“Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
Where do we go when we die?
What lies beyond?
And what lay before?
Is anything certain in life?”
-“The Spirit Carries On,” Dream Theater (1999).
Meaning? Meaning What?
According to a popular, non-specialist, view the project of philosophy is to study the meaning of the universe and of human life. Implicit in this view are the ideas that the universe and human life are both intelligible, and that understanding them will accomplish a significant intellectual and practical good. Of course, understanding the universe furnishes a grasp on what it is good for for us qua humans. Our astronomical inquiries, for instance, have led to many life enhancing technologies like computers, satellites, smartphones, GPS, and X-ray machines. We live better lives than our forebears on account of these technologies. But this is not to say that that’s the universe’s purpose. The stars weren’t made to facilitate computation or maritime transport, nor were the oceans filled to float our cruise liners or furnish prime coastal real estate for seaside resorts. The universe confronts us with these affordances only contingently, and it could all have easily been otherwise. This is where the universe’s analogy with human life as an object of inquiry breaks down. Since we must necessarily live with ourselves, negotiate the world on the terms we find ourselves subject to, and deal with others from our personal point of view, a meaningful life however we understand it means something to us necessarily. Understanding human life must get us a handle on what we are good for for ourselves, and for others whose interests we can further or thwart. This is the variety of understanding of human life that religion, art, and literature have traditionally seen fit to expound on.
Religions offer lists of prescriptions and proscriptions for the good of their adherents, and differences between religions come from their differing conceptions of what that good consists in. Arts, including imaginative and poetic literature, offer vantage points from which their audiences might discover or reconcile themselves to their own place in the world. This is why religion and art have been singled out as sources of meaning. Yet this is also why religion and art seem to be concerned with the pursuit or maintenance of human happiness, rather than a meaningful life simpliciter. Without further qualifications is a happy life a meaningful life? Arguably, it is not.
Happiness and Meaningless Lives
In a tale from Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel a beggar with a piece of dry bread for his supper is elated when he discovers the mere aroma of a stew from a tavern he cannot afford suffices to make his poor fare a delicious repast. The tavern-keeper observing the indigent’s meal demands to be paid for the stew his establishment provided. Without the aroma of the stew the beggar would’ve had to content himself with dry bread, but with it he was able to delude himself into a happy satiety. It is undeniable the beggar has had a happy prandial experience, yet it seems perverse to call this episode of delusional coping on his part a meaningful experience. In the same tale a canny Samaritan devises a payment fit to compensate the tavern-keeper for his contribution to the beggar’s meal. He jingles in his pocket coins worth the price of the stew whose aroma the beggar used to flavour and season his dry bread. It seems the tavern-keeper must now be happy, and have had a meaningful experience, on a par with that of the well-fed beggar. Rabelais presents the whole episode as farcical and instructive only in demonstrating the crudeness and vapidity of our meaning making instincts—here diagnosed as mere coping strategies in the face of the human condition. If our happiness depends on cultivating self-serving delusions and a happy life is a meaningful life then we have a specious notion of meaningfulness. One that fails to discriminate between reality and imagination, and offers those who are unhappy due to objective persistent situational factors the glib advice to just think themselves into a happy and meaningful life.
American philosopher Robert Nozick (1974) famously offered the “experience machine” thought experiment to argue that reality is valuable independently of our experience and if we could think ourselves into a happy state by disregarding reality it would not be best for us. In his mature formulation of the thought experiment in The Examined Life (1989) he writes: “Imagine a machine that could give you any experience (or sequence of experiences) you might desire. When connected to this experience machine, you can have the experience of writing a great poem or bringing about world peace or loving someone and being loved in return. You can experience the felt pleasures of these things, how they feel “from the inside.” You can program your experiences for the rest of your life. If your imagination is impoverished, you can use the library of suggestions extracted from biographies and enhanced by novelists and psychologists. You can live your fondest dreams “from the inside.” Would you choose to do this for the rest of your life?…Upon entering, you will not remember having done this; so no pleasures will get ruined by realizing they are machine-produced.” Most people choose not connect themselves to the experience machine. The upshot is that feeling happy from the inside is not all that matters to us, we want our pleasure to be connected to life as it really is rather than what we think it is.
Taking that idea forward, it would be strange to maintain our life is meaningful simply because we can falsely believe that objective distressing situational factors don’t impinge on our life experience, or that our lives are happier than they actually are. So much for the view that thinking one is happy, or thinking oneself into happiness, makes one’s life meaningful. But what about a life that is happy due to objective factors? It seems intuitive that the beggar from Rabelais’ tale would be happy if he were a prince who never wanted for anything instead of a pauper eating dry bread with a whiff of stew. However, it is not obvious that that more comfortable, more desirable life as a prince would also on that account be any more meaningful than life as a beggar.
If life is meaningful because it affords the living an opportunity to satisfy their desires in the broadest possible sense of the word, then lives in which desires are frustrated fail to have meaning. Meaning affirmers may claim life is meaningful because it is meaningful for some living beings, some of the time, and under some circumstances; it might even be more or less meaningful depending on how many living beings’ desires are fulfilled or frustrated. Meaning deniers will judge this response inadequate because it answers a different question than the one needing answering. Meaning deniers aren’t asking who the bearers of a meaningful life might be, or how numerous they are, or under what conditions they are bearers of a meaningful life. They’re asking what it is for any bearer’s life to be meaningful. It is the what of the meaning question in contention and not the who.
The idea that a happy life might be meaningless has always been present in the cultural imaginary. Many a parable identifies the rich and privileged who have their every whim satisfied as living a dissolute, frivolous life devoid of meaning in the lofty sense of meaning attributed to hard lives of those who toil for the impersonal good. The soldier who gives his life in battle is widely judged to have lived a meaningful life while a playboy millionaire who lives lavishly and to a great age is judged to have lived a shallow, even meaningless, life. Is it the taking on of unhappiness, displeasures, and undesirable experiences for the good of others that makes life meaningful? Despite the popularity of the affirmative response in qualified cases—where displeasures are endured for others’ good—it is far from clear that suffering for others’ good, or what has also been called having a purpose, makes life meaningful any more than does enjoying pleasures for one’s own good. We often hear it said that a life with purpose, i.e. involving hardships undertaken for unselfish or benevolent reasons, is a life with meaning. But what sort of thing is it that purpose confers on a life to make it count as meaningful?
From Purpose to Meaning
First, let’s get a better handle on purpose. One definition of purpose that captures the full semantic scope of the idea in the popular and academic imaginary is that offered by Kaufman (2020). A person with a healthy sense of purpose on his view (p.212) satisfies the following “selection criteria.” They are:
“Principled/virtuous: They show “a sustained commitment to moral ideals or principles that include a generalized respect for humanity; or a sustained evidence of moral virtue.”
Consistent: They have “a disposition to act in accord with one’s moral ideals or principles, implying also a consistency between one’s actions and intentions and between the means and the ends of one’s actions.”
Brave: They show “a willingness to risk one’s self-interest for the sake of one’s moral values.”
Inspiring: They have “a tendency to be inspiring to others and thereby to move them to moral action.”
Humble: They demonstrate “a sense of realistic humility about one’s own importance relative to the world at large, implying a relative lack of concern for one’s own ego.””
It is too easy to imagine a person who could meet all the criteria for having a healthy sense of purpose, and consequently a meaningful life, while still doing things most would balk from identifying as generative of meaning. Consider the following counterexample.
A non-offending paedophile or minor-attracted person with an acute sense of responsibility for the well-being and dignity of others who:
Never hurts others in a bid to satisfy their paedophilic desire (virtuous);
Believes their diligent practice of using manga depicting fictional minors in sexual situations in a private environment, without impinging on others’ sense of propriety and physical and mental safety, harms no one while enriching their own life immensely (consistent);
Takes ever greater risks in advocating against discrimination faced by minor-attracted persons while being mindful of privacy and safety needs of others, because they believe being minor-attracted and not acting on those desires with a minor is consistent with valuing human autonomy (brave);
Inspires others with their high functioning at a conventional 9-to-5 job which they take great pride in, and volunteer to the cause any time not spent at work or pursuing paedophilic release (inspiring); and,
Has their head on their shoulders, not thinking themselves better than anyone else (humble).
The virtues attributable to the non-offending paedophile are comparable to those we might attribute to a decorated soldier who embodies the highest military and civic ideals. A veteran who:
Only ever used his martial prowess lawfully and in appropriate circumstances (virtuous);
Lived up to the letter and spirit of martial and civil laws even in the face of demands or opportunities to act contrarily (consistent);
Went above and beyond the call of duty at great personal risk to secure lawful mission objectives (brave);
Inspired others to take on the hardships that come with conscientiously serving the national interest by exemplifying these ideals in their personal conduct and advocating for wider public adoption of these ideals (inspiring);
Did not coast on their socially privileged status as a veteran, or judge others as less deserving of consideration than themselves and their peer group (humble).
Given the profile of omissive and commissive behaviours and dispositions of the purpose driven non-offending paedophile and the purpose driven decorated war veteran it is clear they are both living meaningful lives in the lofty sense of the term. This seems odd because the naïve intuition is that the mere non-offending of the paedophile should not be counted as individuating purpose in the same way that the active service of the war veteran is to be seen as individuating purpose. This intuitive unease in likening the war veteran to the non-offending paedophile qua bearer of a meaningful life arises only because we fail to appreciate that lives ostensibly very different from each other can all be meaningful in the same lofty sense.
Different lives can of course be meaningful by pursuing their own specific, idiosyncratic purpose. We only have a problem with a purpose others might identify as their own when it puts them at odds with the common interests and well-being of others. We have no problem attributing a purpose driven and meaningful life to a terrorist, we only take issue with the terrorist’s purpose and meaningful life as being bad for others. Since people can legitimately be said to find meaning in purposes as diverse as advocating for granting paedophiles the status of a sexual minority, carrying out a fatwa on Salman Rushdie for blasphemy in his fiction, and dying for one’s country and clan, it appears meaningful lives can be good, bad or ugly, laudable or reprehensible, so long as they are driven by their bearers’ purposes. Meaningful lives can be purpose agnostic.
An extreme form of purpose agnosticism aimed at a meaningful life is found in religious traditions that recommend withdrawal from worldly pursuits to free the individual to discover meaning through some form of ascesis or theophanic communion with the godhead. Such traditions come in many flavours: Catholic monasticism, and Hindu, and Buddhist, meditative practices are among the more common forms of religious praxes one encounters that recommend complete withdrawal from the banausic exertions involved in forming and perpetuating a home and family. These traditions variously recommend that the active lives of consumption required to maintain and perpetuate the self and its familial supports be replaced with spiritual strivings that are indifferent to the this-worldly fate of the self and the family. Of course, individuals pursing this variety of purpose, and the resultant meaningful life, can exemplify virtue, consistency, bravery, humility and inspire others to moral action. But the meditative and reclusive practices by themselves do not facilitate these dispositions to the extent that they recommend private cultivation of virtue, disregard for secular appraisals of personal religious practices, isolating and protecting religious doctrines and practices from secular social scrutiny and rational challenge, and position their teachings as essentially superior to secular alternatives.
A meaningful life according to such religious traditions is for loyal adherents only, and the meaning generated for adherents is private and incommunicable in secular terms of an other-directed purpose driven life. This renders talk of meaningful lives inside the tradition into a variety of self-narrative rather than a discourse responsive to objective factual considerations applicable to adherents and non-adherents alike. Meditation retreats considered crucial for achieving a meaningful life run by Isha Foundation for instance have required diverting rivers, destroying acres of forest land, and dumping untreated sewage into areas adjoining their premises. If these negative externalities suffered by non-adherents are necessary to facilitate adherent’s search for meaning in their lives, and secular criticisms of such occurrences are dismissed as irrelevant to assessment of the social value of adherent’s purpose driven activities then a personally meaningful life can be to the detriment of others—without losing its lofty sense of being meaningful. This doesn’t sit well with the widespread intuition that people living meaningful lives contribute to a general increase in social well-being and the impersonal good. If world-denying, ascetic, purpose driven lives are meaningful lives then meaning must be something other than we’ve thought it to be.
Meaning talk: A Narrative Coping Strategy
Philosophers from the early 20th century onward tended to rubbish the question about the meaning of life as nonsense, and though that attitude is no longer as widespread it has its contemporary adherents. Those sympathetic to the question are disposed to think that since the question has seemed significant to all civilizations across history it must have a significant answer. But in every case the answer seems to imply that a meaningful life is purpose agnostic, or driven by an essentially arbitrary purpose to which we attribute unique life-guiding significance. In his defense of this view of the meaning of life the philosopher Richard Taylor uses the Myth of Sisyphus to illustrate that it is our being reconciled to our strivings rather than to our achievements that dignifies, or removes the arbitrariness from, our choice of purpose. Even if purposes are implanted in us as strange and irrational impulses pursuing them in earnest makes our lives meaningful (Taylor 2000). If Sisyphus’s accursed goal of rolling the stone uphill is never complete so are our goals of perpetuating “home and family…[and] the begetting of others who will follow in our footsteps and do more of the same” never complete. At the end of the day Sisyphus decides to begin his task of rolling the stone uphill once again, but we leave the task of perpetuating home and family to the next generation. It is our choosing to call this task a purpose in the lofty, meaning conferring sense, that seems to give our meaning talk its emotional, moral, and aesthetic weight. We say bringing up the next generation or caring for our elderly and disabled makes our lives meaningful because we couldn’t bear to think that these onerous responsibilities, undertaken involuntarily by most people, don’t directly serve our interests. We make aversive or difficult purposes that are part of the human predicament palatable by anointing them with the narrative power to confer meaning on our bare lives.
Some philosophers think that purposes that clearly benefit others, or are broadly benevolent, are privileged in being meaning conferring in ways that self-involved purposes without clear benefits to others are not. But since this scruple doesn’t arise naturally from the concept of purpose necessary for a meaningful life it is otiose. Those insisting the benevolence of a purpose driven life is uniquely determinative of the life’s meaning are committed to showing how the relative benevolent consequences of two purpose driven lives may be compared. Alert to this demand some have attempted to provide intuition-pumps like the following:
Parents who bring up healthy and up standing children take on many challenges and frustrations to benefit the children, who in their turn will contribute to the betterment of society at large. Adult children who care for their elderly parents are repaying their parent’s good turn in bringing them up to be functioning, autonomous persons capable of pursing their own interests and purposes. They’re also setting a good example for those on whose ministration and concern they will themselves depend on in their later years. Children will one day pay taxes, fight in the army, and provide services needed by an aging population. So, parents live meaningful lives.
Although this intuition has the vibe of meaning—as it helps itself to the warm fuzzy glow we feel in exercising our agency within the bonds of close relationships in which we are significant agents and patients, acknowledging others and being acknowledged by them,— it doesn’t show that such benevolence is not attributable to a self-involved conception of purpose. To drive home the point consider an equally laudatory story about a self-involved purpose driven life led by a master chair-maker who is childfree:
He is consumed by the desire to craft the finest specimens of chairs for his growing clientele, needing to spend long hours on the constantly evolving project of maintaining sufficient stock. Accordingly, he has refrained from forming any romantic or friendly bonds or responsibilities that will take away from time he must have to realise his chosen purpose. Chairs have been crucial to civilization, facilitating the dignified and comfortable co-presence of people and the formation of a sense of collective identity and agency. Schools and offices need them not as luxuries but as basic infrastructure that allows people to show up and bring all their attention to a shared focal concern. Child or senior citizen, everyone in any station of life must spend a big part of their days seated. Though the chair-maker acts from a personal and completely self-interested sense of purpose, like parents who bring up children for their own self-interest, he is benefiting society at large. Society needs chairs for judges in supreme courts and for housewives serving a family meal on the dinner table alike, chairs for retirees to relax in as they chat with their old pals in public parks and for young professionals to enjoy their snacks and cigarettes on. The chair-maker is participating in the project of civilization just as are parents bringing up their children.
Some may object that the average child added to the world population will bring more good into the world than one more good chair added to the stock of world furniture by the monomaniacal chair-maker. But it is far from obvious this is so. Many children will grow up to be criminals, dependents, or net negative tax contributors, but every chair will add a positive amount to the economy not including the positive contributions it will indirectly enable by providing comfortable seating to inventors and scientists among others. Since the chair-maker and the parent are equally living meaningful lives, driven by their self-involved purposes, and are responsible in a sense for benevolent collateral consequences of their actions, there is no independent rational basis to maintain there’s a significant qualitative difference between purpose driven lives that benefit others directly and those that do so indirectly.
Meaning and the kingdom of Ends
We’ve gone over secular and religious conceptions of what it is to live a meaningful life, and seen that while purpose driven lives that improve others’ well-being come closest to what most people mean by the phrase ‘meaningful life’ it is not clear that such lives are rationally discriminable from self-involved purpose driven lives which don’t concern themselves with others’ well or ill-being. In the final analysis meaning talk in the lofty sense serves as laudatory gloss on behaviours one or one’s community is anyway disposed to practice and encourage. This explains both why meaning making is an inside job requiring personal negotiation between individuals’ and society’s abilities and constraints, and why one man’s meaning tends not to mean quite the same thing to everyone. Must we abandon the ambition of finding a purpose that speaks to us and making what meaning we can of our lives? Certainly, there is no need to do so, and doing whatever we can to improve our own and potentially others’ lives is commendable. But given the inherent difficulty of picking out the unique meaning conferring aspect of various legitimate purposes a person might identify with we must be cautious we aren’t making talk of a meaningful life mean more than it does.
REFERENCES
David Benatar ed. (2016) Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions, 3rd Ed. Rowman & Littlefield.
Rabelais. Trans. M. A. Screech. (2006). Gargantua and Pantagruel. Penguin.
Scott Barry Kaufman (2020). Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization. TarcherPerigree.
