4 Contemporary Views Concerning
Life's Ultimate Meaning

Albert Camus' Nihilism

Albert Camus is a nihilist. He believes life is ultimately without meaning. Camus thinks life doesn’t need to have an overarching meaning for it to be worth living. The absurdity of life is to be embraced. We must honestly and bravely face our fate. In doing so, we can find contentment and happiness.

He takes Sisyphus to represent the absurd hero, one who’s conscious of his suffering but chooses to keep rolling his stone up the hill only to have it roll to the bottom and start again. As he famously says, "we must imagine Sisyphus happy."

For a more in-depth look at Camus' take on life's meaning check out the new video at The Philosophical Life on YouTube (below).

Richard Taylor's Subjectivism

The second view is by philosophy and internationally renowned beekeeper Richard Taylor. (Yes, some philosophers moonlight in interesting ways).

Taylor avoids reading into the myth of Sisyphus an absurd hero. Instead, he thinks the main point of the myth is that meaninglessness is tied to pointless activity.

Taylor thinks if you tweak the case and Sisyphus is given a substance in his veins that makes him most want to roll stones that meaning arrives on the scene. The meaning of life is from within us. It’s a matter of having rightly-oriented desires.

Such desires focus on the process. They don’t focus on the product, goal, or achievements that come out of such activity. To illustrate this, he tweaks the case again. Sisyphus most desires to create a beautiful and lasting temple. He does it.

Now he’s condemned to eternal boredom. This is a form of torture or hell. It’s "the bad place" to refer to the TV show. The good place is the place full of activity that one takes a deep interest in. Thus, Taylor’s view is purely subjective. It’s only a matter of how things appear from inside the subject.

Camus couldn’t consistently take this step, as what makes Sisyphus happy requires an embrace of the absurdity of life and its meaninglessness. Having that happiness become the meaning of life would be self-defeating.

Susan Wolf's Hybridism

Susan Wolf embraces a hybrid view. She thinks Taylor’s view is missing the importance of an objective standard. You need to care deeply about the activities that you do, but those activities themselves must be objectively meaningful.

For instance, if you care deeply about getting high on pot, and smoking pot all day, every day doesn’t objectively make a life meaningful, then, for Wolf, your life isn’t meaningful, even though it’s full of subjective meaning.

Your passion must align with a purpose greater than yourself. Think about the life of Gandhi, MLK, or Mother Thresa. Pursuit of justice, resistance of oppression, and care for the most vulnerable people in society is to embrace pursuits that have independent value. The value of justice isn’t determined solely by the self-interests of the individuals pursuing justice.

Yet, the meaning of life also needs the subjective part. If your pot smoking has objective meaning because, unknown to you, the second-hand smoke is wafting into a neighbor’s window and alleviating the pain caused by their cancer, then the objective value of reducing suffering doesn’t thereby make your life meaningful. Why? You don’t know about or care about what’s objectively going on in your activity. You just care about getting high. So, you need a subjective part that correctly aligns with the objective part. This is what makes life meaningful.

Christine Vitrano's Taylor + Wolf View

Lastly, Christine Vitrano argues that the view of Taylor and Wolf have something right, but the views are incomplete. What are they lacking?

Vitrano thinks Wolf’s view lacks a coherent account of objective meaning. Some might find playing chess objectively meaningful. Others might find spending time with family objectively meaningful. What’s objectively meaningful Wolf leaves open to it being relative to the individual. As such, Wolf’s conception of meaning is not a good guide to what’s objectively meaningful.

Taylor’s view of life’s meaning is problematic because it lacks an appropriate moral dimension. As long as you take deep interest in what activity you find yourself doing, your life can be meaningful for Taylor.

As any intro ethics course will likely teach, the pursuit of self-interest alone fails to capture what morality demands in important cases. Vitrano ties meaning to morality and thinks showing due regard to others in central to pursuing things that are meaningful. It’s isn’t enough that you care deeply about the pursuits.

So, Vitrano marries the best insights from Wolf and Taylor into her own view. She argues that the meaning of life requires satisfaction and happiness with one’s life. But, as you pursue activities that bring you satisfaction you must act morally. You cannot pursue such things in a way that’s only about promoting your self-interest.  You must also meet your moral obligations to others as you do so.

I hope you’ve found this sketch of 4 views helpful.

~Christopher "Got Meaning on My Mind" Cloos