is the answer. As has been argued, love serves as the driving force for the theist, atheist, and the more cosmic thinker. Love is hailed as the meaning of life because, as the crux of this paper has shown, it serves as a hallmark to what it means to live.
The Meaning of Life
1. The Meaning of "Meaning". One part of the field of 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).
The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches Essay
The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches Essay. The meaning of life is one of the questions that have attracted the attention of many philosophers as well as writers. Two different views on this issue are expressed by Richard Taylor and Susan Wolf. Get a custom essay on The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches.
Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful?
Author: Matthew Pianalto Category: Ethics, Phenomenology and Existentialism, Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 997. Editors' note: this essay and its companion essay, The Meaning of Life: What's the Point? both explore the concept of meaning in relation to human life. This essay focuses on meaning in individual human lives, whereas the other addresses the meaning of life as a whole.
The Purpose of Life Is to Discover Your Gift. The Meaning of Life Is to
A note on the wall says, "The meaning of life is to find your gift; the purpose of life is to give it away." In May 2006 an article in a Newport News, Virginia newspaper described a scene in a documentary called "Master of the Flame" about a local glass artist named Emilio Santini.
What is the meaning of life?
So, it is really recognition that is the meaning of life — but that of course does not sound as dramatic and poetic as love being the meaning of life. But love, to be experienced 'to the ...
Essays About Life: Top 5 Examples Plus 7 Prompts
7 Prompts for Essays About Life. 1. What Is The True Meaning Of Life. Use this prompt to compile different meanings of life and provide a background on why a person defines life as they do. Life encompasses many values and depends on one's perception.
What 3 Famous Thinkers Said About the Meaning of Life
manual. "What is the meaning of life?" is simultaneously one of the oldest questions in philosophy and a relatively new concept. Here's what Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Albert ...
The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives
Give your life a meaning, and that's the meaning it will have. 5. Conclusion. The dismissal of the question about the meaning of life which was characteristic of Ayer and his generation, and Camus's idea that meaninglessness doesn't matter, may be what ironically sparked the recent interest in the question.
Essay on Life for Students and Children
500+ Words Essay on Life. First of all, Life refers to an aspect of existence. This aspect processes acts, evaluates, and evolves through growth. ... Pursuing a hobby is a perfect way to bring meaning to life. Without a passion or interest, an individual's life would probably be dull. Following a hobby certainly brings new energy to life. It ...
The Meaning of Life, Essay Example
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.
Essay on The Meaning of Life
Essay on The Meaning of Life. My few years on this planet have been a bit confusing. I have learned of many aspects of life from which one can draw meaning, if indeed such meaning can be drawn. I have also learned that there can be no singular meaning of life to stand for us all, or even any one of us. What I have learned above all is that ...
The Meaning and Purpose of Life: [Essay Example], 710 words
According to existentialism, life has no inherent meaning or purpose, and individuals must grapple with the anxiety and despair that arise from this realization. However, existentialists also argue that this lack of inherent meaning grants individuals the freedom to define their own purpose and create meaning through their choices and actions.
Meaning of life
"The Storm Fiend" — Heading to Book II Chapter IX of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, 1898 illustration by E. J. Sullivan. The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833-1834), book II chapter IX, "The Everlasting Yea". [1]Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than ...
What is the meaning of life?
Another possible meaning of life would be that it is about improving ourselves as much as possible, being the best people that we can be. If that is how you want to define the meaning of life ...
Rhea Ripley Reveals The Meaning Behind Her Tattoos
On her tattoo representing her bond with her younger sister Calista: "We're sisters for life. It doesn't matter how far we go in life or what the distance is between us. We're always going to be there for each other and we're always going to love each other. So we just wanted to have some sort of memento of our love, pretty much."
Trump Reposts Crude Sexual Remark About Harris on Truth Social
Last month, Mr. Trump questioned Ms. Harris's identity as a Black woman, suggesting at a convention of Black journalists that Ms. Harris had used her racial profile as a way to gain a political ...

Reason and Meaning

Share this:

Leave a Reply

4 philosophical answers to the meaning of life

Existentialism

Religious existentialism

Question of the Month

Next Question of the Month

Bibliography

The Meaning of Life

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

3.1 Subjectivism

2. Supernaturalism

2.1 God-centered Views

2.2 Soul-centered Views

3. Naturalism

Support SEP

The Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches Essay

Works Cited

Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful?

1. Cosmic Pessimism vs. Everyday Meaning

2. Subjectivism

3. Objective Meaning

4. Hybrid Theory

5. Conclusion

Related Essays

Translations

PDF Download

About the Author

Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at 1000WordPhilosophy.com .

The Purpose of Life Is to Discover Your Gift. The Meaning of Life Is to Give Your Gift Away

Essays About Life: Top 5 Examples Plus 7 Prompts

5 Essay Examples

7 Prompts for Essays About Life

What 3 Famous Thinkers Said About the Meaning of Life

Immanuel Kant

Essay on Life for Students and Children

Why is Life Important?

How to Improve Quality of Life?

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Download the App

The Meaning of Life, Essay Example

Related Essay Samples & Examples

Utilitarianism and Its Applications, Essay Example

The Age-Related Changes of the Older Person, Essay Example

The Problems ESOL Teachers Face, Essay Example

Should English Be the Primary Language? Essay Example

The Term “Social Construction of Reality”, Essay Example

Rhea Ripley Reveals The Meaning Behind Her Tattoos

Rhea Ripley

Demi Bennett

Related Articles

Trump Reposts Crude Sexual Remark About Harris on Truth Social

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS