The Meaning of Life - A Reader (Klemke and Cahn)
OVERVIEW
“The Meaning of Life” (compiled by E.D. Klemke and Steven M. Cahn) is a collection of essays/answers to the question of meaning in life from two dozen thinkers, including Bertrand Russell, Thomas Nagel, Leo Tolstoy, and Arthur Schopenhauer. Part I seeks answers from the religious perspective, Part II the “non-theistic alternatives,” and Part III explores whether questions on meaning are themselves meaningless. The first edition was published in 1981, with three revised editions to follow that added a fourth section: how life can have meaning if it must end. I couldn’t possibly summarize each of the 25 essays, but I will speak to the some of the more common flavours of responses and overarching themes from the non-believers.
Let’s first address a common (but misguided) belief from many in the religious camp: that without God or some objective meaning found “out there,” human life is meaningless, and that if we weren’t created for something, then human life is also without purpose. From here an attack on science and atheism often follows – science for revealing the true nature of the universe (cold, indifferent; and ourselves: cosmically unimportant), and atheism for its contempt of religion (which, it’s argued, is the only thing that lends meaning and significance to our existence). To the first point – that without some universally-ratified meaning, life is meaningless – we need only examine what meaning is. Meaning is a value judgement, and those are only ever subjective. E.D. Klemke, one of the essayists and the original compiler of the anthology, says:
From the standpoint of present evidence, evaluational components such as meaning and purpose are not to be found in the universe as objective aspects of it. Such values are the result of human evaluation. With respect to them, we must say that the universe is valueless; it is we who evaluate, upon the basis of our subjective preferences. Hence, we do not discover values such as meaning to be inherent within the universe. Rather, we “impose” such values upon the universe.
The notion of an objective meaning is unintelligible, it’s implausible. To conclude that subjective meaning is somehow lesser than objective meaning is incoherent, there’s nothing other than subjective meaning that exists. (Also, imagine if we were all to discover tomorrow that the meaning of our existence was as food for some alien super-race. Would that feel satisfying? No. Why not? Because meaning is, and has always been, a subjective evaluation).
To the second half, that if we weren’t created by some supernatural ubermind then we haven’t any purpose, that’s to conflate the two kinds of purpose that exist. The first sense of the word is “Did you have a purpose in moving the chair?” vs. the second sense, “what is the purpose of a chair?” The first sense is attributed to people and their behaviour, but the second sense is only attributed to things. We don’t usually confer this second type of purpose to other living beings. A dog may be trained to herd sheep, but that doesn’t mean a street dog is without purpose. A tree may be planted to provide shade, but a tree growing naturally in the forest is not purposeless – it’s not pointless to be that tree. We generally accept that living things carry their purpose in their living; they are ends-in-themselves, not means-to-an-end. (Imagine approaching someone at a dinner party and inquiring: “what are you for? What purpose do you serve?”). Just because we weren’t created by some supernatural agency like a gadget with an intended function doesn’t make our living without any purpose, only without purpose in the second sense. The purpose we do possess is in our living, in our choices, actions, and agency.
Now that we’ve established that a secular perspective on life does not void it of all meaning and purpose, let’s turn to what our skeptics have to say about how we can live our lives most meaningfully. There are three common flavours of responses from our non-believers.
1) Have worthwhile goals that you pursue with zest (Susan Wolf and Paul Edwards)
For an individual life to have meaning, it generally has two features: 1) there is some dominant goal or goals which give direction to our actions, and 2) these goals are pursued with zest. In this way, life can be meaningful and is so in the subjective sense. Susan Wolf calls these goals “projects of worth,” and believes that meaningful lives are lives of active engagement with these types of projects. Paul Edwards believes only that our goals and attachments be not “too shallow,” but that if we want our lives to also be worthwhile, then the goals should have positive value. So, a meaningful and worthwhile life is one where we pursue positive goals with passion and enthusiasm. Paul Edwards contrasts cosmic meaning with terrestrial meaning and sees no reason why the absence of the former means absence of the latter, or why the presence of the former assures presence of the latter. He writes:
There is really no good reason to grant that the life of a particular person becomes meaningful in the terrestrial sense just because human life in general has meaning in the cosmic sense. If a superhuman being has a plan in which I am included, this fact will make (or help make) my life meaningful in the terrestrial sense only if I know the plan and approve of it and of my place in it, so that working toward the realization of the plan gives direction to my actions.
As long as we have positive goals to work toward, and we are happy to work towards them, our lives have meaning and worth.
2) Find intrinsic value in living (Moritz Schlick, Richard Taylor, and Joel Feinberg)
Moritz Schlick, Richard Taylor, and Joel Feinberg question whether pursuing goals (purpose-driven action) lends meaning to life, because (if you examine it closely…) our goals have no inherent significance. Consider what our most common life goals are: raise a family, make the world a better place, and/or live on in some way after our deaths. We are born, we toil toward these goals, and we die. For what? For the next generation to do the same. But why? So that this may go on forever? Where is the inherent value of a goal if the goal is simply to secure a future in which to have more goals? (Nevermind that even a gentle interrogation reveals that our accomplishments are not enduring and that most of us will soon be forgotten). But there’s another problem with this way of living, highlighted by Joel Feinberg, and that’s that by projecting the “point” of life, or the “meaning” of life to some future state that can somehow confer value backwards, we never actually find meaning in the present.
Moritz Schlick calls this problem living “under the curse of purposes,” and this he defines as work: any activity that receives its value only from its goals – any activity that is not valuable in-and-of itself, whose purpose exists outside itself. He contrasts work – these activities undertaken only for some future accomplishment – with play, activities that carry their satisfaction in themselves, that are not future-looking but present facing; play is an end-in-itself, not a means-to-an-end. Schlick’s encouragement is to release, for a day or an hour at least, “the life that is fettered in its entirety to the purposes of utility,” and instead enjoy activities that carry their own purpose and value in themselves (what you might call purposeless action). Richard Taylor agrees, it’s not the goals that matter, it’s the doing, and that the meaning of life is to want to do the thing you are doing. Life doesn’t have to have a “point” beyond its own intrinsic value, its own self-fulfillment through the sheer pleasure of living it. Truly, life could be its own point.
3) Life is absurd and nothing really matters (Albert Camus, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Thomas Nagel)
And then there are those great thinkers who have pondered deeply about life and concluded that the whole thing is ridiculous. Albert Camus famously compared man’s predicament to that of Sisyphus, the figure of Greek mythology who was cursed by the Gods to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down again just before reaching the top. Sisyphus is the portrait of meaningless existence, one characterized by pointless toil and ultimate futility. Humanity too commits its living to ceaseless toil, to strivings and hopes that will be dashed by death or undone by time. This is what Camus and others call “absurdity,” the meaning and worth we demand from a world that has none, the seriousness with which we take our unimportant lives. Camus believed that the only appropriate response to the absurdity of our situation was contempt. The Youtube channel Crash Course Philosophy summed up Camus’ thoughts this way: the meaning of life is whatever prevents you from killing yourself. (Put that on a pillow, eh?) Arthur Schopenhauer compared the world to a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony from which we should expect suffering and misery as inherent features, not as abnormalities. As to what we should pursue in life? “Tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow.” Lastly, Thomas Nagel – he didn’t agree with Camus that we should meet absurdity with contempt, but rather meet it with irony. We humans spend decades planning and fussing, exerting immense effort to achieve success and agonizing over failure… we worry about our appearance, our health, and our social utility. In short, we take ourselves very seriously, considering that none of it matters in the end. From the nebula’s-eye view, Nagel says, we are “arbitrary, idiosyncratic, highly specific occupants of the world, one of countless possible forms of life.” This is an invitation not to despair, but to stop taking yourself so seriously, to appreciate the irony of your circumstances. And what does it mean to live with irony toward your situation? Joel Feinberg offered that it’s to adopt a state between seriousness and playfulness. If existence is just one big cosmic joke, then we can meet life not with contempt or scorn, but with an amused smile and perhaps a lighthearted shrug of the shoulders. Nothing really matters anyway, so do whatever makes living tolerable! No one’s getting out alive.
So, there you have it, the perspectives of several illustrious secular thinkers on life, meaning, and purpose. Whether you pursue goodness, goals, play, or dismiss the charade as totally absurd, there is a philosopher who shares your opinion.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Philosophy doesn’t usually lend itself to action, but whichever flavour of response appeals to you, take that advice and run with it.
But… if you were to smoosh them all together…
Imagine that there was some supreme being who had a plan in mind for you. Think for a moment, what would you like that plan to be? What would feel meaningful to do with your time, or to work toward? If objective meaning could exist, what would you want it to be? Whatever your answer, that’s the thing you already want to do. So, go do it (and remember not to take any of it too seriously).
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? No.
If I had to describe the book in one sentence? 23 thinkers share their perspectives on meaning, purpose, and how best to live our lives.
Who should read this book? Anyone who wants to cover the most important essays written on meaning and purpose.