Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-hvd4g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-08T08:16:26.133Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remorse and the Ledger Theory of Meaning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2022

Lucas Scripter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A common idea about assessing meaning in life is that one draws up a list of those various positive values that one has achieved and subtracts from it one's negative deeds in life. The resulting balance is the meaningfulness of one's existence. I call this the ledger theory. Drawing on the work of Raimond Gaita and Julian Barnes's novel The Sense of an Ending, I argue for a phenomenology of remorse that gives us reason to reject the ledger theory. Even those agents whose lives have been exceptionally meaningful in some respects may remain haunted by their past. Certain sorts of misdeeds – those that involve significant, irreparable damage – leave life marred in such a way that the negative remains, even in the face of all the meaningful deeds of life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 98 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 81 - 102
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, Julian, The Sense of an Ending (London: Vintage, 2012).Google Scholar
Bittner, Rüdiger, ‘Is it Reasonable to Regret Things One Did?’ The Journal of Philosophy, 89 (1992), 262–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, Walter, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ [1935] in Illuminations, ed. Arendt, Hannah and trans. Zohn, Harry (New York: Mariner, 2019), 166–195.Google Scholar
Bramble, Ben, ‘Consequentialism about Meaning in Life’, Utilitas, 27 (2015), 445–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brogaard, Berit and Smith, Barry, ‘On Luck, responsibility and the meaning of life’, Philosophical Papers, 34 (2005), 443–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Cheshire, ‘Geographies of Meaningful Living’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 32 (2015), 15–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Stephen M. and Nyholm, Sven, ‘Anti-Meaning and Why it Matters’, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 1 (2015), 694–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camus, Albert, The Fall [1956], trans. Buss, Robin (New York: Penguin, 2013).Google Scholar
Cholbi, Michael, ‘Grieving Our Way Back to Meaningfulness’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 90 (2021), 235–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry, The Reasons of Love (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Gaita, Raimond, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2000).Google Scholar
Gaita, Raimond, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammerton, Matthew, ‘A Puzzle about Meaning and Luck’, Ratio, 35 (2022), 123–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Beatrix, ‘Contingency and the Quest for Meaning’, in On the Meaning of Life, ed. Himmelmann, Beatrix (Berlin: De Gruyter), 83–98.Google Scholar
Jagannathan, Dhananjay, ‘On Making Sense of Oneself: Reflections on Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending’, Philosophy and Literature, 39 (2015), A106–A121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamm, F.M., ‘Rescuing Ivan Ilych: How We Live and How We Die’, Ethics, 113 (2003), 202–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kauppinen, Antti, ‘Meaning and Happiness’, Philosophical Topics, 41 (2013), 161–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kauppinen, Antti, ‘Meaningfulness and Time’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 84 (2012), 353–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landau, Iddo, Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landau, Iddo, ‘Immorality and the Meaning of Life’, The Journal of Value Inquiry, 45 (2011), 309–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, Todd, A Fragile Life: Accepting Our Vulnerability (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, Todd, A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metz, Thaddeus, Meaning in Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metz, Thaddeus, God, Soul and the Meaning of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Living the Past Forward: The Present and Future Value of Backward-Looking Emotions’ in Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles and Regret, eds. Nussbaum, Martha C. and Levmore, Saul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 131–149.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Nyholm, Sven, ‘Meaning and Anti-Meaning in Life and What Happens After We Die’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 90 (2021), 11–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg, ‘Agent Regret’ in Explaining Emotions, ed. Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 489–506.Google Scholar
Smuts, Aaron, ‘The Good Cause Account of The Meaning of Life’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 51 (December 2013), 536–562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tartaglia, James, Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles, ‘Self-Interpreting Animals’ in Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Richard, Good and Evil: A New Direction (New York: Macmillan, 1970).Google Scholar
Tolstoy, Leo, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilych’ [1886] in The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories, trans. Wilks, Ronald, Briggs, Anthony, and McDuff, David (New York: Penguin, 2008).Google Scholar
Jay Wallace, R., The View from Here: On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wielenberg, Erik J., Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard, ‘Moral Luck’ in Moral Luck (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, Susan, Meaning in Life and Why it Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).Google Scholar