searching for the meaning of life essay

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

The Meaning of Life: What’s the Point?

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Questioning the Question

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Supernaturalism

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

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

3. Nihilism

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

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

4. Naturalism

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

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

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

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

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

5. Conclusion

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

forty-two .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Essays

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

Existentialism by Addison Ellis

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

Nietzsche and the Death of God by Justin Remhof

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

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

The Badness of Death by Duncan Purves

Is Immortality Desirable? by Felipe Pereira

Hope by Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale

Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf

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About the Author

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

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The Meaning of Life, Essay Example

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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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.

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The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life

Iddo Landau is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel. His publications include ‘The Meaning of Life sub specie aeternitatis ’ ( Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 2011) and Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (Oxford University Press, 2017).

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This volume presents thirty-two essays on a wide array of topics in modern philosophical meaning in life research. The essays are organized into six parts. Part I, Understanding Meaning in Life, focuses on various ways of conceptualizing meaning in life. Among other issues, it discusses whether meaning in life should be understood objectively or subjectively, the relation between importance and meaningfulness, and whether meaningful lives should be understood narratively. Part II, Meaning in Life, Science, and Metaphysics, presents opposing views on whether neuroscience sheds light on life’s meaning, inquires whether hard determinists must see life as meaningless, and explores the relation between time, personal identity, and meaning. Part III, Meaning in Life and Religion, examines the relation between meaningfulness, mysticism, and transcendence, and considers life’s meaning from both atheist and theist perspectives. Part IV, Ethics and Meaning in Life, examines (among other issues) whether meaningful lives must be moral, how important forgiveness is for meaning, the relation between life’s meaningfulness (or meaninglessness) and procreation ethics, and whether animals have meaningful lives. Part V, Philosophical Psychology and Meaning in Life, compares philosophical and psychological research on life’s meaning, explores the experience of meaningfulness, and discusses the relation between meaningfulness and desire, love, and gratitude. Part VI, Living Meaningfully: Challenges and Prospects, elaborates on topics such as suicide, suffering, education, optimism and pessimism, and their relation to life’s meaning.

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The Meaning of Life Is Surprisingly Simple

You can make your quest for meaning manageable by breaking it down into three bite-size dimensions.

“ How to Build a Life ” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his new podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life .

W ant to live in a directed, resolute way? To always know why you’re doing what you’re doing? There’s a simple way to make your dreams come true: Go find the meaning of life!

People who believe that they know their life’s meaning enjoy greater well-being than those who don’t. One 2019 study found that agreeing with the statement “I have a philosophy of life that helps me understand who I am” was associated with fewer symptoms of depression and higher positive affect.

Lucky you if you were born already knowing what the meaning of your life is. For the rest of us, the search can be difficult and frustrating. Philosophy is often unhelpful, offering abstract ideas such as Aristotle’s human function or Kant’s “highest good” that are hard to comprehend, let alone put into action.

Throwing up your hands and concluding that the question of the meaning of life is simply unanswerable—by you, at least—is the easy response. But you can make your quest for meaning manageable by breaking it down into three bite-size dimensions, and then considering each one in turn.

Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.

M any psychologists call knowing your life’s meaning “presence,” and the drive to look for it “search.” They are not mutually exclusive: You might or might not search, whether you already have a sense of meaning or not. Some people low in presence don’t bother searching—they are “stuck.” Some are high in presence but keep searching—we can call them “seekers.”

Presence is highly correlated with well-being, but search seems to have no bearing on it—and pondering your meaning in life too much could even lead you to dissatisfaction. Consider how the paradox of choice leaves people unsatisfied when they’re given too many options in consumer items. Or in love, for that matter: A 2009 study in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior tells a whole story in its title: “More Options Lead to More Searching and Worse Choices in Finding Partners for Romantic Relationships Online.” Though no study I have seen has specifically examined the issue, we can guess that peripatetic meaning-seekers would suffer in a similar way.

Read: Finding purpose in life can make you healthier

If you haven’t yet found a sense of meaning at all, how do you go about searching for it without searching too much? The answer is to take a sprawling philosophical question and make it manageable. You can do so most effectively—and without too much obsessing—by assessing your life along three dimensions, which the psychologists Frank Martela and Michael F. Steger defined in The Journal of Positive Psychology in 2016:

• Coherence : how events fit together. This is an understanding that things happen in your life for a reason. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can fit new developments into your narrative the moment they happen, but you usually are able to do so afterward, so you have faith that you eventually will.
• Purpose : the existence of goals and aims. This is the belief that you are alive in order to do something. Think of purpose as your personal mission statement, such as “the purpose of my life is to share the secrets to happiness” or “I am here to spread love abundantly.”
• Significance : life’s inherent value. This is the sense that your life matters. If you have high levels of significance, you’re confident that the world would be a tiny bit—or perhaps a lot—poorer if you didn’t exist.

Read: Coincidences and the meaning of life

You can think of these three dimensions as macronutrients: the elements that we need for a balanced and healthy sense of meaning in life. They might already be part of your spiritual diet. For example, Christians believe that life is significant because God loves us; that our purpose is to love and serve God and other people; and that God has a coherent plan for our lives, whether it is clear to us or not.

Listen as Arthur C. Brooks and Lori Gottlieb explore the key components of happiness—pleasure, joy, and satisfaction in How to Build a Happy Life .

Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Googl e | Pocket Casts

Balancing your macronutrients doesn’t require traditional religion—many secular and even atheist philosophies offer a way to cultivate them as well, focusing on ethical and moral behavior.

T o begin the process of discovering the meaning in your life—or to adjust a search that’s gone slightly off course—I recommend following three steps.

1. Check your diet.

If you told me you had just changed your eating habits and weren’t feeling well, I would ask about your macronutrient profile: whether you are consuming enough fats, protein, and carbohydrates—and in the right balance. Similarly, a sense that your life lacks meaning should provoke the question of whether you have a deficit in coherence, purpose, or significance. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you feel out of control—tossed about in life without rhyme or reason? If so, you need a better grasp on coherence.
• Do you lack big plans, dreams, or ideas for your future that excite you? This is a purpose issue.
• Do you feel like it wouldn’t matter if you disappeared, like the world would be no worse—or maybe better—if you did? This is a problem of significance.

2. Search in the forest.

If you find a deficit in a particular area of meaning, search for it in a productive way. Fortunately, you don’t have to figure out how to do it on your own—philosophical and religious traditions have been doing exactly that for millennia. One of the best organized strategies comes from Hinduism’s concept of the ashramas , or the four stages of a balanced life. The third is Vanaprastha — literally “retiring to the forest,” in Sanskrit—which ideally begins at about age 50 and entails stepping back from day-to-day demands to focus more on life’s deep meaning through reflection, meditation, and study. You can do a version of this at any stage of life by dedicating time each day to the search. For some, this means meditation or prayer. For others, it requires the study of texts or working with masters. It might even involve therapy. But you have to approach it as you would any other important goal—by doing the work .

3. Make sure you don’t search too hard.

Your quest for meaning will be counterproductive if it hinders your happiness. To make sure you’re in the Goldilocks zone, you can take a survey that tells you your levels of presence and search, and compare your scores with others’ on the website of the University of Pennsylvania’s Authentic Happiness program. If you find that your presence is all right but you are a hyperactive seeker, this is a signal to enjoy the sources of meaning you already have, as opposed to constantly looking for new ones. In this situation, I sometimes offer what I call the “Dorothy Strategy,” based on Dorothy’s famous line from The Wizard of Oz : “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard; because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.” If you feel lost in your search for meaning, cut yourself some slack and go back to the basics.

A ll of this advice relies on one very strong assumption—that life actually has meaning. Not everyone agrees with this. Some have built entire schools of thought on the assumption that life is inherently meaningless, and that we can be truly free only when we embrace this truth. “If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever,” the philosopher Albert Camus wrote in The Rebel , “then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.”

Read: The Great British Baking Show and the Meaning of Life

Each of us has to decide whether we believe this is true. I cannot say for certain; it is, as we say in my business, an “untestable hypothesis.” The paradox of the untestable hypothesis is that even if we seek, we can never be sure that we have found what is real and true. But one thing is certain: We will not find anything unless we look.

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Tolstoy and the search for the meaning of life

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It's evident in the novel that the philosophical author thought about life and death a great deal. In his essay 'Death and the meaning of life' (below) Tolstoy's understanding of death took away all the purpose of life, so much so that Tolstoy began to devalue his existence and was worried he would want to take his own life. 

Death and the Meaning of Life - by Leo Tolstoy

In my writings I advocated, what to me was the only truth, that it was necessary to live in such a way as to derive the greatest comfort for oneself and one’s family.

Thus I proceeded to live, but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me: I was overcome by minutes at first of perplexity and then of an arrest of life, as though I did not know how to live or what to do, and I lost myself and was dejected. But that passed, and I continued to live as before. Then those minutes of perplexity were repeated oftener and oftener, and always in one and the same form. Theses arrests of life found their expression in ever the same questions: ‘Why? Well, and then?’ […]

The questions seemed to be so foolish, simple, and childish. But the moment I touched them and tried to solve them, I became convinced, in the first place, that they were not childish and foolish, but very important and profound questions in life, and, in the second, that, no matter how much I might try, I should not be able to answer them. Before attending to my Samára estate, to my son’s education, or to the writing of a book. I ought to know why I should do that. So long as I did not know why, I could not do anything, I could not live. Amidst my thoughts of farming, which interested me very much during that time, there would suddenly pass through my head a question like this: ‘All right, you are going to have six thousand desyatinas of land in the Government of Samára, and three hundred horses, – and then?’ And I completely lost my senses and did not know what to think farther. Or, when I thought of the education of my children, I said to myself: ‘Why?’ Or, reflecting on the manner in which the masses might obtain their welfare, I suddenly said to myself: ‘What is that to me?’ Or, thinking of the fame which my works would get me, I said to myself: ‘All right, you will be more famous than Gógol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, and all the writers in the world, – what of it?’ And I was absolutely unable to make any reply. The questions were not waiting, and I had to answer them at once; if I did not answer them, I could not live.

I felt that what I was standing on had given way, that I had no foundation to stand on, that which I lived by not longer existed, and that I had nothing to live by.

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and could not help breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping; but there was no life, because there were no desires the gratification of which I might find reasonable. If I wished for anything, I knew in advance that, whether I gratified my desire or not, nothing would come of it. If a fairy had come and had offered to carry out my wish, I should not have known what to say. If in moments of intoxication I had, not wishes, but habits of former desires, I knew in sober moments that was a deception, that there was nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to find out the truth, because I guess what it consisted in. The truth was that life was meaningless. It was as though I had just been living and walking along, and had come to an abyss, where I saw clearly that there was nothing ahead but perdition. And it was impossible to stop and go back, and impossible to shut my eyes, in order that I might not see that there was nothing ahead but suffering and imminent death, – complete annihilation.

What happened to me was that I, a healthy, happy man, felt that I could not go on living, – an insurmountable force drew me on to find release from life. I cannot say I wanted to kill myself.

The force which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, more general than wishing. It was a force like the former striving after life, only in an inverse sense. I tended with all my strength away from life. The thought of suicide came as naturally to me as had come before the ideas of improving life. That thought was so seductive that I had to use cunning against myself, lest I should rashly execute it. I did not want to be in a hurry, because I wanted to use every effort to disentangle myself: if I should not succeed in disentangling myself, there would always be time for that.

At such times, I, a happy man, hid a rope from myself so that I should not hang myself on a cross-beam between two safes in my room, where I was by myself in the evening, while taking off my clothes, and did not go out hunting with a gun, in order not to be tempted by any easy way of doing away with myself. I did not know myself what it was I wanted: I was afraid of life, strove to get away from it, and, at the same time, expected something from it.

All that happened with me when I was on every side surrounded by what is considered to be complete happiness. I had a good, loving and beloved wife, good children and a large estate, which grew and increased without any labour on my part. I was respected by my neighbours and friends, more than ever before, was praised by strangers, and, without any self-deception, could consider my name famous. With all that, I was not deranged or mentally unsound, – on the contrary, I was in full command of my mental and physical powers, such as I had rarely met with in people of my age: physically I could work in a field, mowing, without falling behind a peasant; mentally I could work from eight to ten hours in succession, without experiencing any consequences from the strain. And while in such condition I arrived at the conclusion that I could not live, and, fearing death, I had to use cunning against myself, in order that I might not take my life. […]

The former deception of the pleasures of life […] no longer deceives me. No matter how much one should say to me, ‘You cannot understand the meaning of life, do not think, live!’ I am unable to do so, because I have been doing it too long before. Now I cannot help seeing day and night, which run and lead me up to death. I see that alone, because that alone is the truth. Everything else is a lie. […]

‘My family – ‘ I said to myself, ‘but my family, my wife and children, they are also human beings. They are precisely in the same condition that I am in: they must either live in the lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, why guard, raise and watch them? Is it for the same despair which is in my, or for dullness of perception? Since I love them, I cannot conceal the truth from them, – every step of cognition leads them up to this truth. And the truth is death.’

‘Art, poetry?’ For a long time, under the influence of the success of human praise, I tried to persuade myself that that was a thing which could be done, even though death should come and destroy everything, my deeds, as well as my memory of them; but soon I came to see that that, too, was a deception. It was clear to me that art was an adornment of life’ a decoy of life. But life lost all its attractiveness for me. How, then, could I entrap others? So long as I did not live my own life, and a strange life bore me on its waves; so long as I did not live my own life, and a strange life bore me on its waves; so long as I believed that life had some sense, although I was not able to express it, – the reflections of life of every description in poetry and in the arts afforded me pleasure, and I was delighted to look at life through this little mirror of art; but when I began to look for the meaning of life, when I experienced the necessity of living myself, that little mirror became either useless, superfluous and ridiculous, or painful to me. […]

‘Well, I know’, I said to myself, ‘all which science wants so persistently to know, but there is no answer to the question about the meaning of my life.’ But in the speculative sphere I saw that, in spite of the fact that the aim of the knowledge was directed straight to the answer of my question, or because of that fact, there could be no other answer than what I was giving to myself: ‘What is the meaning of my life’ – ‘ None’ Or, ‘What will come of my life?’ – ‘Nothing.’ Or, ‘Why does everything which exits exist, and why do I exist?’ – ‘Because it exists.’ […]

Rational knowledge in the person of the learned and the wise denied the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, all humanity, recognized this meaning in an irrational knowledge. This irrational knowledge was faith, the same that I could not help but reject. That was God as one and three, the creation in six days, devils and angels, and all which I could not accept so long as I had not lost my senses.

My situation was a terrible one. I knew that I should not find anything on the path of rational knowledge but the negation of life, and there, in faith, nothing but the negation of reason, which was still more impossible than the negation of life. From the rational knowledge it followed that life was an evil and men knew it, – it depended on men whether they should cease living, and yet they lived and continued to live, and I myself live, though I had known long ago that life was meaningless and an evil. From faith it followed that, in order to understand life, I must renounce reason, for which alone a meaning was needed. 

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Search for the Meaning of Life: Essays and Reflections on the Mystical Experience, Revised Edition Paperback – May 30, 2003

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Man’s Search for Meaning Essay

The problem of searching for the meaning of life has always been the central topic for the vast majority of people. During a definite period of our life we all start to question ourselves why we were born, what is the purpose of our lives, and how we should proceed in certain situations. All of this combined, if answered correctly, would bring the inner peace to an individual and the feel of happiness.

As it has already been proved, the material stuff is not as important as it is credited due to the fact that the sincere feelings, ironically, have fallen in price among all the society layers. Nonetheless, some people fail to find happiness or peace of mind and fall into the state of meaninglessness.

This essentially means that an individual missed out on an important part of his or her life, and something fundamental has happened that changed the perception of the world and the emotional edge. A nice example of such an existential crisis would be the situation that Mr. Morrie got caught up in when he found out that he is terminally ill. There is always room for the change, and all the people have to do is seek the answers somewhere deep inside themselves and not others.

Speaking of the meaninglessness, the key element of this experience is the inner emptiness, a void within an individual. Frankl states that the people who are believed to encounter the meaninglessness lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are trapped in the circumstances which Frankl has called the existential vacuum (Frankl 130). One of the vivid examples provided by Frankl is a death camp, and the exposition is pretty clear: if one day you get there – what are you going to live for? An oppressive atmosphere and the hopelessness of the situation will easily break the human psyche and house inside one’s brain the unceasing idea of the fact that there is no need to live any longer.

A similar state catches up when one’s parent or a loved one dies. It always happens unexpectedly, even when you think you’re ready. You cannot make up for anything the existential void caused by the loss. There is a very high possibility that sometime after their death, one still will not be fully aware that they are not alive anymore (Grey 1). One feels like there is no need to live anymore if his or her parents are gone. This situation is vaguely reminiscent of the death camp, but the principles underlying the two cases are very similar.

Existential loss of meaning is often connected to the logotherapy. Logotherapy is very beneficial in dealing with an individual with a terminal illness because this kind of person habitually feels that the existence is worthless. It is asserted that each individual’s life has an exceptional meaning even when the person is opposed to the hopeless circumstances over which he or she superficially has either diminutive or completely absent control (Camus and Gilbert 117).

The role of the logotherapist is to assist the person in realizing that exceptional meaning inside himself or herself. The logotherapist does not offer the meaning, but somewhat supports the person in determining his or her own meaning. One of the methods of applying the logotherapy is the Socratic dialogue. In this method, the logotherapist asks provocative questions and draws out answers from the patient. The assumption is that the answers are already contained in the mind of the patient, but are present in the subconscious. The role of the logotherapist is to ask pertinent questions and to bring up the answers from the patient’s subconscious to consciousness.

The purpose of this method is to demonstrate that the answers lie within the patient and are not to be sought from the therapist or others. One cannot understand the meaning of life apart from the meaning of suffering because suffering is an inevitable aspect of human existence (Nietzsche and Fritzsche 210). To discover meaning in suffering is essential to meaningful living. Much of what Frankl describes in his clinical work, involves the people’s attitude towards their suffering.

Learning that we have choices, particularly the freedom to choose one’s attitude towards, or how one responds to, is often the central lesson for many patients (Schopenhauer and Taylor 371). Once again, the parallel can be drawn between the logotherapy and “Tuesdays with Morrie” where Mitch became a reluctant logotherapist for his dying teacher. Mitch eased Morrie’s pain and talked to him to let him see that it is not yet time to die. And while this concept is understandable, there is another perspective.

Morrie was a kind of a logotherapist for Mitch, too. It is explained by the way the teacher brings back the memories of the school time and wants Mitch to recall who he really was before he got tightened into the working routine quagmire and lost his wife. Seemingly, Mitch had lost the meaning of his life and was on the verge of falling into the pit of meaninglessness.

Questions about what’s normal and what causes nonstandard have been with us since the birth of man. Consistent with Frances and other concurring critics, a convergence of connected aspects led to an over-diagnosis of mental illness. The majority of them accept as true the fact that a growing number of primary maintenance and other non-psychiatric specialists are giving out antipsychotic medications, regardless of their lack of knowledge in that part of medicine. Belligerent sales and advertising by pharmacological corporations may also be the key factor that catalyzed the issue (Frances 34).

The book by Frankl gives the general answer to the question of existence and meaning of life – you should never give up and find the strength within you to keep going forward and not let the discouragement engulf you. A logotherapist might not always be around, so it is of great importance to remember how to be your own logotherapist. Reading this book gives you the necessary motivation and the benefit is evident. Firstly, one would learn to become an empath for his or her own and the others around. Secondly, one could apply the methods described in the Frankl’s work in any of the ordinary situations out there.

Either you feeling upset, unlucky, or simply lonely, the mood that the book conveys is absolutely out of this world as it allows you to understand what might have been missing from your life and what is the way to go. Of course, in some cases, it is of the essence to have the professional helping hand around, but the main lesson that the book teaches you is that you are the architect of your own fortune, and you must not give up when struggling, taking into account that the suffering is progress in some way, without which it is impossible to imagine our life.

Works Cited

Camus, Albert, and Stuart Gilbert. The Stranger . New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946. Print.

Frances, Allen. Saving Normal . New York, NY: William Morrow, 2013. Print.

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning . Boston: Beacon, 2006. Print.

Grey, Julienne. “My Mother Is Not a Bird.” New York Times . N.p. 2015. Web.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Peter Fritzsche. Nietzsche and the Death of God: Selected Writings . Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin, 2007. Print.

Schopenhauer, Arthur, and Richard Taylor. The Will To Live . New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co., 1967. Print.

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1. IvyPanda . "Man's Search for Meaning." October 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mans-search-for-meaning/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Man's Search for Meaning." October 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mans-search-for-meaning/.

• Gestalt and Logotherapy Therapeutic Approaches
• “Tuesdays With Morrie” Film by Mick Jackson
• Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
• Lessons on Death and Life in “Tuesdays With Morrie” by Mitch Albom
• Life Meaning in “Tuesdays With Morrie” by Mitch Albom
• Originality and Value in “Man’s Search of Meaning”
• The Mystery of God and Human Being in “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Frankl
• Comparison of “Tuesdays With Morrie” by Mitch Albom and “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
• "Tuesdays With Morrie", M. Albom’s True Narrative
• "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl
• Will's Role in the Meaning of Life
• Self-Cultivation as the Process of a Human Being
• Views on the Human Being by Zhuangzi
• Why Is Death Bad?
• Ideas in “The Meanings of Life” by Roy Baumeister

The Meaning of Life

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

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

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

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Supernaturalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Naturalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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afterlife | death | ethics: ancient | existentialism | friendship | love | perfectionism, in moral and political philosophy | value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic | well-being

IResearchNet

Search for Meaning in Life

Search for meaning in life definition.

The search for meaning in life refers to the idea that individuals are strongly motivated to find meaning in their lives, that is, to be able to understand the nature of their personal existence, and feel it is significant and purposeful. Life feels meaningful to people when they can satisfactorily answer the big questions about their lives, such as who am I, why am I here, what is truly important to me, what am I supposed to do with my life. That finding meaning in life is considered a fundamental motivation by some means that human beings must perceive a sufficient amount of meaning in their lives. In other words, feeling that one’s life is significant, comprehensible, or purposeful may be necessary for human psychological functioning.

Background and History of the Search for Meaning in Life

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Alfred Adler said that people innately strive to accomplish the purpose of their lives, particularly through participation in social activities. Erik Erikson proposed the need for self-integration in later life. In this approach, searching for meaning focuses on struggling to understand one’s life experiences and what it all has meant in the Big Picture. Eric Fromm stressed the importance of meaning in human life and suggested that feeling alienated from others and mindlessly feeling, thinking, and acting during daily and work activities reduces our ability to find life meaningful. Abraham Maslow thought meaning would arise from self-actualization, or achieving one’s full potential.

Fromm’s ideas about alienation and automatization in modern life echo work by Viktor Frankl, the person who is most closely associated with psychological work on meaning in life. Frankl’s experiences as a survivor of Germany’s World War II concentration camps convinced him of the importance of finding a purpose for living. He felt that the biggest difference between those who did and did not survive the horrific camps was not how much they were forced to work, how little they had to eat, or how exposed to the elements they were (everyone had to work to exhaustion, no one had enough to eat, and all were greatly exposed to adverse weather). Instead, Frankl believed that Friedrich Nietzsche’s maxim— by having “our own why of life we shall get along with almost any how”—made the critical difference. Frankl believed that all people must find their own, unique why—in other words, their purpose in life. He wrote that those who found some meaning or purpose were more likely to survive the concentration camps, and those who had lost their purpose were almost certainly doomed. Following Frankl’s writings, and his founding of logotherapy (literally, meaning-healing), psychological work on the importance of searching for meaning accelerated dramatically. Roy Baumeister’s argument that meaning in life is rooted largely in people’s strivings for feelings of purpose, value in what they do, control and capability, and self-worth ushered in the modern era of social psychological research into the search for meaning.

Two important distinctions must be made between the search for meaning in life and related psychological processes. First, although Frankl wrote that the will to meaning drove each person to find the unique meaning of his or her own life, others distinguished between searching for meaning and having meaning. A common assumption is that only people without meaning in life would search for it. Essentially, the assumption was that searching for and feeling the presence of meaning in life were opposite ends of the same continuum.

Several lines of research, however, demonstrate that searching for meaning is different from having meaning. Psychological measures of how much people are searching for meaning and how much meaning people feel in their lives have very little overlap. Also, the assumption that searching for and having meaning are opposite versions of the same thing may be culturally bound. That is to say, among European Americans (who often think in terms of individuality and dichotomies), there is a small, inverse relation between the two (the less you have, the more you search, and vice versa), whereas some evidence suggests that among people from cultures that are more traditionally collectivistic or holistic (who often think in terms of relationships or harmony, e.g., Japan), the two variables may be positively related (the more you search, the more you feel you have, and vice versa). Those whose cultural influences are somewhere in between (e.g., Spaniards) appear to report no relation between them. Finally, some evidence also indicates that searching for meaning and having meaning fluctuate in their relation to each other depending on age and stages in life. For example, the relation may be less strong in youth and stronger in older adulthood. A younger person might be searching for more meaning and also feel life is meaningful, whereas an older adult is more likely to search for meaning in life if he or she feels that life is somewhat meaningless.

The second important distinction to make is between searching for meaning in life and searching for some sort of meaning in a traumatic or aversive event. Those who have experienced traumatic events, such as being assaulted, losing a loved one, or having a miscarriage, often struggle with the question, why did this happen. Frequently, attempts to answer such questions are referred to as a search for meaning. It is probably more accurate to refer to them as efforts to find situational meaning or attributions. The search for meaning in life refers to attempts to understand what one’s life as a whole means, rather than more circumscribed efforts to understand a particular event.

Importance of the Search for Meaning in Life

If the search for meaning in life is an important psychological motivation, it should be important to human welfare. We know with certainty that the presence of meaning in life is related to more well-being in relationships, work, and life in general, as well as to less psychological distress. However, we cannot assume that people who are searching for meaning in life are simply less happy and more distressed. The search for meaning in life might motivate people to immerse themselves in religion, volunteering, wilderness adventures, or philosophy just as much as it might drive them to despair. Even people who already feel that their lives are full of meaning might be searching for a deeper understanding of that meaning, or be trying to adjust to a big life change such as having children, or they might be looking for new sources of meaning. For example, a successful athlete might derive meaning from athletic competition. A career-ending injury might take away that source of meaning, and the athlete might look to family, friends, religion, or social service as potential new sources of meaning.

Those highest in the search for meaning appear somewhat less happy, more anxious, and more depressed, but they also appear more open-minded and thoughtful in some ways, reflecting on their past experiences and asking questions about the nature of their religious beliefs. How much people are searching for meaning also varies from day to day. On days when people are searching for meaning in life, they are actually happier. So, even though people who are usually searching for meaning are less happy, people who momentarily search for meaning enjoy the process in the short term. In some ways this supports the theory that the search for meaning is an important psychological motivation: Those who are able to meet temporarily strong needs for meaning over a day or two are happy with their success, whereas those who must search for longer periods, or who are almost always trying to meet this need, are unhappy.

Individual Differences in the Search for Meaning in Life

People differ in the strength and intensity of their search for meaning in life. Psychologists have developed questionnaires in recent years to measure these differences. Recent efforts to develop psychometrically sound measures of the search for meaning in life appear promising, although more research and theory development are needed. People who score high on search for meaning measures are usually looking for more meaning and purpose in their lives. People who score low are rarely looking for meaning and purpose. Scores on this scale are stable, even over 1 year, meaning that people who are usually searching for meaning in life now will probably still be searching next year.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Meaning of Life — What is the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Inquiry

What is The Meaning of Life: a Philosophical Inquiry

• Categories: Meaning of Life Philosophy of Life

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Published: Sep 7, 2023

Words: 794 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

The philosophical inquiry, different approaches to meaning, the search for purpose.

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Meaning of the Term Childhood as the Happiest Period of Life

This essay about the significance of a happy childhood as the foundation for a fulfilling life. It emphasizes the importance of a supportive family environment, positive social interactions, and opportunities for personal growth and discovery. It explores how these elements contribute to emotional, social, and cognitive development, highlighting their enduring impact into adulthood. Additionally, it acknowledges cultural and socioeconomic variations in defining a happy childhood while advocating for universal access to these essential components for the well-being of individuals and communities.

How it works

The genesis of a blissful childhood often serves as the bedrock of a balanced, enriching existence. This epoch, characterized by exploration, enlightenment, and purity, lays the groundwork for an individual’s emotive, communal, and cognitive maturation. However, the crux of a jubilant childhood transcends mere dalliance in unfettered play and mirth; it encompasses a labyrinthine interplay of elements encompassing a nurturing familial milieu, affirmative communal engagements, and avenues for personal evolution and revelation. This treatise delves into the facets of a felicitous childhood and its indelible resonance on an individual’s odyssey through existence.

At the nucleus of a jubilant childhood lies the nexus of a nurturing and supportive familial milieu. The family serves as the epicenter for emotional equilibrium and blossoming. The unwavering love, attentiveness, and counsel proffered by progenitors and caretakers are quintessential. These components engender a sense of belonging and self-esteem in juveniles, pivotal for their emotional equilibrium. In such an ambience, progenies cultivate trust, feel emboldened to explore their environs, and articulately express themselves, cognizant of possessing a secure bastion to return to.

Furthermore, the import of affirmative communal interactions extends beyond the familial sphere to encompass camaraderie and community ties. Social interactions wield substantial sway in fostering empathy, collaboration, and conciliation proficiencies. Through frolic and collective endeavors, progenies learn to navigate societal nuances, amicably resolve conflicts, and appraise the import of collaboration and deference for others. These nascent experiences of fellowship and inclusion contribute significantly to the elation and contentment of a jubilant childhood, paving the path for robust communal relationships in later years.

Equally pivotal to a blissful childhood is the opportunity for individual evolution and revelation. An ambience that fosters inquisitiveness, ingenuity, and erudition empowers juveniles to delve into their inclinations and aptitudes. Whether via formal pedagogy, play, or familial pursuits, kindling a juvenile’s curiosity and furnishing avenues for artistic expression are imperative for cognitive enrichment and personal fulfillment. Such encounters not only augment knowledge and adeptness but also bolster a juvenile’s sense of achievement and self-regard.

Despite the universal aspiration for a jubilant childhood for all, it is imperative to acknowledge that the concept may diverge vastly across cultural and socioeconomic spectra. What constitutes a felicitous childhood in one milieu may appear markedly distinct in another, shaped by cultural mores, traditions, and accessible assets. Nonetheless, the cardinal tenets of love, security, communal support, and chances for personal evolution remain universally salient.

Upon reflection on the essence of a felicitous childhood, it becomes apparent that its ramifications reverberate deeply into adulthood. The emotional fortitude, communal adeptness, and sense of self fashioned during these nascent years play a pivotal role in surmounting the vicissitudes of grown-up life. Furthermore, the remembrances of a jubilant childhood metamorphose into a fount of solace and fortitude, proffering a reservoir of bliss that individuals can tap into throughout their lifetimes.

In summation, a felicitous childhood constitutes a cherished bequest that lays the groundwork for a robust, gratifying existence. It is delineated by a nurturing familial milieu, affirmative communal interactions, and myriad avenues for evolution and revelation. Whilst specifics may diverge across disparate cultures and individual sojourns, the fundamental facets of love, security, and personal development retain universal import. As society progresses, ensuring that every progeny has the opportunity to savor the pleasures of a felicitous childhood remains an imperative objective, promising not solely the well-being of individuals but also the vitality and vigor of communities worldwide.

Remember, this exposition serves as a springboard for inspiration and further inquiry. For tailored assistance and to ascertain compliance with all scholarly benchmarks, deliberating with professionals at EduBirdie is advised.

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"Meaning of the Term Childhood as the Happiest Period of Life." PapersOwl.com, Apr 14, 2024. Accessed April 16, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/meaning-of-the-term-childhood-as-the-happiest-period-of-life/

"Meaning of the Term Childhood as the Happiest Period of Life," PapersOwl.com , 14-Apr-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/meaning-of-the-term-childhood-as-the-happiest-period-of-life/. [Accessed: 16-Apr-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Meaning of the Term Childhood as the Happiest Period of Life . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/meaning-of-the-term-childhood-as-the-happiest-period-of-life/ [Accessed: 16-Apr-2024]

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International Politics Major Places First in Collegiate Laws of Life Essay Contest

Veronika Miskowiec, a second-year Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar majoring in international politics was awarded first place in the Collegiate Laws of Life essay contest for her paper titled “A Tale of Lions and Oxen”. Congratulations Veronika! Full story