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Understanding “Meaning of life” in Terms of Reasons for Action

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Notes

  1. Thaddeus Metz, "The Meaning of Life", in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013.

  2. Ronald Hepburn fittingly speaks about a “conceptual darkness” surrounding the question about the meaning of life: Ronald Hepburn, “Questions About the Meaning of Life”, 1965, repr. in E. D. Klemke, ed., The Meaning of Life, 2 nd Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 261–276.

  3. See Metz op. cit.

  4. See Metz op. cit.

  5. Stephen Campbell made similar points with regard to the concept of welfare: Stephen Campbell “An Analysis of Prudential Value”, Utilitas Vol. 25, No. 3, 2013, pp. 334–354.

  6. See Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). See also Ben Bramble, “Consequentialism about Meaning in Life”, Utilitas Vol. 27 No. 4, 2015, pp. 445–459.

  7. Mark Rowlands, “The Immortal, the Intrinsic and the Quasi Meaning of Life”, Journal of Ethics Vol. 19, 2015, p. 380.

  8. Ibid., p. 381.

  9. Ibid., p. 382.

  10. See Kai Nielsen, “Linguistic Philosophy and ‘The Meaning of Life’”, 1964. rev. ed. in E. D. Klemke, ed., The Meaning of Life, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 177–204. See also Hepburn op. cit. See also Rudolf Wohlgennant, “Has the Question About the Meaning of Life Any Meaning?”, 1981, repr. in O. Hanfling, ed., Life and Meaning: A Reader (Cambridge: Basic Blackwell Inc., 1987), pp. 34–38.

  11. See Arjan Markus, “Assessing Views of Life, A Subjective Affair?”, Religious Studies, Vol. 39, 2003, pp. 125–143. See also Garrett Thomson, On the Meaning of Life (South Melbourne: Wadsworth, 2003), pp. 8–13. See also Neil Levy, “Downshifting and Meaning in Life”, Ratio, Vol. 18, 2005, pp. 176–189.

  12. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, P. Mairet (tr.), (London: Methuen & Co, 1948). See also Richard Taylor, Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1970), Chap. 18.

  13. Metz op. cit.

  14. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), Chap. 1.

  15. See Metz op. cit.

  16. Cheshire Calhoun, “Geographies of Meaningful Living”, Journal of Applied Philosophy Vol. 32, No. 1, 2015, p. 15.

  17. Ibid., p. 17.

  18. Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (France: Editions Gallimard, 1942).

  19. Sartre op. cit.

  20. Thaddeus Metz, “The Concept of a Meaningful Life”, American Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 38 (2001), p. 138.

  21. Calhoun, op. cit., p. 18.

  22. Ibid., p. 19.

  23. Antti Kauppinen. “Meaningfulness”, in Guy Fletcher (ed.) Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 281–291, p. 283.

  24. See Philip Stratton-Lake and Brad Hooker. “Scanlon versus Moore on Goodness.” In Metaethics after Moore, eds. Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

  25. See Kauppinen op. cit.

  26. Ibid.

  27. This idea is expressed in the following sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y85yfT0Oug.

  28. See Daniel Jacobson, "Fitting Attitude Theories of Value", in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011.

  29. David Ross, Foundations of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), pp. 278–279.

  30. See Wlodek Rabinowicz, “Value: Fitting-Attitude Account of”, in Hugh LaFolette, ed., International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

  31. Some authors take motivating reasons to be a sub-class of explanatory reasons. See Roger Crisp, Reasons and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Others consider motivating and explanatory reasons to be different kinds of reasons. See Maria Alvarez, "Reasons for Action: Justification, Motivation, Explanation", in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016. This difference need not concern us here, since we will not be concerned with any of these reasons, but only with justificatory (i.e. normative) reasons.

  32. See Joseph Raz, Practical Reasoning and Norms (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1975, reprinted, Oxford University Press, 1990 and 1999). Tim Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998). It is disputed what exactly facts are, but this need not concern us here. Furthermore, while this is the most common understanding of reasons for action, there are some different proposals, such as Roger Crisp’s (op. cit.) definition of reasons for action as properties of an action that count, for the agent, in favor of performing the action. My proposal to understand the notion of life’s meaning in terms or reasons for action is meant to be compatible with each of these conceptual proposals about what exactly reasons for action are.

  33. Crisp, op. cit.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Susan Wolf, “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life”, Social Philosophy & Policy Vol. 14 (1997), p. 208.

  36. Brambell, op. cit.

  37. Kauppinen 2016, op. cit., p. 281.

  38. Wolf 2012, op. cit.

  39. Rowlands 2015 op. cit., Note 2

  40. Ibid.

  41. Metz 2013 op. cit. The references are to: Brooke Alan Trisel, “Futility and the Meaning of Life Debate”, Sorites, 2002, pp. 70–84. Brad Hooker, “The Meaning of Life: Subjectivism, Objectivism, and Divine Support”, in N. Athanassoulis and S. Vice, eds., The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 184–200. Alexander Alexis, The Meaning of Life: A Modern Secular Answer to the Age-Old Fundamental Question (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011). Harry Frankfurt, “The Importance of What We Care About”, Synthese, Vol. 53, 1982, pp. 257–272.

    Harry Frankfurt, “Reply to Susan Wolf”, in S. Buss and L. Overton, eds., The Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002), pp. 245–252. Harry Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Guy Fletcher, “A Fresh Start For Objective List Theories”, Utilitas, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2013.

  45. This way of defining subjectivism about reasons for action is inspired by Susanne Mantel, “How to be psychologistic about motivating but not about normative reasons”, Grazer Philosophische Studien Vol. 93, 2016, pp. 80–105. I profited from her and Stephan Padel’s comments on this issue.

  46. For Donald Davidson and Michael Smith, who were (among) the strongest traditional subjectivists, reasons were no facts or propositions but states, and thus an ontologically different entity. See Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 1994). Donald Davidson, “Actions, Reasons and Causes”, Journal of Philosophy Vol. 60, No. 23, 1963, pp. 685–700.

  47. This is intended to capture Marc Schroeder’s version of subjectivism. See Marc Schroeder, Slaves of the Passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  48. Some argue that besides objectivists and subjectivists, there is a third position about what constitutes normative reasons for action, according to which the normativity stems neither from desires, nor from objective goodness, but from the concept of rationality. (See Alvarez, op. cit.) I am inclined to think that this position comes down to one of the others. (See Crisp, op. cit.) Therefore, I am ignoring it here.

  49. Among nihilists, I also count error-theorists about reasons for action/ meaning of life.

  50. Examples of hybrid views are Wolf (1997) op. cit. and Hepburn op. cit.

  51. See Wolf 2012 op. cit.

  52. See Antti Kauppinen, “Meaningfulness and Time”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 84, No. 2, 2012, pp. 345–377.

  53. Metz 2013 op. cit.

  54. Kauppinen 2016, op. cit., p. 288.

  55. Kauppinen 2016, op. cit., p. 281.

  56. Wolf 2012, op. cit., p. 52.

  57. Kauppinen 2016 op. cit. pointed this out as well.

  58. Ibid.

  59. John Cottingham, “Meaningful Life”, in P. K. Moser and M. T. McFall, eds., The Wisdom of the Christian Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 175–196.

  60. Kauppinen 2016 op. cit., p. 282.

  61. Crisp op. cit.

  62. See Stephen Campbell, Sven Nyholm, “Anti-Meaning and Why it Matters”, Journal of the American Philosophical Association Vol. 1, 2015, pp. 694–711.

  63. Depending on one’s account of what grounds normative reasons for action, dogs might not be a good example of individuals that cannot act for such reasons. It seems to me that they can act in order to further their own welfare and if this (partly) grounds normative reasons for action, they can act for such reasons.

  64. See Robert Audi, “Intrinsic Value and Meaningful Life’, Philosophical Papers Vol. 34, 2005, pp. 331–355. See also Thaddeus Metz, Meaning in Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Acknowledgment

I thank Roger Crisp and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Business Ethics, Mannheim University, L9, 5, 68161, Mannheim, Germany

    Tatjana Višak

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Višak, T. Understanding “Meaning of life” in Terms of Reasons for Action. J Value Inquiry 51, 507–530 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-017-9591-z

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