What makes life meaningful philosophy

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.

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. Thus the meaning in the act of giving creative expression to what may be ephemeral insights.

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. 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 resources, to destroy loves, to destroy rights, turns out to be a full-time job. Or bigotry? Or hatred? 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:. 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.

Answering it requires providing an account of the ultimate nature of the world, our minds, value and how all these natures interrelate.

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. By taking a reflective perspective, significance itself accrues.

The sixth-century Chinese sage Lao Tzu—who is said to have dictated the Tao Te Ching before escaping civilization for solitude in the mountains—believed the universe supplies our value. Like Woodling, he would argue that goals are insignificant, and that accomplishments are not what makes our lives matter.

But unlike Woodling, he suggests meaning comes from being a product of the world itself. No effort is necessary. Instead of reflection, Lao Tzu proposes a deep understanding of the essence of existence, which is mysterious. Life matters because we exist within and among living things, as part of an enduring and incomprehensible chain of existence.

Sometimes life is brutal, he writes, but meaning is derived from perseverance. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Discover Membership. Editions Quartz. More from Quartz About Quartz. Follow Quartz. These are some of our most ambitious editorial projects.

In contrast, by the latter, having a soul and putting it into a certain state is what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Many supernaturalists of course believe that God and a soul are jointly necessary for a greatly meaningful existence. However, the simpler view, that only one of them is necessary, is common, and sometimes arguments proffered for the complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler one.

If a person failed to do what God intends her to do with her life or if God does not even exist , then, on the current view, her life would be meaningless. According to this argument, lower goods such as animal pleasure or desire satisfaction could exist without God, but higher ones pertaining to meaning in life, particularly moral virtue, could not.

However, critics point to many non-moral sources of meaning in life e. There is a different argument for an extreme God-based view that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite, unlimited, or ineffable, which Robert Nozick first articulated with care Nozick , —; see also Bennett-Hunter ; Waghorn The core idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning.

Being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does.

This work also must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something 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 relational rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition. Perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, without being connected to something beyond it, or maybe it could obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is beautiful or otherwise valuable for its own sake but not meaningful Nozick , —68; Thomson , 25—26, A serious concern for any extreme God-based view 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 e. Even religiously inclined philosophers have found this hard to deny these days Quinn , 58; Audi ; Mawson , 5; Williams , — Largely for that reason, contemporary supernaturalists have tended to opt for moderation, that is, to maintain that God would greatly enhance the meaning in our lives, even if some meaning would be possible in a world without God.

One approach is to invoke the relational argument to show that God is necessary, not for any meaning whatsoever, but rather for an ultimate meaning. Still another argument is that only with God could the deepest desires of human nature be satisfied e.

There has also been the response that, with the opportunity for greater meaning from God would also come that for greater anti-meaning, so that it is not clear that a world with God would offer a net gain in respect of meaning Metz , 34— For example, if pleasing God would greatly enhance meaning in our lives, then presumably displeasing God would greatly reduce it and to a comparable degree.

Notice that none of the above arguments for supernaturalism appeals to the prospect of eternal life at least not explicitly. There are three prominent arguments for an extreme soul-based perspective. One argument, made famous by Leo Tolstoy, is the suggestion that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that something is worth doing only if it will make a permanent difference to the world, and that doing so requires being immortal see also Hanfling , 22—24; Morris , 26; Craig Critics most often appeal to counterexamples, suggesting for instance that it is surely worth your time and effort to help prevent people from suffering, even if you and they are mortal.

Indeed, some have gone on the offensive and argued that helping people is worth the sacrifice only if and because they are mortal, for otherwise they could invariably be compensated in an afterlife e. Another recent and interesting criticism is that the major motivations for the claim that nothing matters now if one day it will end are incoherent Greene A second argument for the view that life would be meaningless without a soul is that it is necessary for justice to be done, 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 a Karmic force.

Something like this argument can be found in Ecclesiastes, and it continues to be defended e. A third argument for thinking that having a soul is essential for any meaning is that it is required to have the sort of free will without which our lives would be meaningless. Immanuel Kant is known for having maintained that if we were merely physical beings, subjected to the laws of nature like everything else in the material world, then we could not act for moral reasons and hence would be unimportant.

It finds it in that which proceeds from man and remains with him as his inner essence rather than in the accidents of circumstances turns of external fortune W henever a human being rubs the lamp of his moral conscience, a Spirit does appear. This Spirit is God The standard objection to this reasoning is to advance a compatibilism about having a determined physical nature and being able to act for moral reasons e. It is also worth wondering whether, if one had to have a spiritual essence in order to make free choices, it would have to be one that never perished.

Like God-centered theorists, many soul-centered theorists these days advance a moderate view, accepting that some meaning in life would be possible without immortality, but arguing that a much greater meaning would be possible with it.

Granting that Einstein, Mandela, and Picasso had somewhat meaningful lives despite not having survived the deaths of their bodies as per, e. If a finite life with the good, the true, and the beautiful has meaning in it to some degree, then surely it would have all the more meaning if it exhibited such higher values——including a relationship with God——for an eternity Cottingham , —35; Mawson , , 52—53; Williams , —34; cf.

Benatar , 35— Mawson , 53— More common, though, is the objection that an eternal life would include anti-meaning of various kinds, such as boredom and repetition, discussed below in the context of extreme naturalism sub-section 3. Like supernaturalism, contemporary naturalism admits of two distinguishable variants, moderate and extreme Metz The moderate version is that, while a genuinely meaningful life could be had in a purely physical universe as known well by science, a somewhat more meaningful life would be possible if a spiritual realm also existed.

God or a soul could enhance meaning in life, although they would not be major contributors. From this perspective, God or a soul would be anti-matter, i. They differ in terms of the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings.

Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she strongly wants it or intends to seek it out and she gets it. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards for meaning because meaning is at least partly mind-independent, i. Here, something is meaningful partially because of its intrinsic nature, in the sense of being independent of whether it is wanted or intended; meaning is instead to some extent the sort of thing that merits these reactions.

There is logical space for an orthogonal view, according to which there are invariant standards of meaningfulness constituted by what all human beings would converge on from a certain standpoint. However, it has not been much of a player in the field Darwall , — One influential subjectivist has recently 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 , 80—94, Subjectivism was dominant in the middle of the twentieth century, when positivism, noncognitivism, existentialism, and Humeanism were influential Ayer ; Hare ; Barnes ; Taylor ; Williams As a result, subjectivism about meaning lost its dominance.

Those who continue to hold subjectivism often remain suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value e. Theorists are moved to accept subjectivism typically because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are reasonably sure that meaning in life obtains for some people, but do not see how it could be grounded on something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural or the supernatural or the non-natural.

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 their lives. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There is a cluster of other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism, according to which this theory best explains certain intuitive features of meaning in life. For one, subjectivism seems plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one Frankfurt , 80— For another, it is uncontroversial that often meaning comes from losing oneself, i. Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective elements involved.

For a third, meaning is often taken to be something that makes life worth continuing for a specific person, i. Critics maintain that these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value or an external reason in realizing oneself, losing oneself, and having a reason to live Taylor , ; Wolf , , 89— One important strategy is to suggest that subjectivists can avoid the counterexamples by appealing to the right sort of pro-attitude.

Instead of whatever an individual happens to want, perhaps the relevant mental state is an emotional-perceptual one of seeing-as Alexis ; cf. But the will itself And without any appeal to objectivity, it is perhaps likely that counterexamples would resurface. Another subjectivist strategy by which to deal with the counterexamples is the attempt to ground meaningfulness, not on the pro-attitudes of an individual valuer, but on those of a group Darwall , —66; Brogaard and Smith ; Wong Does such an intersubjective move avoid more of the counterexamples?

If so, does it do so more plausibly than an objective theory? Objective naturalists believe that meaning in life is constituted at least in part by something physical beyond merely the fact that it is the object of a pro-attitude. Obtaining the object of some emotion, desire, or judgment is not sufficient for meaningfulness, on this view.

Morality the good , enquiry the true , and creativity the beautiful are widely held instances of activities that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow——along with the counterexamples to subjectivism above——are not. Objectivism is widely thought to be a powerful general explanation of these particular judgments: the former are meaningful not merely because some agent whether it is an individual, her society, or even God cares about them or judges them to be worth doing, while the latter simply lack significance and cannot obtain it even if some agent does care about them or judge them to be worth doing.

From an objective perspective, it is possible for an individual to care about the wrong thing or to be mistaken that something is worthwhile, and not merely because of something she cares about all the more or judges to be still more choiceworthy.

Of course, meta-ethical debates about the existence and nature of value are again relevant to appraising this rationale.

Most objectivists instead try to account for the above intuitions driving subjectivism by holding that a life is more meaningful, not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of propositional attitudes such as cognition, conation, and emotion.

A related approach is that, while subjective attraction is not necessary for meaning, it could enhance it e. For instance, a stereotypical Mother Teresa who is bored by and alienated from her substantial charity work might have a somewhat significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she felt pride in it or identified with it.

Over the past few decades, one encounters the proposals that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that involve: positively connecting with organic unity beyond oneself Nozick , — ; being creative Taylor ; Matheson ; living an emotional life Solomon ; cf.

There is as yet no convergence in the field on one, or even a small cluster, of these accounts. Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful or otherwise desirable parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful desirable parts but ends with few or none of them Kamm , 18—22; Dorsey These three cases suggest that meaning can inhere in life as a whole, that is, in the relationships between its parts, and not merely in the parts considered in isolation.

However, some would maintain that it is, strictly speaking, the story that is or could be told of a life that matters, not so much the life-story qua relations between events themselves de Bres It is worth considering how far this sort of case is generalizable, and, if it can be to a substantial extent, whether that provides strong evidence that only life as a whole can exhibit meaningfulness. Perhaps most objectivists would, at least upon reflection, accept that both the parts of a life and the whole-life relationships among the parts can exhibit meaning.

Supposing there are two bearers of meaning in a life, important questions arise. Naturalists until recently had been largely concerned to show that meaning in life is possible without God or a soul; they have not spent much time considering how such spiritual conditions might enhance meaning, but have, in moderate fashion, tended to leave that possibility open an exception is Hooker Lately, however, an extreme form of naturalism has arisen, according to which our lives would probably, if not unavoidably, have less meaning in a world with God or a soul than in one without.

To find meaning in life, a person has to decide on their own values and then take action to live according to them. Looking for meaning in life is a Sysipean task — the more you search for one, the less you understand it. This went on for eternity.

The absurdist French philosopher Albert Camus proposed that people should embrace the absurdity of our existence and then proceed to wilfully live their lives. You might have noticed that this whole time, philosophers assumed we are talking about the meaning of human life. What about animal life?

Or maybe life as in all events that happen in the universe? Zalta ed. Thanks to Daniel Action for validating the research for this article and proofreading the drafts. Thanks to Igor Pikovets for reviewing the drafts, and to Mark Vital for collaborating on information design of the graphic.

Reductionism is a tool, not the goal. Ideally, a philosopher should write this article with my help in the visualization department. I hope the next version of this infographic will be made in collaboration with a philosophy expert.

Until then, please treat this infographic as a proof of concept for visualization on a popular topic with an academic foundation. Natural Pantheism Dates back to prehistoric times Pantheism is the belief that God is in everything, that all things together comprise an all-encompassing god. Determinism Circa 6th Century BC Determinism is the idea that all events happen as a result of previously existing causes.

One of many ways Confucius explained virtue is this: Now the man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others.

Solipsism was first recorded by the Greek sophist, Gorgias who is reported to have said: Nothing exists. Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it. Cynicism Appeared around 4th Century BC The Cynics attempt to offer people the possibility of happiness and freedom from suffering in the age of uncertainty. Hedonism Appeared around 4th Century BC Hedonism offers us a life based on seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering. Legalism Chinese Appeared around 4th Century BC The Legalists believed that humans are inherently selfish and cannot be trusted to behave morally.

Epicureanism Appeared around 4th Century BC The Greek philosopher Epicurus BC was a materialist ancient Greek philosopher who offered that the meaning of life was in achieving sustainable pleasure which leads to a state of tranquility and freedom from fear ataraxia. Quietism Appeared around 3rd Century BC Quietists believe that philosophy as such has no answers to offer. Modern Humanism Circa the late s Humanism points out that humans themselves are responsible for the fate of humans in this world.

Kantianism Appeared in Kantianism proposes that every human action should be judged according to a universal maxim, or principle. Nihilism Appeared in Nihilism, also called Pessimism, is the belief that nothing can make life meaningful. Pragmatism Circa the s Unlike many other schools of philosophy, the Pragmatists have no official creed. Logical Empiricism Circa the s Also called logical positivism, the idea of logical positivism is that anything that the only type of knowledge available to us is facts — scientifically verifiable and observable.