On the search for the meaning of life

The question as to the meaning of life has inspired a plethora of answers. According to estimates, there are billions of posts online about the subject, to cite just one metric...

Monika Betzler: As self-reflective beings, there is no way around the question of the meaning of life – the mere fact that not everything goes well in our lives guarantees it. Particularly in moments of crisis and times of transition, the question arises with immediate force.

In old age or when confronted with serious illness, when death approaches or we lose our job – then we take stock: What have I achieved in my life? What significance does it have? Naturally, we can also ask ourselves: Can I tell a coherent story about my life, and would it have an understandable meaning? But that is not sufficient. I can organize my whole life around counting blades of grass – that would be understandable, but would it be meaningful too?

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What would be meaningful?

Betzler: There are very many different ideas as to what constitutes a meaningful life. What unites them all, I think, is that we’re looking for something greater than ourselves. Something that goes beyond what makes us happy or satisfies our desires. There must be something more than our subjectivist conception of well-being or the good life. It’s no coincidence, certainly, that there are many theologically inspired or religious conceptions of the meaning of life.

I personally think, however, that in the modern world we should have a conception of meaning that does not depend on such strong metaphysical assumptions about a deity. Although I grant that religion gives a particular meaning to the lives of believers.

Rapp: Meaning in life is just one dimension of value that can contribute to a good life. Pleasure, joy, enjoyment, feelings of fulfillment – they form another dimension of value, as it were. A third is morality, ethical action.

You’re talking now about meaning in life …

Rapp: Yes, and deliberately so. The question as to the meaning of life just cannot be answered as such. It throws up a whole pile of other questions and is based, moreover, on false analogies and problematic presuppositions. Just one example: If we think of this meaning as a sort of purpose, then there’s presumably a false analogy at play: We’re speaking of the meaning of life as if we were talking about the meaning of, say, a can opener. The manufacturer gave the can opener a specific purpose. Who gave humans their purpose?

Many would say, religions?

Rapp: It may seem as if all questions can be solved if we just assume the existence of an all-powerful God who determines this purpose for us humans. But then we must also assume that God has an interest in giving such purpose and that we would recognize and accept the purpose. So we would be better off asking what gives our individual life meaning, what gives it value and significance. But to reiterate: Meaning is just one of the dimensions of value of a good life.

Betzler: In this respect, the concept of a good life is broader than that of a meaningful one.

Rapp: Precisely. But honestly: When I get up in the morning, my first thought is not what I can do now to fulfill a moral imperative or optimize some enjoyment/cost ratio. What I actually do is determined ideally by the pursuit of greater tasks, projects which I think make my life more meaningful.

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Autonomy as a condition of meaning

A meaningful life, a good life – what conditions are needed to achieve these things?

Betzler: Naturally, our search for meaning does not take place in a vacuum. There are a whole lot of external factors that affect the process – help, hinder, or even prevent it. Health would be one of these conditions, plain luck another. Social conditions can also help significantly when it comes to leading a meaningful life. If we belong to a marginalized group, for example, and do not receive the respect and the recognition that we need to ascribe value to ourselves, we’re lacking an important precondition for ascribing value to our actions and the goals we pursue.

Rapp: Certainly, social conditions play a crucial role. To give just one example: the classic scenario of choosing a career. Among graduates of academic high schools, the conversation can run along the following lines: I’d kind of like to earn a lot of money, but also do something socially useful that helps give meaning to my life, and so on. Yet of course just being in a position to think like this involves a certain amount of privilege. How many people do not have the chance at all to say what career they would like to pursue? Or if we look back one or two generations, many people did not have the opportunity – and certainly not women – to determine for themselves what life they want to lead to make it meaningful.

Betzler: Autonomy is thus an important enabling condition of meaning: that we’re in a position to choose for ourselves which values we embrace. If my father tells me I have to become a baker and take over the bakery one day, this on its own may be enough not to allow me to see the career as meaningful.

You’re saying effectively that meaning in life arises when we’re capable of subjectively valuing objectively valuable things. What is objectively valuable in your view?

Betzler: Certainly, one can argue whether objective values exist. But there are undoubtedly many things on the value of which people can thoroughly agree. And that counting blades of grass, say, is not one of them. This allows for a large plurality of values. But it’s important that the thing is valuable to us, that we can appreciate it. Personal projects and close relationships are particularly helpful here. These are ‘diachronic commitments,’ which help us appreciate something valuable in a stable manner over time. For instance, I can volunteer to help save the rainforest – a personal project – or engage fully in parenthood – a close relationship – and appreciate the valuable dimensions associated with this.

Rapp: Exactly, there is a subjective and an objective component. Even if everybody else values something – if I myself do not find it valuable, it doesn’t contribute to my own sense of meaning in my life.

Responses to Schopenhauer

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What is a good life and how do we live well? These are the fundamental questions of ancient Greek ethics and moral philosophy. The question as to the meaning of life is comparatively recent. Where does it come from?

Rapp: In German, this curious turn of phrase emerges in the late 18th century in the likes of Kant and Fichte as the value of being, value of life, meaning of life. In English, one of the earliest documented usages comes in a novel from 1834 by Scottish author Thomas Carlyle. It’s a peculiar story featuring a caricature of a German scholar called Herr Teufelsdröckh. This eccentric character poses rather odd questions – including about “the meaning of life.”

In this respect, it’s a kind of precursor of the offbeat science fiction classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which a supercomputer tasked with determining the meaning of life comes back with the answer 42 after millions of years of calculations?

Rapp: Yes, you could say that. The actual boom for the concept begins with the ‘pessimistic’ philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. His philosophy is pessimistic in the sense that the will drives us to striving that cannot ever be satisfied. Whenever we reach the supposed goal, we notice that we are left feeling frustrated. That’s why people have the idea that Schopenhauer is proposing that life is not worth living. From the middle of the 19th century, by contrast, we see an explosion of literary productions arguing, pace Schopenhauer, that life is worth affirming. This definitively establishes the concept of the meaning of life.

Betzler: And 100 years later, Schopenhauer’s ideas experience a revival with the existentialists, who argue that life is absurd.

Rapp: Precisely, they’re primarily opposing the idea of a given meaning, as they maintain that everything depends on us defining meaning for ourselves. It’s about autonomy and self-definition. And thus the existentialists can be reintegrated, as it were, into the discourse about what makes life meaningful. After all, people today also assume that a certain amount of autonomy and authenticity is required for meaning.

That’s why I recommend the movie The Truman Show to my students. It tells the story of a young man who grows up in a 24-hour TV show. At some point, he discovers that everything in his life has been staged. There’s a director sitting up there who controls and manipulates it all. He comes to realize that nothing in his life was ever autonomous or authentic. But eventually he manages to break out of the staged world into a real world, which is the condition for a meaningful life.

Finding meaning in crises

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Gaining authenticity, learning to value something – these are the sort of acts by which young people forge their future. Recent studies warn, however, that youngsters are increasingly suffering from anxieties. Is this causing them to miss out on the meaningful?

Betzler: Perhaps we sometimes create poor conditions for young people to find meaning in their lives. What they need is to be given options to pursue valuable goals. And to find out whether they themselves can value these goals. But for this, they need patience, perseverance, and the space to think and reflect.

And last but not least, social media encourages young people today to permanently compare themselves socially with others: not to pursue something for its intrinsic value but to constantly evaluate and present themselves. This is not helpful as regards learning to appreciate the intrinsic value of things. After all, this does not happen overnight, but requires trial and error and the opportunity to try things out.

I’m getting at the crises of our times, at a prevailing mood that might go: You old people have made a royal mess of things. What even makes sense anymore?

Betzler: Naturally, there are reproaches that we humans are in the process of destroying this world; and indeed things are going badly with the climate and the rules-based world order. Of course, this can make young people anxious and prompt them to ask whether the future still offers them the scope to pose questions about the meaning of life.

That can be no small cross to bear under certain circumstances. But more fundamentally: Can’t the search for meaning also unduly burden life?

Betzler: We can certainly view this talk of the meaning of life as insanely perfectionist and overtaxing. On top of everything else, now we’ve got to find meaning in life! Perhaps when faced with strong existential doubts, we’ve got to get a grip on ourselves sometimes and tell ourselves that maybe meaning is not everything. Above all, the constant question as to whether this or that gives my life meaning is often a case of overthinking. It’s better to “just do” – that is, to engage with tasks in a spirit of appreciation. When you do that, the feeling of fulfilled meaning often comes by itself.

Prof. Dr. Monika Betzler is Chair of Practical Philosophy and Ethics at LMU.

Prof. Dr. Christof Rapp is Chair of Ancient Philosophy at LMU and Director of LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies

Research on the meaning of life at CAS:

At the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), a new ‘Research Focus’ program is devoted to the question of the „Meaning of Life“. Christof Rapp and Monika Betzler are two of the principal researchers involved.