Philosophical views on the meaning of life

Value as meaning
In that they attempt to answer the question "What is valuable in life?", theories of value are theories of the meaning of life. Famous philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and many others had clear views about what sort of life was best (and hence most meaningful). Aristotle, for example, believed that the pursuit of happiness was the Highest Good and that such is achievable through our uniquely human capacity to reason.


Atheistic views
Main article: Atheism
Atheism's strictest sense means the lack of belief that a god or supernatural over being (of any type or number) exists, and by extension that neither the universe nor we were created by such beings. Atheism pertains to three of the five interpretations of the meaning of life question: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?" Because most atheists reject supernatural explanations for the existence of life, lacking a deistic source, they commonly point to abiogenesis as the likely source for the origin of life. As for the purpose of life, some atheists argue that since there are no gods to tell us what to do, we are left to decide that for ourselves. Other atheists argue that some sort of meaning can be intrinsic to life itself, so there is no need for any god to instill meaning into it. Some believe that life is nothing more than a byproduct of insensate natural forces and has no underlying meaning or grand purpose.


 Existentialist views
Main article: Existentialism
The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer offered a bleak answer by determining one's life as a reflection of one's will and the will (and thus life) as being an aimless, irrational, and painful drive. However, he saw salvation, deliverance, or escape from suffering in aesthetic contemplation, sympathy for others, and asceticism. Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher of the 19th century, invented the term "leap of faith" and argued that life is full of absurdity and the individual must make his or her own values in an indifferent world. For Kierkegaard, an individual can have a meaningful life (at least one free of despair) if the individual relates the self in an unconditional commitment to something finite, and devotes his or her life to the commitment despite the inherent vulnerability of doing so.


Humanist views
Main article: Humanism
To the humanist, life's biological purpose is built-in: it is to reproduce. That is how the human race came to be: creatures reproducing in a progression of unguided evolution as an integral part of nature, which is self-existing. But biological purpose isn't the same thing as human purpose, though it may be a factor thereof. Human purpose is determined by humans, completely without supernatural influence. Nor does knowledge come from supernatural sources, it flows from human observation, experimentation, and rational analysis preferably utilizing the scientific method: the nature of the universe is what we discern it to be. As are ethical values, which are derived from human needs and interests as tested by experience.

Enlightened self-interest is at the core of humanism. The most significant thing in life is the human being, and by extension, the human race and the environment in which we live. The happiness of the individual is inextricably linked to the well-being of humanity as a whole, in part because we are social animals which find meaning in relationships, and because cultural progress benefits everybody who lives in that culture.

When the world improves, life in general improves, so, while the individual desires to live well and fully, humanists feel it is important to do so in a way that will enhance the well being of all. While the evolution of the human species is still (for the most part) a function of nature, the evolution of humanity is in our hands and it is our responsibility to progress it toward its highest ideals. In the same way, humanism itself is evolving, because humanists recognize that values and ideals, and therefore the meaning of life, are subject to change as our understanding improves.

The doctrine of humanism is set forth in the Humanist Manifesto  and A Secular Humanist Declaration .


Nihilist views
Main article: Nihilism
Friedrich Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. The term nihilism itself comes from the Latin nihil, which means "nothing". Nietzsche described Christianity as a nihilistic religion, because it removes meaning from this earthly life, to instead focus on a supposed afterlife. He also saw nihilism as a natural result of the idea that God is dead, and insisted that it was something to be overcome, by returning meaning to the Earth.

Martin Heidegger described nihilism as the state in which "there is nothing of Being as such", and argued that nihilism rested on the reduction of being to mere value.

Nihilism rejects claims to knowledge and truth, and explores the meaning of an existence without knowable truth. Though nihilism tends toward defeatism, one can find strength and reason for celebration in the varied and unique human relationships it explores. From a nihilist point of view, the ultimate source of moral values is the individual rather than culture or another rational (or objective) foundation. The characteristic that distinguishes nihilism from other skeptical or relativist philosophies is that, rather than merely insisting that values are subjective or even warrant less, nihilism declares that nothing is of value, as the name implies.


 Positivist views
Main article: Logical positivism
Of the meaning of life, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the logical positivists said: expressed in language, the question is meaningless. This is because "meaning of x" is a term in life usually conveying something regarding the consequences of x, or the significance of x, or that which should be noted regarding x, etc. So when "life" is used as "x" in the term "meaning of x", the statement becomes recursive and therefore nonsensical.

In other words, things in a person's life can have meaning (importance), but a meaning of life itself, i.e., apart from those things, can't be discerned. In this context, a person's life is said to have meaning (significance to himself and others) in the form of the events throughout his life and the results of his life in terms of achievements, a legacy, family, etc. But to say that life itself has meaning is a misuse of language, since any note of significance or consequence is relevant only in life (to those living it), rendering the statement erroneous. Language can provide a meaningful answer only when it refers to a realm within the realm of life. But this is not possible when the question reaches beyond the realm in which language exists, violating the contextual limitations of language. Such a question is broken. And the answer to a broken question is an erroneous or irrelevant answer.

Other philosophers besides Wittgenstein have sought to discover what is meaningful within life by studying the consciousness within it. But when these philosophers looked for a holistic definition of the “Meaning of Life” for humanity, they were stone-walled by the Wittgenstein linguistic model.

Logical positivism asserts that statements are meaningful only insofar as they are verifiable, and that statements can be verified only in two (exclusive) ways: empirical statements, including scientific theories, which are verified by experiment and evidence; and analytic truth, statements which are true or false by definition, and so are also meaningful. Everything else, including ethics and aesthetics, is not literally meaningful, and so belongs to "metaphysics". One conclusion is that serious philosophy should no longer concern itself with metaphysics.


 Pragmatist views
Main article: Pragmatism
Pragmatic philosophers suggest that rather than a truth about life, we should seek a useful understanding of life. William James argued that truth could be made but not sought. Thus, the meaning of life is a belief about the purpose of life that does not contradict one's experience of a purposeful life. Roughly, this could be applied as: "The meaning of life is those purposes which cause you to value it." To a pragmatist, the meaning of life, your life, can be discovered only through experience.

Pragmatism is a school of philosophy which originated in the United States in the late 1800s. Pragmatism is characterized by the insistence on consequences, utility and practicality as vital components of truth. Pragmatism objects to the view that human concepts and intellect represent reality, and therefore stands in opposition to both formalist and rationalist schools of philosophy. Rather, pragmatism holds that it is only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that theories and data acquire significance. Pragmatism does not hold, however, that just anything that is useful or practical should be regarded as true, or anything that helps us to survive merely in the short-term; pragmatists argue that what should be taken as true is that which most contributes to the most human good over the longest course. In practice, this means that for pragmatists, theoretical claims should be tied to verification practices--i.e., that one should be able to make predictions and test them--and that ultimately the needs of humankind should guide the path of human inquiry.


 Transhumanist views
Main article: Transhumanism
Transhumanism is an outgrowth of Posthumanism, which is an extension of Humanism. Like its ideological ancestors, it proposes that we should seek the advancement of humanity and of all life to the greatest degree of differed feasible equation. Although transhumanism makes no distinctions regarding anything as grandiose as "the meaning of life", it is different from humanism and posthumanism in its emphasis on the proposition that science should take the foremost role in the improvement of life. To the transhumanist, the meaning of life is necessarily indefinite and ambiguous, and should be left to the philosophical inclinations of the individual. Nevertheless, whatsoever an individual chooses to believe, transhumanism insists that there does exist a moral imperative common to all intelligent agents to improve their lives and, moreover, to advocate for the universal recognition of freedoms regarding an individual's choice of life enhancement. All living things should be free to choose, to the extent of their capacities, to improve themselves or not in any way they so desire, and no living thing should ever be given the opportunity to interfere in the personal development of any other living being unless for that being's own good (such as if the being's ignorance of some otherwise well understood principle or fact were driving it to unwitting self-injury).

To transhumanists, these principles extend greatly beyond more conventional lifestyle choices and freedoms of thought, and encompass such experimental and highly controversial subjects as morphological freedom and procreative beneficence. These are, respectively, the freedom to choose the shape and function of one's body and mind, and the freedom to do the same for one's descendants, excepting when to do so would in some way injure the descendants or the descendants' freedom to make the same choices (which are considered to be the same thing in certain senses). Transhumanists therefore advocate that all life forms have the freedom to access the tools and knowledge necessary to improve their lives however they see fit (and that these things must be made universally available), whether this be in simple manifestations such as the options of meeting basic medical and dietetic requirements, or more complex examples such as the options of genetic engineering or cybernetic augmentation. Transhumanists argue that improved people will necessarily have improved capabilities to seek out and answer questions regarding "the meaning of life" as they see it, more so than even humans do currently. The transhumanist programme, then, is essentially the programme that insists that all living things be granted the basic option to inquire after their own personal or social "meanings of life" (including meanings that human beings are currently incompetent to comprehend) as much as it is physically possible to do so, and no less.

 

Scientific Approaches To The Meaning of Life  Entropy and Life  What is Life?   Philosophical views on the meaning of life 

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