Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T05:24:45.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Does anything we do matter forever?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

T. J. MAWSON*
Affiliation:
St Peter's College, Oxford University, Oxford, OX1 2DL, UK

Abstract

In this article, I consider the question of whether or not any action we perform matters forever. I distinguish two senses of mattering, which I call ‘relative’ and ‘non-relative’ mattering; and I argue that the answers one should give to the questions of whether or not anything we do matters forever in these senses depend on one's world-view. I thus consider the questions from an atheistic naturalistic world-view and from two variants of the theistic world-view. Finally, I argue that on any plausible variants of these world-views, we either are already in or will end up in a state where nothing we do matters forever in the non-relative sense. And I consider whether or not it matters now that this is where we are or will end up. I conclude that on atheistic naturalism and on one variant of theism, it doesn't non-relatively matter now and on another variant of theism it does non-relatively matter now. I conclude that, on both variants of theism, it relatively and non-relatively matters at the time it obtains.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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.)

Footnotes

I am grateful for comments on this article made by those meeting under the aegis of the Athenaeum's Natural Theology Group: Claire Carlisle, John Cottingham, Douglas Hedley, Dave Leal, and James Orr. I am also grateful to Wendell O'Brien, Stewart Goetz, Guy Kahane, Klaas Kraay, John Schellenberg, and Nick Waghorn, who were kind enough to offer comments on the article. I am also very grateful for the comments of an anonymous referee for this journal.

References

Davison, Scott (2012) On the Intrinsic Value of Everything (London: Bloomsbury).Google Scholar
Kahane, Guy (2014) ‘Our cosmic insignificance’, Noûs, 48, 745772.10.1111/nous.12030CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kahane, Guy (2017) ‘If nothing matters’, Noûs, 51, 327353.10.1111/nous.12146CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraay, Klaas (ed.) (2018) Does God Matter? (New York: Routledge).Google Scholar
Mawson, T. J. (2016) God and the Meanings of Life (London: Bloomsbury).Google Scholar
Mawson, T. J. (2018) The Divine Attributes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Thomas (1971) ‘The absurd’, The Journal of Philosophy, 68, 716727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Wendell (1996) ‘Meaning and mattering’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 34, 339360.10.1111/j.2041-6962.1996.tb00796.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bernard (1986) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard (2006) ‘The human prejudice’, in Moore, A. W. (ed.) Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 135154.10.1515/9781400827091CrossRefGoogle Scholar