“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy”- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
The second quarter 2020 issue of The Philosopher’s Magazine1 includes an essay with the intriguing title Who Is a Meaning of Life For? by Elijah Millgram of the University of Utah. This is quite timely as I begin to delve into the question of what a meaningful life is by permitting a preface to that section.
Millgram begins by recalling a comment by Gisela Striker, a historian of ancient philosophy, that she hoped life didn’t have a meaning, because it would be too oppressive. Millgram transposes this into a more than rhetorical proposition; perhaps “we shouldn’t simply take it for granted that we want meaningful lives.”2 He begins with the example of John Stuart Mill (on whom he wrote a book) who made his life’s meaning ‘the Utilitarian Enterprise’ but eventually felt himself trapped by it.
By comparison, Millgram posits Friedrich Nietzsche who in The Gay Science suggests one’s ‘purpose for existence’ can be achieved by finding an interpretation that covers what one has already done. Here the goal is to lock everything down through ingenuity and inventiveness so that one’s entire life in all its meaningless detail is reconfigured into a unifying purpose which one can then embrace in conformity with Nietzsche’s metaphysical theory of ‘eternal return.’ But Milligram thinks such an artistic reconstruction of one’s life ultimately reflects Nietzsche’s rock bottom cynicism as to whether reality matters at all.
In brief then, J.S. Mill sees meaning as guiding action and Nietzsche sees it as reconciliation. Alternatively the desire for a meaningful life can viewed as a prison or a fanatical delusion. Millgram offers a third option, the denial of the need for a meaning of life, concluding with the perplexing question, “What do I want it [a meaning of life] for?”3
I would reply that perhaps Millgram is conflating the meaningful life with the purposeful life. I believe the reason we want to find purpose is because it is one of the four components of the meaningful life. The other three are contentment, virtue, and resolution of one’s relationship to ultimate reality. Each of the four is difficult to achieve, but all are worthy of attainment. And why do we want these? Well, because they compose the summum bonum of happiness and meaning. The next section on this site will investigate all of them and answer Millgram’s question.
——————————————————————————————
1Garvey, James (editor), The Philosopher’s Magazine. Issue 89, 2nd Quarter 2020.
2Ibid., page 50.
3Ibid., page 54.
“Only the infinite self, the problem solver, the complete thinker, the one who knows…only his existence, I say, is perfectly sure.” – Josiah Royce.
“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.” – C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
“…in truth there only atoms and the void” – Democritus.
Taoism and Stoicism teach us that disinterested acceptance of the reality of the unfolding world imparts equanimity. The Bhagavad Gita suggests that acting without undue concern for the results allows tranquility and connection to ultimate reality. For Christians, predestination by the grace of the divine may devalue action in this life, but feelings of freedom and fate will still need to be acknowledged. Religious authorities advise believers that the love of God trumps one’s concern for salvation and impels action consistent with the plan of the divine.
“Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal.” – Mary Baker Eddy.
Evil can be natural and thus unavoidable or due to free agency, meaning human action, which in theory should be preventable. Human evils are usually minor when due to accident or immaturity, but more severe when due to error, weakness, selfishness, and especially malice. Evil is countered through efforts at self-perfection and humility. Nevertheless the mythological contest between good and evil continues to play out in daily life where the best means to be an agent for good is a personal commitment to it. Historically this benevolence is embodied in two personas – the saint and the hero.
An excellent guide in ethical action towards others is William Frankena’s prioritization model: in complex situations: first avoid and eliminate evil, next promote good, and third, never choose any evil unless there is a clear excess of good from the choice. Societal ethics is further defined by the notion of duty. My table of prioritized duties is presented in the Appendix (.
Third doubt is the tool by which we fine tune belief. By stepping back and questioning the truth value of a proposition, we have the opportunity to identify confirmatory and/or contradictory evidence for additional reasoning. If we start with 10 consecutive black balls randomly pulled from a closed box, we may believe the rest are black as well, but if we draw out another ten we are more confident of our findings, and if we examine them all we are assured. This applies as well to our biased opinions of people; one of the great lessons of life is that each human being must be judged individually.
Objective and subjective truth are not only different, but to some extent mutually exclusive. Science, not intuition , tells us why the moon does not fall to the Earth like an apple, but internal reflection informs one’s knowledge of good and evil.
Propositions regarding ultimate reality come next although such items are very limited and God can only be asserted by a circumscribed definition, many persons may deny as defining ‘God’ at all. For those who accept this tautology, we cannot escape the disappointment that God’s characteristics are otherwise uncertain. Religion then is extremely speculative and caution must be exercised in following it to a purposeful life. The ultimate propositions of moderate certainty – the universe as creative (#20) and directional (#45) however yield some hope of cosmic meaning for those who seek it.
As we begin to move from our preparatory work to a formulation of the meaningful and flourishing life, the table of certainty will serve as a yardstick for guidance. Each reader should be prepared to defend his or her own version of trusted beliefs when confronted with the big questions.
