Philo 12 (1):5-23 (2009)
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Abstract |
Even if the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is coherent, the fact remains that it is vague. Its vagueness largely centers on the use of the term “meaning.” The most prevalent strategy for addressing this vagueness is to discard the word “meaning” and reformulate the question entirely into questions such as, “What is the purpose of life?” or “What makes life valuable?” among others. This approach has philosophical merit but does not account for the intuitions and sub-questions driving the original question as plausibly as does an interpretation that I call the narrative interpretation. I will argue that the question, “What is the meaning of life?” should be understood as the request for a narrative that narrates across those elements and accompanying questions of life of greatest existential import to human beings.
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Keywords | Philosophy and Religion |
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ISBN(s) | 1098-3570 |
DOI | philo20091211 |
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Recent Work on the Meaning of Life and Philosophy of Religion.T. J. Mawson - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (12):1138-1146.
Is Life’s Meaning Ultimately Unthinkable?: Guy Bennett-Hunter on the Ineffable.Thaddeus Metz - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (4):1247-1256.
Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life (Repr.).Thaddeus Metz - 2015 - In Masahiro Morioka (ed.), Reconsidering Meaning in Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with Thaddeus Metz. Waseda University. pp. 228-278.
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