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‘The Meaning of Life’: A Qualitative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

James O. Bennett
James O. Bennett*
Affiliation:
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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Extract

One trend in contemporary discussions of the topic, ‘the meaning of life.’ is to emphasize what might be termed its subjective dimension. That is, it is widely recognized that ‘the meaning of life’ is not something that simply could be presented to an individual, regardless of how he/she felt about it. Thus, for example, Karl Britton has written that we could imagine ‘a featureless god who set before men some goal and somehow drove them to pursue it'; while this would constitute a purpose for human life, it would hardly be sufficient to render life meaningful. ‘The goal would seem arbitrary, senseless: and its pursuit burdensome, souldestroying.’ Similarly, R. W. Hepburn has stated that meaningfulness must indispensably involve value judgment. Any set of conditions presented to us, whether by God, nature, or our fellow humans, constitutes a fact about how the world is; what provides meaningfulness to our lives, on the other hand, must be something which we affirm - something we feel ought to be the case.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 581 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 1984

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References

1 Britton, Karl Philosophy and the Meaning of Life (Cambridge: At the University Press 1971), 16Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Hepburn, R.W. ‘Questions About the Meaning of Life,’ reprinted in Sanders, Steven and Cheney, David R. eds., The Meaning of Life (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1980), 114Google Scholar

4 If the quantitative phrase sounds paradoxical, one must remember that the only way quality can be intersubjectively accessible is through correlation with quantity. Quality as such is confined to the individual; intersubjectively, we must be content to deal with indications of quality that can be quantitifed.

5 Britton, 12

6 Taylor, Richard Good and Evil: A New Direction (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. 1970),Google Scholar Chapter 18

7 David Wiggins, Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life (From the Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. LXII, 1976), 331-78

8 Taylor, 259-60 and 266-7

9 Ibid., 259

10 Ibid., 260-8

11 Wiggins, 340-9

12 Ibid., 377

13 Ibid., 373

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., 378

16 As Dewey so ably reminds us: ‘Organic Life … is a process that involves an environment. It is a transaction extending beyond the spatial limits of the organism. An organism does not live in an environment; it lives by means of an environment.’ Dewey, John Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1964), 25Google Scholar

17 As Taylor contends in his analysis of value preceding his account of ‘the meaning of life.’ For a more detailed discussion of this, see Bennett, James O. ‘Beyond Good and Evil: A Critique of Richard Taylor's “Moral Voluntarism”,’ The Journal of Value Inquiry, XII, 4 (1978), 313-19.Google Scholar

18 Moore, G.E. Principia Ethica (Cambridge: At the University Press 1968), 188Google Scholar

19 Taylor, 250

20 Mill, John Stuart Utilitarianism, ed. Sher, George (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company 1979), 8–11Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 9

22 Ibid.

23 My basic approach in this paper is categorical and hypothetical, rather than dialectical. That is, I am not attempting to prove any thesis, but rather am offering some categories, with an attending conceptual framework, which I hope will prove fruitful for further exploration of the topic. The justification for a category such as ‘quality of experience’ is not in antecedent proof but rather in subsequent development.

24 The phrase is ambiguous, but I accept both interpretations: the experiences are of something perceived by the subject as having intrinsic value, and the experiences themselves possess intrinsic value (that is, the experience of intrinsic value is itself intrinsically valuable).

25 For instance, I am reluctant to say that anyone who experiences life as meaningful could be totally wrong, because I believe that life itself is intrinsically valuable, as well as feeling and thought. This does not, however, warrant the conclusion, 1ife is unconditionally meaningful, so it does not matter how one lives.’ There are many unavoidable negative elements in life - such as pain, anxiety, and frustration - and those whose experience of intrinsic value is not frequent or rich enough to compensate for those elements may well be led to conclude that life is not worth the effort.

26 The standardization of experience is perhaps most evident in the writings of Descartes, Locke, and Hume, who propound the view that there are simple, ultimate units ('essences,’ ‘ideas,’ ‘impressions’) of which the entire wealth of human experience is composed. The materials of our experience are all the same, and they lie before us waiting to be recognized; such a framework allows almost no room for what I term the qualitative dimension.