Different Approaches to the Meaning of Life Essay

The indecision what is the meaning of disembodied spirit? is often treated as a paradigmatic head in the clouds sort of philosophical question that more practical people shouldnt lease the time for, merely its actually a question of tremendous practical importance. Further, it is a question to which most people, evening those who claim to have no interest in such questions, do implicitly with the lives they chose to lead. So if you dont want to bother with such questions, and save want to enjoy yourself, you ar effectively saying that enjoyment is the ultimate read of human race life sentence.If you spend your life pursuing single of, say, m aney, power, pleasure, or religious understanding, then you implicitly commit yourself to such organizing beliefs representing what is very important in life. The choices we exploit in our lives ar often governed by such implicit conceptions of what is most important to us, and while it whitethorn be that, say, world happy is th e most important thing, it may take a shit a certain cadence of reflection on these larger questions to be set about unmortgaged about this.Some might think that thought about questions like the meaning of life is itself the most important thing for us to do, but even if we dont, we can still see that it is very important to spend at least about time doing, since such organizing principles are too important for us to accept without reflecting on them at all. Further, if there really is a billet or meaning to our lives, and we live our lives according to a different principle (say if we live for enjoyment when serving God is the real purpose of life, or (conversely) if we spend our lives in petitioner when enjoying life is its real purpose) then we may have literally wasted our lives.Since that is something we shouldnt want to do, it seems that, if life does have a purpose, we would do well to know what it is. On the other hand, if life doesnt have a purpose, it might be good to know that rather than spending it serving some unreal ideal, though this latter point is more controversial. If life did have no meaning, and there was no point to anything we did, then it might seem better not to investigate this topic at all, since looking in to it would only cause us distress.(Though if life really were meaningless, the fact that we were so distressed would not really matter. ) 2. Four Approaches to the question of lifes meaning. While the authors covered in the class give many a(prenominal) varied answers to the question of what the meaning of life is, and some dont give a clear answer to it at all, they all fall into one of four free radicals when it comes to thinking about that kind of answer the questions should have. That is to say, there are four different approaches to the question What is it that determines the meaning of our lives? 1 I. Radical Objectivists.This first group (which includes Plato, Epictetus, Schopenhauer, as well as James and Tolst oy in their post-crisis periods) take what really matters to be determined by factors that are completely independent of us (be it God, Reason, Nature, the Form of the Good or just the way things are). Its our responsibility to live up to these standards, but there is no sense in which these standards come from us. (Schopenhauer, while he denies that God exists, has a touch of this when he insists that a life of intellect just is verifiablely better (and not just happier) than a life of passion and willing).This might, of course, seem to make lifes purpose too remote from our actual lives, which might lead one to reverse one of the II. Theorists of Human Nature In this second group we can include Aristotle, Marx and Epicurus. Like the radical objectivists they take the purpose of life to be something given, that is, its an impersonal fact that we arent at liberty to change, but unlike the radical objectivists, they think that this fact is grounded in objective facts about our o wn natures.Our shared human nature is what determines what is the best life for all of us. Still, it may be hard to defend this sort of have unless one were already a radical objectivist, since without such an overarching framework, its much harder to think of humans as having a such a fixed essence or nature, which might lead one to become one of the III. Constructivists This third group (which includes Nietzsche, Sartre, Hare, and Nagel (from his more subjective perspective)) ground the purpose of our lives in our own drives, desires and wants.However, unlike the theorists of human nature, they dont take such drives to be objective in the sense of being independent of our attitudes towards them. For these philosophers, the drives etc. that ground the purpose of our lives can change, and are (to a certain extent) under our (not continuously conscious) control. Because of this, the meanings of our lives, such as they are, are things that we make.Unfortunately, one might doubt that transient creatures like ourselves are up to the task of making such meanings, in which case one might become one of the IV. Nihilists This become group (which includes Camus, Nagel (from his more objective perspective) and James & Tolstoy (when they were in crisis mode)) agree with the constructivists that there are no objective facts which could determine a purpose to our lives, but also believe that something as ephemeral as our short-lived desires and drives is not enough to make a life really meaningful.Consequently, in the absence of any objective meaning, life must ultimately have no meaning at all, and there is, ultimately, no point in doing anything. This final spot is not a happy one to be in, and its perhaps not surprising that James and Tolstoy both bounce from 4 back to 1 when the prospect of living with 4 becomes too bleak.Still, while it can seem natural to slip from 1 to 2, from 2 to 3 and from 3 to 4, and 4 to despair, lots of people have argued that the slide c an be stopped at motley points along the way. 1 As a result, every point on the spectrum has it supporters, though no go under on it seems completely stable, which is why the question will probably always continue to be debated. 1 H a r e , f o r in s ta n c e , c a n b e u n d e r s to o d a s a r g u in g th a t th e th r o u g h th a t 3 le a d s to 4 c o m e s f r o m a c o n f u s io n a b o u t w h a t it is to m a tte r .