Herewith, a first installment of some chapter-by-chapter observations on the magnificent Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, with an attempt to lay bare some of the philosophical issues lurking below the surface of the text.
1. Chapter 1 sounds the central theme of the Book: Omnia vanitas, "All is vanity." What is the scope of 'all'? Presumably it does not include God, but it does include every human pursuit whether for pleasure, power, possessions, progeny, or any other finite good that mortals strive after. All is vanity and "striving after wind." (1:14) Even the striving for wisdom is a vain pursuit. (1:17-18)
Does the 'all' in 'All is vanity' cover nature? This is an interesting question that I will leave undecided. But the contrast in 1:2 suggests that nature lies outside the scope of the universal quantifier: "A generation goes and a generation comes/But the earth remains forever." Reading 'earth' as standing for the physical cosmos, then it is plausible to restrict 'All is vanity' to human existence. Whether or not it is restricted to human existence, 'All is vanity' clearly applies to human existence.
What does 'vanity' mean? The vain is the empty, the insubstantial, that which seems to be something, but is nothing, that which lacks true reality and ultimate importance, that which ultimately doesn't matter. The author (authors?) convey this insubstantiality with the metaphor of a striving after wind as in 1:14. Man, a bit of dust in the wind, strives after wind.
All things are insubstantial and because they are insubstantial they are unsatisfactory. (Compare Pali Buddhism: all things are anatta, hence dukkha.) "All things are wearisome . . . The eye is not satisfied with seeing/Nor is the ear filled with hearing." (1:8) Desire is insatiable. It promises, but never fulfills. All satisfactions are deceptive and ultimately unsatisfactory. There is nothing new under the sun; what is old is forgotten, and what will be, will one day be old and forgotten.
The vanity of things is connected to their temporal character. The past is no longer; the future is not yet; the present alone is. But the present is fleeting, and so ultimately is not. It is and is not and so is vain, empty, ontologically substandard. Only the present is real, but it is not truly real since it passes away: its very being is a passing-away.
2. Chapter 2 begins by reminding us that pleasure and laughter are vain and futile. For what does any pleasure accomplish? (2:2) Now either you feel the force of this question or you don't, and if the latter, then I doubt that I can help you. But perhaps F. H. Bradley can help you. In "Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake" in Ethical Studies, Bradley asks, "Why is it that pleasure-seeking as the search for my pleasure is declared vain, and pleasure itself impalpable and misleading . . . We must look for an answer to the nature of pleasure." (37) He continues:
Pleasure and pain are feelings and they are nothing but feelings. It would perhaps be right to call them the two simple modes of self-feeling; but we are not here concerned with psychological accuracy. The point which we wish to emphasize and which we think is not doubtful is that, considered psychically, they are nothing whatever but states of the feeling self. This means that they exist in me only as long as I feel them, and only as I feel them, that beyond this they have no reference to anything else, no validity and no meaning whatsoever. They are 'subjective' because they neither have, nor pretend to, reality beyond this or that subject. They are as they are felt to be, but they tell us nothing. In one word, they have no content; they are as states of us, but they have nothing for us. (37, emphasis added)
This passage supports my view that there are non-intentional mental states. It also captures an intuition I have (in my better moments) of the meaninglessness of pleasure, especially sensual pleasure. In the words of the Preacher, pleasure doesn't accomplish anything. It doesn't get us anywhere. Or as Bradley puts it, pleasure does not refer beyond itself. It is in that sense meaningless. Bradley, of course, is not commenting on Ecclesiastes; he is mounting an attack on hedonism, the doctrine that the only thing good in itself is pleasure. But it is clear to both the Preacher and Bradley that the pursuit of pleasure is vain.
Not only pleasure but also wealth are vain (2:4-8). All activities are vain and profitless, including the pursuit of wisdom. Wisdom is better than folly, but both the wise man and the fool die. What is the point of being wise, learned, knowledgeable if in a few short years I will be a maggot-infested corpse? The fact of death proves the vanity, the nullity, of human existence. There is no ultimate point if all ends in death. (2:14-16)
At 2:14-16 we have a sort of argument for the vanity of human existence. Human existence is vain because it ends in death. Existence in general is vain because all things must pass away. I accept this argument, but I can easily understand how others would not. Why should impermanence argue vanity and unreality? This is one of the thorny questions Ecclesiastes raises.
The preacher despairs. Having children is no solution. Leaving a legacy is no solution. Your children too will die, and before they do they may squander or otherwise misuse their legacy. The vanity of your existence cannot be made good by procreation, for that too issues in vanity. Piling vanity upon vanity does not lead one to reality.
At 2:24 God makes his first appearance in the Book of Ecclesiastes. The suggestion seems to be that, in the face of universal vanity, all one can do is eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good and that these things are from God. The chapter concludes with the thought that God rewards the good while punishing the sinner. But "this too is vanity and striving after wind." (2:26) The world's "moral equilibrium," to use Peter Lupu's phrase is itself vanity. This conclusion is puzzling. God exists, but his existence does not alleviate the vanity of human life.
Thus at the end of Chapter 2 we are left with the thought that death proves vanity whether or not God exists. What then is God's role if his existence has no bearing on the meaning of human life? This is a question we must keep in mind as we read the subsequent chapters.