Meaning in Life Trilogy (Irving Singer)
OVERVIEW
“Meaning in Life” is a trilogy of books by philosopher Irving Singer. Each of the three books explores a different path to meaning in life, but the first book is foundational to the other two (you can read a full overview of the first book here). In short, we create meaning in life by creating values and ideals, by pursuing love, and by finding harmony in nature and spirit.
1. Meaning in Life – The Creation of Value
Homo sapiens has an evolved set of vital interests – natural impulses, desires, and drives; inclinations that belong to our natural condition. We have an impulse to care and compassion, to love of learning, to curiosity, to adventure and competition, to aesthetic contemplation. We take interest in these things because we were designed by evolution to take interest in them (or their progenitors). It’s our vital interest in these activities and concepts that creates our value system, that defines and directs the measure of what we deem important. That is to say: we bestow value based on our unique and preestablished inclinations. There is nothing transcendental or universal about love, or beauty, or the search for truth – these are human values; some version of them may be shared by other species, but there is nothing supra-species about them, and certainly nothing metaphysical. There is no single pattern of existence that is meaningful for all species, no ultimate values that exist a priori. There is only the species-specific impulses and motives that create a species-specific value system.
Human values, though, go one step further into the realm of ideals. Birds may have an inner sense of what is a good or bad twig, and bees of what is good or bad nectar. But does perfection mean anything to them, and do they suffer from feelings of inadequacy when they fail to live up to self-imposed standards of excellence? We have no reason to think they do. Humans on the other hand fashion ideals, extraordinary standards that we work hard to satisfy. We strive for perfection, likely owing to both our keen intelligence and ultra-social biology (we live in a world of imagination but also of extreme social comparison). Our human nature gives us both the vital interests that create value, and the added layer of idealization.
At its base level, the creation of meaning is the creation of values and subsequent assessments of perfection. The values we naturally strive for are the values we create (because values don’t exist a priori), and ideals make these values meaningful by placing them in a larger imagined context. A meaningful life isn’t discovered, it’s created through our purposeful efforts to satisfy ideals tied to the values we have a natural interest in.
2. Meaning in Life – The Pursuit of Love
Singer’s second book builds off the first. In “The Pursuit of Love” he expands meaning to love – how we seek meaningful lives by loving people, things, and ideals. Love creates meaning because love is, at its core, an appraisal and bestowal of value (a very special type, and perhaps the most principal form in our species). Singer says: “the human quest for meaning is most evident as a “need-to-love-and-be-loved.” Love is how we seek relationships with things that matter to us, with things we value. What we love is what we value, and therefore through love we create meaning.
There are various ways we love people. There’s sexual love, which Singer splits into libidinal (sex drive), erotic (the sexual pleasures of the senses, an aesthetic phenomenon), and romantic love (passion, the emotional need for oneness). All three enable us to create meaningful relations. There’s also social love, love in the context of community, which extends through a spectrum. At opposite ends of the spectrum there is love of self (having a sense of affirmation and assurance), and religious love. The love of life/humanity is the furthest secular end of the spectrum. In between there is love of child, love of parent, love of friend, love of nation/tribe, etc. If you love someone deeply, life is never without meaning.
Then there is the love of things and of ideals. Our first instinct may be to balk at the love of things as superficial, but without love of things we would have no art, no cuisine, no fashion, no beautiful sunsets. There is also the love of acts, sensations, feelings, and emotions – perhaps a love of walking in the woods, or the thrill of a rollercoaster ride. We shouldn’t feel guilty about loving things, they make our lives rich, full of delight and sensory pleasure. While a sense of materiality may be manifested by loving objects, at the opposite end is the love of ideals. Harkening back to the first book, idealization is the next natural step after bestowing value – the search for perfection. It’s certainly possible to love ideals, to have your heart leap at the thought of dedicating your life to the pursuit of something that makes humanity more valuable. And for some, love itself is an ideal.
Singer ends with the suggestion that love “is most rewarding when it harmoniously integrates the love of persons with a love of ideals that progressively enrich experience and a love of things that fully satisfy our needs.” Singer has left this statement deliberately vague so that it can be individually tailored.
3. Meaning in Life – Harmony of Nature and Spirit
Let’s start by removing any suspicion that Singer’s concept of “spirit” in the third book is somehow ethereal, or independent of the physical body. Rather, “what we call spirit is the part of nature that embodies the values and ideals that. . . we create in order to make life worth living. . . Spirit consists in the self-oriented capacity of living beings to change the world in accordance with their own aspirations.” As such, it’s the human spirit that seeks out goodness, truth, and beauty (all very much in accordance with our nature).
The narrative then goes on a walk-about. Singer muses about the differences between meaning and happiness (not the same, but connected through both requiring challenges, goals, aspirations, purposes, and consummatory experiences). He then spends some time disagreeing with Mortiz Schlick and Friedrich Schiller that intrinsically rewarding activity (“play”) should be our main focus (he rather thinks humans enjoy “the pleasure of having something worth seeking,” which is to say extrinsically motivated projects/activities). He then contemplates the value of mere existence – how we crave simply being alive, a sort of abstract desire for existence no matter what. But Singer is not convinced (as other philosophers may be), that the delight of being alive can elevate us to meaningfulness, or even happiness.
At this point, the narrative becomes so impassioned that in several sections the emotion is clearer than the meaning, but I think the upshot is that Singer believes the ultimate harmonization (and in some cases transcendence) of nature and spirit is art and artistic expression. In the first book, Singer laid out how we create meaning by creating value in an imagined context of ideals. Here, Singer points out that art is the optimal expression of imagination and idealization, that both the artist and the aesthete bestow value on art, and therefore that to make or appreciate art is to create meaning. Science and philosophy may be important, but art creates with the intention of creating meaning for someone else, or with the intention of creating explicit enjoyment for someone else, and that’s why art is special. Art can also transcend the confines of nature and biology in ways science and philosophy can’t. In addition, if meaning and happiness are about purposes (goals) and consummations (achievements), then all art achieves both. If you have learned to appreciate art – the palette of Monet, the symphonies of Mozart – then art offers you both meaning and consummation. Nothing else in life does that. A delicious Michelin star meal, an uplifting choral progression, the elegance of a prima ballerina, art is full of satisfactions. We might also appreciate art for the application of skill, or inventiveness, or novelty – so art has inherent and referential meanings, a kind of consummatory enrichment. Within the realm of spirit, art and love are companions, both seeking to maximize fulfillments, and both seeking to focus your attention on being and its qualities.
Conclusion
Value isn’t created in a vacuum and it’s not some pre-existing quality that we discover. Value is bestowed, which is to say created, based on our natural inclinations and interests. And our subsequent assessments of perfection, of how close we come to achieving our ideals within the realm of values, is what creates meaning in life. Love is both an appraisal and bestowal of value, and so perhaps our most principal form of valuing. But love doesn’t just bestow value, love is also how we seek relationships with the things and people that matter. Love is valuational but also relational. Finally, we create meaning by seeking harmonization of nature and spirit, which is best exemplified in art and artistic expression. Art, like love, reveals the importance of imagination and idealization, but it can also transcend the confines of culture and biology. Whether you are creating art or appreciating it, art has a goal, has inherent and referential meanings, and is uniquely able to maximize consummations.
Singer leaves it to you to imagine then what a profound love of life might look like, what a commitment to the art of living well might include, and how this might expand meaning to the furthest horizons of human potential.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Love persons, things, and ideals. Fill your life with artistic expression and appreciation.
IN SUM:
Are these books entirely secular? Yes (even if there is a heavy hand on the religious comparisons and language).
If I had to describe these books in one sentence? How humans create meaning, and why love and art are special expressions of meaning.
Who should read these books? Philosophy-minded individuals interested in how humans create value, and how love and art are related to this creation.