Category: Meaning of Life
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The Absurd: Nagel, Camus, Lupu
I have been re-reading Thomas Nagel's seminal paper, "The Absurd," which originally appeared in The Journal of Philosophy, October 1971, and is collected in Nagel's Mortal Questions (Cambridge UP, 1979, 11-23.) Damn, but it is good. Nagel is one of our best philosophers. He's the real thing. Nagel's central contention is that human existence is…
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The Aporetics of Existential Meaning
For present purposes, an aporia is a set of propositions each member of which has a strong claim on our acceptance, but whose members are collectively inconsistent. Like many a philosophical problem, the philosophical problem of the meaning of life is usefully approached from an aporetic angle. So consider the following aporetic tetrad: A. If…
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The Meaning of Life Must be Subjectively Appropriable
The meaning of life, if there is one, cannot be subjective. This was argued in an earlier entry in this series on the meaning of life. But the meaning of life cannot be purely objective either. The meaning of life, if there is one, must somehow involve a mediation of the subjective and the objective: the…
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If Life Has a Meaning, Then it Cannot be Subjective
My title is my thesis. This post has a prerequisite, The Question of the Meaning of Life: Distinctions and Assumptions. Read it first. Extreme Subjectivism We should distinguish between an extreme and a moderate version of the thesis that the meaning of life is subjective. They can be referred to as extreme and moderate subjectivism…
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The Question of the Meaning of Life: Distinctions and Assumptions
What are we asking when we ask about the meaning of life? Herewith, some preliminary distinctions. Existential versus Linguistic Meaning Those for whom meaning is primarily at home in the semantic domain might wonder whether it makes sense to speak of the meaning of a life or of the actions and projects and events that…
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On the Meaning of Life: Lupu Contra Vallicella
Bill reveals in his post, Could the Meaning of Life Be the Quest for the Meaning of Life, that he “toyed with the notion that the meaning of life just is the search for its meaning.” He concludes that if the meaning of life were merely the searching for it, then there would be no…
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Could the Meaning of Life be the Quest for the Meaning of LIfe?
I have toyed with the notion that the meaning of life just is the search for its meaning. But this is really no better than saying that the meaning of life is subjective: posited and maintained by the agent of the life, and potentially different for different agents. If the meaning of human life is subjective,…
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What It’s All About
I knew a guy who maintained that getting married and having kids was "what it's all about." I incline to the view that figuring out what it's all about is what it's all about. And depending on how seriously one takes that task, one might decide that having children is contraindicated. When Prince Siddartha got word…
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Does God Give His Existence Meaning?
Chad McIntosh writes, Your post We Cannot Be the Source of Our Own Existential Meaning touches on a puzzle that I’ve been wrestling with for several years now. I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts on the following. Like you, I think meaning is bestowed, or endowed, by agents. However, I may hold a stronger view, which…
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We Cannot Be the Source of Our Own Existential Meaning
Some say that life has no meaning except the meaning that we, individually, give it. Thus the meaning of my life is the meaning I give my life, and the meaning of your life is the (perhaps different) meaning that you give your life, and that, apart from these individual projects of meaning-bestowal, one's life…
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At the Zoo: The Aspiring Animal
And here we have an animal who aspires. Unfortunately, his aspirations arise from a material substratum that mocks them, and whose collapse will soon enough spell their end. Or so it seems. If the seeming is so, is not the life of these animals absurd?
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Looking Beyond for Meaning
We look beyond the moments of this life for meaning. And we must look beyond the 'moment' of this life as a whole if this life is to have meaning.
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Is Death an Evil or Not?
I go back and forth on this question. I should be ashamed of myself. Forty years a philosopher and no fixed view on such a fundamental question? What am I (not) being paid to do? To gain some clarity, I will sketch some possible views. I will also sketch the view to which I incline…
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What is Man?
He is an animal, but also a spirit — and thus a riddle to himself. He reasons and speaks, he objectifies, he says 'I' and he means it. Thus he does not parrot the word 'I'; uttering 'I' he expresses self-awareness. Man has a world (Welt), not merely an environment (Umwelt). Man envisages a Higher…
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Is Death Evil?
So is death evil or not? What is my answer? The answer depends on metaphysics. 1. If we are natural beings only, nothing but complex physical systems, continuous with the rest of nature and susceptible in principle of complete explanation by physics and biology, then I cannot see how death in general could be accounted evil. …