What is the Meaning of Life? Read the Philosophers’ Answers

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What Human Life is All About: Philosophers’ Answers

Various philosophers have tried to explain the meaning of life or where will all these lead to. They have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, or what human life is all about. The following are some examples:

Kierkegaard

Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) claimed that the meaning of life is to obey God passionately. That is, a person’s life can be meaningful and worth living only if he believes sincerely and zealously in the Christian God.

Kierkegaard talked about three stages or levels of life—a human person ought to ascend from the lowest stage, (a) the aesthetic (sensuous, even sensual), through the higher stage, (b) the ethical, and on to the highest stage, (c) the religious. For him, only those who have attained the religious stage can have a truly meaningful life or a life worth living.

The following can also be deduced from Kierkegaard’s philosophy about the meaning of life (O’Brien, n.d.):

(a) Life can seem meaningless. But though life often appears meaningless, it needs not be so, and, when it is, it is because of some kind of failure of the life.

(b) In a meaningful life, all the varied aspects of it come together to create some kind of coherent whole. A person pursues a certain goal, to which everything in his life is subordinated.

(c) It is possible for there to be too much meaning in a person’s life, or in its parts. Every single part of life ought to have so much meaning for a person that he can remember it at any moment.

(d) A person can give his life meaning, or that he can acquire meaning in life, by doing something like devoting himself to something.

(e) Life’s meaning comes from some kind of faith, a faith that is passionately acquired and lived daily.

(6) One’s life may have a meaning, but one does not know what it is.

(7) Life’s meaning is ultimately grounded in religious faith, in a person’s personal relation to a supernatural God. However, it is possible both to enjoy life and to give it meaning and substance outside Christianity, just as the most famous poets and artists, the most eminent of thinkers, even men of piety, have lived outside Christianity.

(8) Life has meaning only insofar as it is related in some way to the Infinite. Nothing finite can supply the meaning of life.

Kierkegaard philosophized that the only way to escape despair is to have complete faith in God. Tremendously difficult as well as very important, possessing total faith in God demands passionate personal commitment and a dedication to continuous self-analysis, not just simply attending church regularly and behaving obediently.

Tolstoy

Recognizing that death is the only certainty in life, the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) concludes—unlike Nietzsche—that the meaning of life cannot come from art, science, or philosophy.

For him, the meaning of life lies in a kind of irrational knowledge called “faith,” noting that whatever the faith may be, it provides to man’s finite existence an infinite meaning, a meaning which is not destroyed by sufferings, deprivations, or death.

Possessing everything a person could ever want, Tolstoy, who was born into old Russian nobility, nonetheless found himself disturbed, depressed, psychologically paralyzed, and obsessed with suicide. Finding in his head the persistent recurrence of the question of the meaning of life, Tolstoy’s quandary was this:

“… since I will suffer, die, be forgotten, and make no difference (leave no trace) in the long run, how does my life, or anything I do, have any meaning?” (O’Brien, n.d.)

Tolstoy found the solution in a kind of irrational knowledge called faith. “Faith is faith in God, and lived faith involves some kind of relation to the Infinite. Meaning is found in the appropriate relationship to God, the Infinite” (O’Brien, n.d.).

He concluded that the things normally pursued by many—riches, recognition, prestige, and power—contribute nothing to the meaningfulness of life, whereas faith in God, love, generosity, altruism, and service to others embody a meaningful life.

Sartre

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) viewed our life as absurd and meaningless, although we may make a free choice that would give our lives meaning and responsibility.

Sartre claimed that we earnestly pursue goals which ultimately do not matter, but we persist acting as if they do, and so our lives are absurd.

And when we act to become the foundation of our own being (perhaps similar to Heidegger’s living authentically), the obstacle is other people who pursue their own contrasting goals and sometimes propose a threat to our way of life. People, thus, are always at odds with each other.

Holding that life is meaningless, Sartre espoused that “we can, by our free choice, give life some meaning or other. But the decision to do so is itself a matter of ungrounded free choice, which is such that it doesn’t matter whether that decision or some other one is made” (O’Brien, n.d.).

Sartre’s pessimistic and disheartening philosophy is grounded on his atheism:

“For human beings our existence precedes our essence, since there is no God to give us an essence, and we freely choose what we will become. Unlike chairs and tables we have to make ourselves, and in so doing we alone are responsible for the essence we create.’

“Along with this responsibility comes the anguish that accompanies our decisions. We never know which action we should perform, but perform them we must. Furthermore, as there are no gods or objective moral guidelines, we alone must choose, be responsible for our choices, and accept the accompanying anguish that choice brings. We cannot escape our freedom, Sartre says, and we should offer no excuses for them.

When deciding between staying with our mother or going off and fighting the Nazis, in Sartre’s example, no theory of human nature or objective moral values help. We must simply exercise our freedom, choose, and accept the responsibility and anguish that follows.” (Messerly, 2015)

For Sartre, the human person ought to acknowledge himself as sole legislator of values and morals; he must freely choose to create his own values and meanings for his life to be meaningful.

Camus

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French author, journalist, and existentialist philosopher (though he himself rejected this label) who was a hardcore believer that human life is absurd, meaningless, and senseless. In fact, he criticized those who try to adress the meaninglessness of life by imposing meaning on it.

Camus proposed that the correct attitude is to welcome life’s meaninglessness and the person who really understands that life is absurd and endures it with a smile is an “Absurd Hero.” For him, the best way to cope with life absurdity is to live life with passion, using everything up with an attitude of scorn, revolt, or defiance.

He explained that life is absurd because there is an inescapable clash between human wishes and the meaningless world. This discord has at least four aspects:

(a) People seek a rational understanding of things, but the world is ultimately incomprehensible.

(b) People look for a unity lying beneath the diversity in the world, but the world appears to be an incoherent plurality.

(c) People yearn for a cosmic meaning of all things and a transcendent, higher reality (e.g. God), but no such being can be discerned.

(d) People strive for some permanence, and a perpetual life, but, all that lies ahead is death and oblivion.

Camus’s concept of life’s absurdity is best captured in the image of the mythical Greek of old, Sisyphus who pushes a rock up a hill, over and over, only to see it roll back down again when it reaches the top, in an endless cycle. Pointless labor is Sisyphus’ plight, and people’s too.

Camus proposed that like Sisyphus, people cannot help but continue to ask after the meaning of life, only to find their answers crumble.

So, should people kill themselves, then? Camus’s answer is that they ought not, for to do so is to escape, to give in, and to lose. Rather, people should do the following things which, for Camus, salvage our dignity, result in curious joy, and manifest freedom:

(a) insist that life is better if there is no meaning;

(b) develop an attitude of rationality and honesty (like accepting that there is no afterlife and it is okay);

(c) adopt a mindset of revolt, defiance, and scorn (as Camus held that there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn);

(d) live for now and worry not about the future;

(e) expend energy to the limit: work hard, play hard, tackle all things with enthusiasm and zeal.

Of course, Camus’s philosophy is not encouraging, much less necessarily true. In fact, if human life has no elemental purpose or meaning that reason can speak about, we cannot help asking about why we continue to live and to reason.

James

The American pragmatist philosopher and Harvard professor William James (1842-1910)

held that life is meaningful and worth living because of a spiritual order which, practically speaking, people should believe in.

James admitted that the thought that life is not worth living sometimes arises as people oscillate, between ecstasy and despair, between joy and sadness.

He claimed that the belief that might help people in their search for meaning is religious supernaturalism, the essence of which is the notion that the natural order is part of a greater reality which in turn provides significance to people’s dull existence and explains the world’s mysteries.

James thus suggested believing the physical order as a partial order, which should be supplemented by an unseen spiritual order which people assume on trust.

Against the criticism that this view is unscientific, James countered that the scientifically minded must not be conceited, since science offers only a glimpse of reality, and its knowledge is very small compared to the immensity of our ignorance.

Science can only say what is, but cannot speak of what is not—it has no authority to deny the existence of an invisible world that provides us what the visible world does not.

James believed that there are practical benefits in believing in an invisible religious or spiritual world that if we remove this comfort from people, suicidal hopelessness may ensue. It is this faith that grounds people’s belief in this world’s worthiness.

As for the criticism that religious faith is just wishful thinking, James reminded us how tiny we know of reality relative to omniscience, and explained that though we cannot be so certain about the spiritual realm, it is best to believe in the practical, in that which helps us live.

Being courageous means risking one’s life on a mere possibility, and James encouraged us to believe in that possibility. It is with this optimism that we can make our lives worth living.

Being optimistic and having faith in an unseen spiritual world in which all the wrongs of the natural order are righted provide us a guarantee of a fully worthwhile and meaningful life. This entails acting as though life is worthwhile and has meaning, that is, living with ideals, coupled with courage, will, and other virtues.

Also Check Out: From Socrates to Mill: An Analysis of Prominent Ethical Theories, also by author Jensen DG. Mañebog

Russell

British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) considered life as purposeless and void of meaning. He postulated that human beings and all things precious to them are mere outcome of the accidental collocations of atoms; the causes that produced people had no prevision of the end they were realizing; and there is no life beyond the grave.

Russell believed that the existence of man’s very species, together with all its accomplishments, will eventually be extinguished in the death of the solar system and “buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.”

This not-so-uplifting portrayal of man’s life he penned in his paper. “A Free Man’s Worship,” thus:

“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system…

“… and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins–all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” (Russell, 2008).

Emphasizing that free thoughts are all that life affords in a harsh universe, Russell admitted that men are free and self-aware and this is the source of their value. He encouraged people to courageously admit that the world is bad, but nonetheless love truth, beauty, goodness, and perfection, although the universe will just destroy such things.

He suggested following the Stoics, resigned to the fact that life does not give people everything they want and renouncing desires.

In sum, Russell philosophized that there is no objective meaning in life. Humans ought to be resigned to this, but endeavor nevertheless to energetically cling to ideals, loving truth and beauty, renouncing power, and living constantly in the vision of the good. In this manner, people can attain some freedom from the eternal forces that will ultimately destroy them.

Tagore

The most distinguished Bengali renaissance poet, philosopher, short-story writer, novelist, and educator Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) posited that the ultimate meaning or purpose in human life is to become one with the Infinite. His The Religion of Man (1931) contains outstanding reflection on the meaning of life. (Read: Do a philosophical reflection on a concrete situation from a holistic perspective)

Tagore felt he had understood life’s meaning neither when he recognized that his life mattered, nor when he had a perspective that rid him of his anguish and despair, but rather when he realized that his life was part of a great unity of meaning. He sensed meaning in the viewpoint that everything, including his singular life, is one cohesive whole.

He avowed that life is immense and goodness is realizing one’s self in the all-pervading God. Realizing the Infinite and comprehending the mysteries of reality are possible only in the context of

perfect harmony between man and everything else in nature. He thus advocated recognizing that we are not merely physical self or body but our soul is part of the larger consciousness, and to know one self is to understand the world around.

For him, a human person must realize his kinship with the world, and must sense the eternal spirit in all objects, in order to find the full significance of the world, see himself in perfect truth, and establish his harmony with everything.’

Tagore defined true human as the universal self, represented by the life of the species, or even by the life of every being. When the human person is merged in the universal, that is, he finds the ‘worldman’ in himself, then he is freed from being captive of pain and realizes that he is really unaffected by death and suffering.

Tagore’s philosophy, which is typical of eastern viewpoints, has certain fine corollaries. It promotes pursuing goodness, which is concerned with the happiness of all humanity and for all time, and not just pleasure, which is limited to one’s own self. It encourages loving everyone or everything, for whomsoever or whatever we love, we find in him or it our own soul, as the same supreme soul in us is in everything and everyone.

Meaningful life is being truly united in knowledge, love, and service with all beings, experiencing the freedom of consciousness, to unite with All.

This entails rising above oneself and doing good for the sake of others rather than oneself and advocating harmony of universal humanity among the people of various origin through freedom of mind and spiritual sovereignty.

Concerning grasping the meaning of life, Tagore once said, “The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” Relatedly, he suggested life in nature and in the open as a means of spiritual growth, believing that in nature the spiritual eye sees the infinite lying stretched in quiet smiling stillness and one attains inspiration in the contemplation of the environment.

For Tagore, living a meaningful life involves non-attachment to the trivial concerns of one’s own individual life; lack of concern for how one’s own personal life fares; placing interest in how the true Man as the eternal being, or beings of any sort ultimately fare; concern for all life, not just human life; losing concern for one’s personal accomplishments and disappointments; and nurturing an invigorating interest in the life of the whole.

Ayer

The renowned logical positivist English philosopher A. J. Ayer (1910-1989) claimed that the question of the meaning of life is itself meaningless. He argued that there is no sense in asking what the ultimate purpose of man’s existence or the real meaning of life is.

Part of his premise is his view that there is no reason to believe in a Creator who supposedly intended human persons for a specific purpose. Ayer further claimed that even if there were such a God, his objectives could not provide life meaning unless people agreed to take them. Ultimately, he believed that there is no meaning out there to be found.

That life has no meaning, Ayer claimed, is nothing to cry about, for one’s life has whatever meaning he gives it. The meaning of one’s life boils down to what he purposes, values, and aims at.

The question of the meaning of life is illogical and unanswerable because there is not, and could not be, such a thing, but humans can give their life a meaning, and if they do, it will be meaningful to Them.

In sum, Ayer advocated that there is no reason to think there is a purpose or final end for human life and even if there were one, say it is to comply with a Creator’s purpose, that would be immaterial since that objective would not be ours. In the end, the question of the meaning of human life reduces to the question of how people should live their respective life.

Against Ayer, we may say that it is not true that in his philosophy, life has no meaning. By advocating that we must choose for ourselves what to value, decide what purposes or ends to serve, and produce meaning for ourselves, he, in effect, promoted this: “Give your life a meaning, and that’s the meaning it will have.”

For him therefore, life does have meaning, although it is purely subjective.

Ayer’s disbelief in a Creator and in life’s meaning from God spring from his advocacy of the verification principle, the theory that statements and questions are meaningful only if we can determine whether they are true by analytical or empirical methods.

Take note though that the verification principle itself, if weighed by its own standard, is unverifiable—it is not a tautology nor can it be technically proved through experience … continue reading

Note: Teachers may share this as a reading assignment of their students. For other free lectures like this (especially for students), visit Homepage: Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

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Also read: From Socrates to Mill: An Analysis of Prominent Ethical Theories by Jensen DG. Mañebog

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