Master 208: Nagel on the Meaning of Life
Introduction
This summer I TA'd for an introductory-level philosophy course titled "Ethics and the Meaning of Life." As part of that course, the students were assigned to read a chapter from Thomas Nagel's book, What Does It All Mean? (Oxford University Press, 1987). The chapter was on the meaning of life. Both the instructor and I agreed that the chapter (only seven pages long) represents a very poor treatment of this important topic. I have not read the other articles that Nagel has published on the meaning of life, so I can't evaluate his complete and considered view. But I thought that a brief write-up on this chapter might allow me to say some (hopefully) helpful things about this important topic.
It's not too unusual for people to ask me, when they find out that I study philosophy, about the meaning of life. Meditation on this theme seems to be one of the things that people associate with philosophy. For the most part, I find that when people ask that question in a casual context, they are not actually interested in pursuing the point in any substantial way. I'm not sure whether I should be worried about that. People seem to have some sense that to understand the meaning of life could or should be important and yet the issue is one that's very far removed from their daily lives and one that doesn't come up on a regular basis. Like so many philosophical topics, I expect, people have a hard time seeing its relevance. In addition, I think that for most people, it is not entirely clear what is meant when we make reference to the "meaning" of life. Certainly we're not talking about anything that one might find in an English dictionary--the meaning of "life." Are we talking about the 'purpose' of life? The 'significance' of life?
In what follows, I'll offer some thoughts about what we are looking for when we look for "meaning" and how we should approach inquiring into and discussing it.
Part I
Nagel opens his short chapter on the meaning of life with the following remark:
"Perhaps you have had the thought that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead." (95)
Basically his chapter is an extended attempt to motivate and evaluate this particular thought or claim. This is a not-uncommon starting point for thinking about the meaning of life, but it now strikes me as problematic for two reasons. The first reason may be introduced by considering the following question: Have you ever had that thought? Have you ever had the thought the nothing really matters because in two hundred years (or some such indefinitely long period of time) we'll all be dead? I have. And I actually find the thought quite compelling (though it does not follow that I have always understood or even now understand fully why it is compelling). However, I think that there are also people who have never had this thought and who, when introduced to it by philosophers, do not find it compelling at all.
Now one of the main challenges in philosophical discourse (and in all types of discourse, actually) is to find common ground. Often we find that ground in common intuitions. For instance, most (hopefully all) people agree that it is morally wrong to torture babies just for fun. Most people have experienced events in a dream that seemed to be real. Most people are certain that they, themselves, exist. These are important starting points for developing philosophical theories and arguments. If we could never find common ground, then we could never reason or communicate meaningfully with one another.
Now some people may become worried at this point because they will suspect that for any proposition, even one that is wildly outlandish, it will always be possible to find someone (to whom we might refer with the term, "crackpot") who believes it. Does that mean the possibility of discourse is ruled out altogether? I do not think so. First, we should understand that the fact that we cannot reach a consensus on certain issues does not mean that there is no fact of the matter about that issue. But, second, it does make discussing that issue much more difficult. Now when it comes to the above claim about things mattering and being dead in two hundred years, the fact that some people are unmoved by that thought does not necessarily show that the suggested entailment is spurious or that it is an intrinsically bad starting point for thinking about the meaning of life. But it can make motivating the discussion more difficult and can lead to other problems as well.
When someone presents this thought--that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead--one is usually expected to react negatively. One is supposed to be repulsed by the thought of meaninglessness. But what is required for a meaningful life? Usually the suggestion is that meaning can only be found in something transcendent. Meaninglessness in life is supposed to be entailed by something like naturalism or physicalism, and so one's negative reaction to the meaninglessness of life is supposed to lead to a rejection of such worldviews and the exploration of some alternative that takes the transcendent seriously. (Note that Nagel casts the issue in different terms, as we'll see below, but I think the core is the same.)
Now there is a segment of the population that is not moved by this thought. By that I mean that the thought that we will be dead in two hundred years does not move them to think that life is meaningless. Those who are moved by this claim tend to think that those who are not so moved have somehow missed the point. But they often have a hard time convincing the unmoved that they should be moved by this point. (As I said, it is not necessarily fully transparent to me just why this thought is supposed to be moving.) In the next section, we'll look at how Nagel tries to motivate serious consideration of this thought. He'll explain why this thought is supposed to be compelling and what it is supposed to entail. After looking at his presentation, we'll consider and evaluate both his conclusions and his starting point.
Part II
"Perhaps you have had the thought that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead. This is a peculiar thought, because it's not clear why the fact that we'll be dead in two hundred years should imply that nothing we do now really matters." (95)
What is going on in people's heads that makes some of them think this "peculiar thought"? Nagel suggests that, for these people, the pursuit of goals and ends only seems to make sense or be worthwhile if those ends are permanent. Significance or mattering are tied to permanence. In more romantical language, we might say they are tied to the notion of immortality. If that kind of permanence is not achievable, either through one's own persistence or through being related to some external permanent context, then everything that one accomplishes is worth nought.
Operating behind (or alongside) this desire for permanence, according to Nagel, is the desire for there to be some point to what we are doing. Certainly this can be achieved in the immediate, local context. You eat because you're hungry and sleep because you're tired. We understand the point of those activities. But what is the point of life as a whole? Day in and day out you eat one meal after another--each one as a way of satisfying your hunger on that particular occasion. But is there a point to satisfying your hunger on all those occasions taken as a whole? Is there a point to that sum of activities that makes up your life? If there is no point to that, then there seems to be no important difference between existence and non-existence--living and not living. Of course there is a qualitative difference between existence and non-existence. A person who has existed experiences both more joy and more sorrow than a person who has never existed. But as far as significance or mattering are concerned, the two seem to amount to the same thing. They both have no point or significance.
If one's (finite) life is to have some meaning, significance, or point, it seems, it must be related to some larger context. My life is very short, but if my life contributes to some goal or end that endures, then even after I die, the significance of what I did will persist in that end or goal that outlives me. Now one might spend one's life advocating for some political or social movement that will benefit humankind for many generations to come. But in that case--and in all cases where the larger context is limited to the temporal sphere--we run into the same problem. All human societies and communities will come to an end; and the universe will eventually reach a state where it would be impossible for anyone to recognize that human beings ever did exist at all. My eating because of hunger may derive some local significance from being embedded in the larger context of my life. My life may derive some local significance from being embedded in the larger context of a political movement or the history of the human race. But if that larger context, ultimately, does not have some enduring point, then all the parts that derive their significance from being embedded in it will also have no enduring point.
This, then, is the challenge confronting those who wish for life to meaningful: one needs to find some thing that is inherently meaningful. If one's own life is not inherently meaningful, then the only way for it to have meaning is by being related (either directly or indirectly) to something that is inherently meaningful. To say that something is inherently meaningful is to say that it has some point independently of its relationship to anything else. If it turns out that there is no such larger inherently meaningful context to which one can relate one's life then either (1) life is meaningless or (2) meaningfulness must depend on meeting some other criteria.
Part III
Nagel does consider the possibility that meaningfulness in human life is derived from one's relationship with God. But he thinks this way of finding meaning runs into the same problem as all the others. This is what he says:
'The idea of God seems to be the idea of something that can explain everything else, without having to be explained itself. But it's very hard to understand how there could be such a thing. If we ask the question, "Why is the world like this?" and are offered a religious answer, how can we be prevented from asking again, "And why is that true?" What kind of answer would bring all of our "Why?" questions to a stop, once and for all? And if they can stop there, why couldn't they have stopped earlier?"
'The same problem seems to arise if God and His purposes are offered as the ultimate explanation of the value and meaning of our lives The idea that our lives fulfil God's purpose is supposed to give them their point, in a way that doesn't require or admit of any further point. One isn't supposed to ask "What is the point of God?" any more than one is supposed to ask, "What is the explanation of God?"
'But my problem here, as with the role of God as ultimate explanation, is that I'm not sure I understand the idea. Can there really be something which gives point to everything else by encompassing it, but which couldn't have, or need, any point itself? Something whose point can't be questioned from outside because there is no outside?' (99-100)
The question we have to address is this: Is the notion of something explaining but not itself being explainable really as mysterious as Nagel suggests? In fact, there are reasons to think not. The instructor in my "Ethics" course pointed out that the distinction between necessary and contingent truths may offer helpful insight on this point. My comments, here, are a bit tentative because there is plenty of controversy surrounding these notions, but they should be helpful nonetheless. Many philosophers throughout history have found plausible the idea that some truths are contingent while others are necessary. Some propositions are true or false contingently--that is, by virtue of the way the world happens to be--in a way that leaves open the possibility that things could have been otherwise. "The sky is blue." "There are fifty states in the U.S." "The earth is round." All of these statements are true, but their truth depends upon the world being a certain way. Other propositions, many philosophers have thought, are true or false necessarily; that is, their being true does not depend upon the way the world is in such a way that they could have been otherwise. "1+1=2." "A and not-A cannot both be true at the same time in the same way." These are examples of necessary truths.
Now when we ask for an explanation--when we ask why something is the case--it is possible for us to appeal to both necessary and contingent truths to answer. When we appeal to contingent truths, it is possible to re-pose the question and ask why that truth is true. But when one appeals to necessary truths, this re-posing of the question does not seem to be an open possibility. So consider the proposition, (A) "I have 18 dollars in my pocket." One might ask, "Why do you have 18 dollars in your pocket?" I could respond in a number of ways. "Because I put it there (instead of putting it in my wallet)." "Because that is the amount of change I got after buying a coffee from Starbucks." "Because I chose not to make any additional purchases with it." "Because, fortunately, it did not fall out of my pocket." Now let's consider the proposition: (B) "That is the amount of change I got after buying a coffee from Starbucks." Both propositions (A) and (B) express contingent truths. They happen to be true but could have been otherwise. Moreover, (A) is explained by appealing to (B). Now suppose we ask for an explanation of (B): "Why is 18 dollars the amount of change you got after buying a coffee from Starbucks." Several explanatory claims are open to us: (C) "Because I used a twenty-dollar bill to pay for my coffee." (D) "Because the coffee cost two dollars." (E) "Because 20-2=18." Any one of these propositions could be used as part of an explanation of (B), but notice this important difference: (C) and (D) both express contingent truths. I could have paid with a five dollar bill, or the price of the coffee could have been different, in which cases the amount of money in my pocket would have been different. But (E) is not like (C) and (D). (E) could not have been different, and if one were to ask, "Well, why does 20-2=18?" that question would strike us as very odd. The truths of mathematics do not seem to be the sort of thing that admit of further explanation, even though they can be used to explain other things.
Mathematical truths, then, offer an example of things that can explain but are not explainable. This is exactly the notion that Nagel claimed to find mysterious. But most people don't find the notion of mathematical truths being unexplainable to be particularly mysterious. At least they don't find that fact to be problematic.
Now this does not show, by itself, that God (or the idea of God) can or does ground the meaningfulness of life. But it does help to show that the ideas that Nagel claims to be mysterious are not necessarily or obviously incoherent or objectionable. The idea of there being something that can explain without itself being explainable is not so outlandish. So, perhaps, the idea of there being something that gives everything else their point but does not, itself, have or need any point outside of itself is not so outlandish either. This leaves open the possibility that God could provide the inherently meaningful context in terms of which human life is meaningful. Nagel has not succeeded in ruling it out.
But in order to understand the rest of what Nagel says, in his chapter, we need to keep in mind that he takes himself to have demonstrated adequately that the idea of something being inherently meaningful--of some whole having a point that is not derived from its relationship to anything else--is basically mysterious.
Part IV
At this point, given what he's said and claimed, there are two possibilities open to Nagel: either (1) to accept that life is meaningless or (2) to reevaluate the criteria for meaningfulness. He accepts the former course. This is what he says.
'Even if life as a whole is meaningless, perhaps that's nothing to worry about. Perhaps we can recognize it and just go on as before. The trick is to keep your eyes on what's in front of you, and allow justifications to come to an end inside your life, and inside the lives of others to whom you are connected. If you ever ask yourself the question, "But what's the point of being alive at all?"--leading the particular life of a student or bartender or whatever you happen to be--you'll answer "There's no point. It wouldn't matter if I didn't exist at all, or if I didn't care about anything. But I do. That's all there is to it." ' (100-101)
Now he acknowledges that some find this thought objectionable or depressing. Nagel diagnoses that reaction in the following way: 'Part of the problem is that some of us have an incurable tendency to take ourselves seriously. We want to matter to ourselves "from the outside." If our lives as a whole seem pointless, then a part of us is dissatisfied--the part that is always looking over our shoulders at what we are doing. Many human efforts, particularly those in the service of serious ambitions rather than just comfort and survival, get some of their energy from a sense of importance--a sense that what you are doing is not just important to you, but important in some larger sense: important, period. If we have to give this up, it may threaten to take the wind out of our sails. If life is not real, life is not earnest, and the grave is its goal, perhaps it's ridiculous to take ourselves so seriously. On the other hand, if we can't help taking ourselves so seriously, perhaps we just have to put up with being ridiculous. Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.' (101)
This last paragraph is the one that really reveals the source of Nagel's error and why he is led to such a problematic conclusion. I do think that he is mistaken in thinking that meaningfulness in life is or ought to be so easily discardable. The key to Nagel's error is this. He thinks that the search for a meaningful life is the search for an important life. Now it is true that some people count their lives as meaningful only if it is important, but, in fact, being important is not essential for being meaningful. In fact, a person's life may be very meaningful while being quite unimportant. So the search for meaning and the search for importance are not the same thing. So, also, the search for meaning does not necessarily arise from taking one's self too seriously.
I think that once we understand what meaningfulness in human life really amounts to, we will see that it cannot be discarded as easily as Nagel supposes.
Part V
What are we asking about when we ask about the "meaning" of life. In his article, Nagel talks about the "point" of life. Others might talk about the "purpose" of life or what makes life "valuable," "significant," or "worth living." The problem is that, while these notions may overlap in some respects, they are not identical. Each lends itself to different interpretations of what the "meaning" of life amounts to.
So the instructor in this "Ethics" course suggested that what actually makes life meaningful is being related to certain intrinsic values and intrinsically valuable things. So, on that kind of account, a life that is appropriately connected to love, truth, and beauty would be a meaningful life because it would be "valuable" or "worth having," owing to those connections. It would be a meaningful life even if it lacked the kind of importance that Nagel considered to be essential to a meaningful life. Now I do think that being connected to these sorts of intrinsic values is important, but I want to suggest that even they do not get at what is the central concern of questions about the "meaning of life."
In the next part, I'll start to develop an alternative account of what meaningfulness in life amounts to, and I shall begin by reconsidering Nagel's starting point.
Part VI
"Perhaps you have had the thought that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead." (95)
As I said before, I have had this thought and actually find it to be quite compelling. But I do not think that it is a good place to start thinking about the meaning of life. I think this starting point lends itself to the kind of confusion that leads Nagel to the conclusion that meaningfulness in life is easily discardable.
So think with me, what are the circumstances and situations in which people do seriously think about the meaning of life. Many people, unfortunately, probably associate musing about this topic with the ivory tower and the sheltered, cushioned, comfortable armchair of the academic philosopher. This is a mistake. I suspect that most people who are arrested by this topic are the one's in the middle of severe tragedies. When the company--into which a man has poured his heart and soul for the last forty years and for which he has sacrificed both family and friends--suddenly collapses, he will probably think about the meaning of life. When a woman prepares to bury her third and last remaining child--each one was torn slowly and painfully from her by wasting disease--she will probably wonder about the meaning of life. When a car accident leaves a man paralyzed in all four limbs, he may think about the meaning of life. When a woman is abandoned after twenty years of marriage, she may wonder about the meaning of life. These are people for whom the force of the question about the meaning of life is keenly felt. Indeed, an adequate answer to it may mark the difference between life and death. Since they are inclined to take the question more seriously, they're reflections seem to be a better starting point for pinning down just what we are looking for when we look for the 'meaning' of life.
These individuals will probably not think, explicitly, about the "meaning of life," but they will explore a set of questions, the answers to which form the core of their view about the meaning of life. They will probably be engaged in a process of reevaluating their views about the meaning of life. What, then, is it that they are looking for as they seek to recover from such incredible tragedies? I think, they are trying to make sense of their lives. They may be trying to rationalize what has happened to them. And they may also be trying to justify continuing on. "Meaning" is what makes life intelligible and coherent. When someone is seriously thinking about the meaning of life, he or she is thinking about how to make sense of life.
This is the basic idea. I'll go on to clarify this basic idea and also use it to show why Nagel's approach and conclusion don't really work.
Part VII
When we take seriously that meaningfulness is about making sense of our lives, it becomes clear why it is hard to make comfortable and happy people grapple seriously with the question. Usually, when people are comfortable and happy, they are not in the best position to critically evaluate what is the source of their comfort and happiness. They are just content with the fact that they are comfortable and happy. So it makes sense that, when a philosopher comes along and says to them, "You know, nothing you do really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead," it's hard for the comfortable and happy person to be moved by that. That's why most people who casually ask me about the meaning of life don't really engage seriously with the question. They are comfortable and happy and so, in a sense, are not really concerned with whether life is meaningful or not.
On the other hand, when people are dealing with severe tragedies, the question about whether life is meaningful or not is extremely important. Now some will be made suspicious by this fact. They will wonder whether there isn't something fishy about this "meaning of life" stuff, since it pops up most forcefully when people are facing troubled times. Is it just a crutch or some way of hiding from the true meaninglessness of our existence. But the fact that questions about the meaning of life are felt most forcefully during dark times does not show that there's anything dubious about the meaning of life as a subject of inquiry. In a similar way, the fact that we take doctors most seriously when we are sick does not show that the discipline of medicine is a sham. This fact just serves as a reminder that tragedies are the real tests of worldviews and of one's beliefs about the meaning of life. When you are healthy, it's easy to ignore advice about what you should eat and how much exercise you should get. People may also be very unclear about the reasons and causes of their healthy condition. But when you become sick, these issues move into sharp focus. The test of one's lifestyle-choices comes when sickness arises. Can one just continue in one's habits or does something seriously need to change. Is the sickness just the sort of thing that comes to all people or does it reflect unhealthy choices that you've been making over time?
When the company is flourishing and the CEO is bringing in loads of money and the object of great acclaim and accolades, he will have a hard time taking seriously the thought that the meaningful life does not consist in accumulated material wealth. But when the company has collapsed and he is left with nothing, he is quite ready to consider that possibility. He will likely discover that the story in terms of which he made sense of his life was and is much to small and unstable. He will likely begin to search for another story and another way of understanding his life.
For a CEO who defines his entire life in terms of the condition of his company, the collapse of that company will represent the absolute failure of his life as a whole. For a CEO who has a larger vision of his own life, the collapse of that company may represent just an obstacle to be overcome. For a CEO whose life is defined by the company, there is no possibility of 'overcoming' it's collapse. For the CEO with a larger vision, it is possible to relate even the collapse to other things that are going on in his larger life.
This is why the meaningfulness of life is so important and may, literally, mark the difference between life and death. If one has just experienced the collapse of what one has been building, there is a serious question that must be addressed: Is it worth it to try and pick up the pieces and build again? For someone who is already happy and content, it is easy to say, "Of course you should rebuild and continue. Forget questions about whether there is a point to it all. Life is good and so we should perpetuate it by all means." But for the person who has just experienced the collapse, the prospect of rebuilding--foreseeing that the end of that will just be another collapse--may strike as a task not worth taking up. The issue is not just that this person doubts whether her endeavors will be important or enduring. The issue is that she cannot justify, given her state of mind, exerting herself to build what will ultimately only collapse again.
And Nagel, it's important to see, can offer this person nothing. He writes, ' "There's no point. It wouldn't matter if I didn't exist at all, or if I didn't care about anything. But I do. That's all there is to it." ' (101) It's all well and good for him because he does care about things. But what about the person who doesn't? Can he offer her a reason to care? It seems not. It's just a fact that either one cares or one doesn't, and that's all there is to it.
The real issue, when it comes to the meaning of life, must be something like this: Is there a reason for a person who does not feel the desire to live, to live? This must be a hard question for many contemporary philosophers who think that reasons for doing anything must bottom out in what one desires. What's important to understand is that our desires and our reasons are both shaped by our view of the world. (They also shape our view of the world, so there is definitely some circularity here.) So no single reason can be expected to convince a suffering person that life is worth living. Rather, what the suffering person needs is to come to understand his life as part of a whole story and larger context. He must be able to embed himself in that story and make sense of his life in terms of that story. That is what will likely alter his desires and allow 'reasons' in the more straightforward sense to be compelling for him. Is there a story that can make sense of the very deepest and darkest tragedies in this world? It will not surprise my readers to learn that I think there is. It is the Christian story.
At the center of the Christian story stands Jesus Christ. Because of His love for the world, He descended from His throne on high and took on a human nature. He revealed God's glory and the full extent of His desire for relationship with you and me. Because of his revolutionary teachings and as part of the process of opening that way for personal, covenantal relationship with God, He was arrested by the Jewish religious leaders and sentenced to death on a cross. The Son of God, incarnate, was executed as a criminal. No greater instance of defeat or loss, I expect, has ever been known or ever will be known. And yet that was not the end of that story. Christ's life, and the significance of everything that he did, did not end with his death. They also did not persist in the abstracted way that significant historical influence persists. Rather, Jesus, Himself, returned to life. In this, he demonstrated that those whose lives are appropriately caught up and embedded in the larger context of the will of God do not have to fear ultimate loss or defeat.
I'm am just gesturing at points that could be and need to be developed in enormous detail. Part of what is so amazing about Jesus' story is that He did not feel the need to watch out for Himself, to take care of Himself, to provide for His needs. He trusted so completely in God's watch care and provision that He was able to focus all His attention on being obedient to the will and purpose of His Father. Now so many of us are tempted to give our main attention and focus to the task of providing for and taking care of our own needs. This is understandable, but if that is the context in terms of which we try to make sense of our lives, what happens when we fail? What happens when we lose the job or can't keep the house or have to get financial assistance. If we conceive of the quality of our life in terms of how well we can care for and provide for ourselves (or for those we love, for that matter) what happens when we fail. Does that mean that we should give no thought to ourselves or anyone else? No. But what I am trying to get you to do is to think about the larger context or story in terms of which you understand your life. The Apostle Paul was able to rejoice in the midst of suffering and encouraged others to consider it pure joy when they faced persecution. He understood his life to be embedded in a larger context.
Things are getting more and more jumbled here--I can tell. I'm going to leave that at that. If people have questions they can ask me. And/or I can write more on this later. The point of this was to make some preliminary and clarificatory remarks on the meaning of life, anyway. Hopefully you can see how my approach to these issues differs from Nagel's. He thinks that meaning is tied to importance and, so, comes to the conclusion that if we are unimportant then our lives our meaningless. But I think he has misconstrued the nature of meaningfulness in life.
Now some people do think that being important is what gives their lives meaning. For them, the ultimate loss and tragedy lies in becoming unimportant, and when they do encounter that situation, they will likely begin to question whether importance really is what is key to a meaningful life. But regarding this more general point about the nature of meaningfulness, notice that the view I am offering is quite compatible with the claim that importance is not essential to a meaningful life. To have a meaningful life, my suggestion is, there must be some story or larger context in terms of which one's life becomes intelligible. Now it is possible that, within this story or context, one has a very big and important role to play. It is also possible that, within this story or context, one has an insignificant and unimportant role to play. What matters, for a meaningful life, is not the size of the part, as Nagel seems to suppose, but just the fact that one has a part to play and can make sense of one's life--both the good things and the bad things--in terms of that larger context.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
This summer I TA'd for an introductory-level philosophy course titled "Ethics and the Meaning of Life." As part of that course, the students were assigned to read a chapter from Thomas Nagel's book, What Does It All Mean? (Oxford University Press, 1987). The chapter was on the meaning of life. Both the instructor and I agreed that the chapter (only seven pages long) represents a very poor treatment of this important topic. I have not read the other articles that Nagel has published on the meaning of life, so I can't evaluate his complete and considered view. But I thought that a brief write-up on this chapter might allow me to say some (hopefully) helpful things about this important topic.
It's not too unusual for people to ask me, when they find out that I study philosophy, about the meaning of life. Meditation on this theme seems to be one of the things that people associate with philosophy. For the most part, I find that when people ask that question in a casual context, they are not actually interested in pursuing the point in any substantial way. I'm not sure whether I should be worried about that. People seem to have some sense that to understand the meaning of life could or should be important and yet the issue is one that's very far removed from their daily lives and one that doesn't come up on a regular basis. Like so many philosophical topics, I expect, people have a hard time seeing its relevance. In addition, I think that for most people, it is not entirely clear what is meant when we make reference to the "meaning" of life. Certainly we're not talking about anything that one might find in an English dictionary--the meaning of "life." Are we talking about the 'purpose' of life? The 'significance' of life?
In what follows, I'll offer some thoughts about what we are looking for when we look for "meaning" and how we should approach inquiring into and discussing it.
Part I
Nagel opens his short chapter on the meaning of life with the following remark:
"Perhaps you have had the thought that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead." (95)
Basically his chapter is an extended attempt to motivate and evaluate this particular thought or claim. This is a not-uncommon starting point for thinking about the meaning of life, but it now strikes me as problematic for two reasons. The first reason may be introduced by considering the following question: Have you ever had that thought? Have you ever had the thought the nothing really matters because in two hundred years (or some such indefinitely long period of time) we'll all be dead? I have. And I actually find the thought quite compelling (though it does not follow that I have always understood or even now understand fully why it is compelling). However, I think that there are also people who have never had this thought and who, when introduced to it by philosophers, do not find it compelling at all.
Now one of the main challenges in philosophical discourse (and in all types of discourse, actually) is to find common ground. Often we find that ground in common intuitions. For instance, most (hopefully all) people agree that it is morally wrong to torture babies just for fun. Most people have experienced events in a dream that seemed to be real. Most people are certain that they, themselves, exist. These are important starting points for developing philosophical theories and arguments. If we could never find common ground, then we could never reason or communicate meaningfully with one another.
Now some people may become worried at this point because they will suspect that for any proposition, even one that is wildly outlandish, it will always be possible to find someone (to whom we might refer with the term, "crackpot") who believes it. Does that mean the possibility of discourse is ruled out altogether? I do not think so. First, we should understand that the fact that we cannot reach a consensus on certain issues does not mean that there is no fact of the matter about that issue. But, second, it does make discussing that issue much more difficult. Now when it comes to the above claim about things mattering and being dead in two hundred years, the fact that some people are unmoved by that thought does not necessarily show that the suggested entailment is spurious or that it is an intrinsically bad starting point for thinking about the meaning of life. But it can make motivating the discussion more difficult and can lead to other problems as well.
When someone presents this thought--that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead--one is usually expected to react negatively. One is supposed to be repulsed by the thought of meaninglessness. But what is required for a meaningful life? Usually the suggestion is that meaning can only be found in something transcendent. Meaninglessness in life is supposed to be entailed by something like naturalism or physicalism, and so one's negative reaction to the meaninglessness of life is supposed to lead to a rejection of such worldviews and the exploration of some alternative that takes the transcendent seriously. (Note that Nagel casts the issue in different terms, as we'll see below, but I think the core is the same.)
Now there is a segment of the population that is not moved by this thought. By that I mean that the thought that we will be dead in two hundred years does not move them to think that life is meaningless. Those who are moved by this claim tend to think that those who are not so moved have somehow missed the point. But they often have a hard time convincing the unmoved that they should be moved by this point. (As I said, it is not necessarily fully transparent to me just why this thought is supposed to be moving.) In the next section, we'll look at how Nagel tries to motivate serious consideration of this thought. He'll explain why this thought is supposed to be compelling and what it is supposed to entail. After looking at his presentation, we'll consider and evaluate both his conclusions and his starting point.
Part II
"Perhaps you have had the thought that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead. This is a peculiar thought, because it's not clear why the fact that we'll be dead in two hundred years should imply that nothing we do now really matters." (95)
What is going on in people's heads that makes some of them think this "peculiar thought"? Nagel suggests that, for these people, the pursuit of goals and ends only seems to make sense or be worthwhile if those ends are permanent. Significance or mattering are tied to permanence. In more romantical language, we might say they are tied to the notion of immortality. If that kind of permanence is not achievable, either through one's own persistence or through being related to some external permanent context, then everything that one accomplishes is worth nought.
Operating behind (or alongside) this desire for permanence, according to Nagel, is the desire for there to be some point to what we are doing. Certainly this can be achieved in the immediate, local context. You eat because you're hungry and sleep because you're tired. We understand the point of those activities. But what is the point of life as a whole? Day in and day out you eat one meal after another--each one as a way of satisfying your hunger on that particular occasion. But is there a point to satisfying your hunger on all those occasions taken as a whole? Is there a point to that sum of activities that makes up your life? If there is no point to that, then there seems to be no important difference between existence and non-existence--living and not living. Of course there is a qualitative difference between existence and non-existence. A person who has existed experiences both more joy and more sorrow than a person who has never existed. But as far as significance or mattering are concerned, the two seem to amount to the same thing. They both have no point or significance.
If one's (finite) life is to have some meaning, significance, or point, it seems, it must be related to some larger context. My life is very short, but if my life contributes to some goal or end that endures, then even after I die, the significance of what I did will persist in that end or goal that outlives me. Now one might spend one's life advocating for some political or social movement that will benefit humankind for many generations to come. But in that case--and in all cases where the larger context is limited to the temporal sphere--we run into the same problem. All human societies and communities will come to an end; and the universe will eventually reach a state where it would be impossible for anyone to recognize that human beings ever did exist at all. My eating because of hunger may derive some local significance from being embedded in the larger context of my life. My life may derive some local significance from being embedded in the larger context of a political movement or the history of the human race. But if that larger context, ultimately, does not have some enduring point, then all the parts that derive their significance from being embedded in it will also have no enduring point.
This, then, is the challenge confronting those who wish for life to meaningful: one needs to find some thing that is inherently meaningful. If one's own life is not inherently meaningful, then the only way for it to have meaning is by being related (either directly or indirectly) to something that is inherently meaningful. To say that something is inherently meaningful is to say that it has some point independently of its relationship to anything else. If it turns out that there is no such larger inherently meaningful context to which one can relate one's life then either (1) life is meaningless or (2) meaningfulness must depend on meeting some other criteria.
Part III
Nagel does consider the possibility that meaningfulness in human life is derived from one's relationship with God. But he thinks this way of finding meaning runs into the same problem as all the others. This is what he says:
'The idea of God seems to be the idea of something that can explain everything else, without having to be explained itself. But it's very hard to understand how there could be such a thing. If we ask the question, "Why is the world like this?" and are offered a religious answer, how can we be prevented from asking again, "And why is that true?" What kind of answer would bring all of our "Why?" questions to a stop, once and for all? And if they can stop there, why couldn't they have stopped earlier?"
'The same problem seems to arise if God and His purposes are offered as the ultimate explanation of the value and meaning of our lives The idea that our lives fulfil God's purpose is supposed to give them their point, in a way that doesn't require or admit of any further point. One isn't supposed to ask "What is the point of God?" any more than one is supposed to ask, "What is the explanation of God?"
'But my problem here, as with the role of God as ultimate explanation, is that I'm not sure I understand the idea. Can there really be something which gives point to everything else by encompassing it, but which couldn't have, or need, any point itself? Something whose point can't be questioned from outside because there is no outside?' (99-100)
The question we have to address is this: Is the notion of something explaining but not itself being explainable really as mysterious as Nagel suggests? In fact, there are reasons to think not. The instructor in my "Ethics" course pointed out that the distinction between necessary and contingent truths may offer helpful insight on this point. My comments, here, are a bit tentative because there is plenty of controversy surrounding these notions, but they should be helpful nonetheless. Many philosophers throughout history have found plausible the idea that some truths are contingent while others are necessary. Some propositions are true or false contingently--that is, by virtue of the way the world happens to be--in a way that leaves open the possibility that things could have been otherwise. "The sky is blue." "There are fifty states in the U.S." "The earth is round." All of these statements are true, but their truth depends upon the world being a certain way. Other propositions, many philosophers have thought, are true or false necessarily; that is, their being true does not depend upon the way the world is in such a way that they could have been otherwise. "1+1=2." "A and not-A cannot both be true at the same time in the same way." These are examples of necessary truths.
Now when we ask for an explanation--when we ask why something is the case--it is possible for us to appeal to both necessary and contingent truths to answer. When we appeal to contingent truths, it is possible to re-pose the question and ask why that truth is true. But when one appeals to necessary truths, this re-posing of the question does not seem to be an open possibility. So consider the proposition, (A) "I have 18 dollars in my pocket." One might ask, "Why do you have 18 dollars in your pocket?" I could respond in a number of ways. "Because I put it there (instead of putting it in my wallet)." "Because that is the amount of change I got after buying a coffee from Starbucks." "Because I chose not to make any additional purchases with it." "Because, fortunately, it did not fall out of my pocket." Now let's consider the proposition: (B) "That is the amount of change I got after buying a coffee from Starbucks." Both propositions (A) and (B) express contingent truths. They happen to be true but could have been otherwise. Moreover, (A) is explained by appealing to (B). Now suppose we ask for an explanation of (B): "Why is 18 dollars the amount of change you got after buying a coffee from Starbucks." Several explanatory claims are open to us: (C) "Because I used a twenty-dollar bill to pay for my coffee." (D) "Because the coffee cost two dollars." (E) "Because 20-2=18." Any one of these propositions could be used as part of an explanation of (B), but notice this important difference: (C) and (D) both express contingent truths. I could have paid with a five dollar bill, or the price of the coffee could have been different, in which cases the amount of money in my pocket would have been different. But (E) is not like (C) and (D). (E) could not have been different, and if one were to ask, "Well, why does 20-2=18?" that question would strike us as very odd. The truths of mathematics do not seem to be the sort of thing that admit of further explanation, even though they can be used to explain other things.
Mathematical truths, then, offer an example of things that can explain but are not explainable. This is exactly the notion that Nagel claimed to find mysterious. But most people don't find the notion of mathematical truths being unexplainable to be particularly mysterious. At least they don't find that fact to be problematic.
Now this does not show, by itself, that God (or the idea of God) can or does ground the meaningfulness of life. But it does help to show that the ideas that Nagel claims to be mysterious are not necessarily or obviously incoherent or objectionable. The idea of there being something that can explain without itself being explainable is not so outlandish. So, perhaps, the idea of there being something that gives everything else their point but does not, itself, have or need any point outside of itself is not so outlandish either. This leaves open the possibility that God could provide the inherently meaningful context in terms of which human life is meaningful. Nagel has not succeeded in ruling it out.
But in order to understand the rest of what Nagel says, in his chapter, we need to keep in mind that he takes himself to have demonstrated adequately that the idea of something being inherently meaningful--of some whole having a point that is not derived from its relationship to anything else--is basically mysterious.
Part IV
At this point, given what he's said and claimed, there are two possibilities open to Nagel: either (1) to accept that life is meaningless or (2) to reevaluate the criteria for meaningfulness. He accepts the former course. This is what he says.
'Even if life as a whole is meaningless, perhaps that's nothing to worry about. Perhaps we can recognize it and just go on as before. The trick is to keep your eyes on what's in front of you, and allow justifications to come to an end inside your life, and inside the lives of others to whom you are connected. If you ever ask yourself the question, "But what's the point of being alive at all?"--leading the particular life of a student or bartender or whatever you happen to be--you'll answer "There's no point. It wouldn't matter if I didn't exist at all, or if I didn't care about anything. But I do. That's all there is to it." ' (100-101)
Now he acknowledges that some find this thought objectionable or depressing. Nagel diagnoses that reaction in the following way: 'Part of the problem is that some of us have an incurable tendency to take ourselves seriously. We want to matter to ourselves "from the outside." If our lives as a whole seem pointless, then a part of us is dissatisfied--the part that is always looking over our shoulders at what we are doing. Many human efforts, particularly those in the service of serious ambitions rather than just comfort and survival, get some of their energy from a sense of importance--a sense that what you are doing is not just important to you, but important in some larger sense: important, period. If we have to give this up, it may threaten to take the wind out of our sails. If life is not real, life is not earnest, and the grave is its goal, perhaps it's ridiculous to take ourselves so seriously. On the other hand, if we can't help taking ourselves so seriously, perhaps we just have to put up with being ridiculous. Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.' (101)
This last paragraph is the one that really reveals the source of Nagel's error and why he is led to such a problematic conclusion. I do think that he is mistaken in thinking that meaningfulness in life is or ought to be so easily discardable. The key to Nagel's error is this. He thinks that the search for a meaningful life is the search for an important life. Now it is true that some people count their lives as meaningful only if it is important, but, in fact, being important is not essential for being meaningful. In fact, a person's life may be very meaningful while being quite unimportant. So the search for meaning and the search for importance are not the same thing. So, also, the search for meaning does not necessarily arise from taking one's self too seriously.
I think that once we understand what meaningfulness in human life really amounts to, we will see that it cannot be discarded as easily as Nagel supposes.
Part V
What are we asking about when we ask about the "meaning" of life. In his article, Nagel talks about the "point" of life. Others might talk about the "purpose" of life or what makes life "valuable," "significant," or "worth living." The problem is that, while these notions may overlap in some respects, they are not identical. Each lends itself to different interpretations of what the "meaning" of life amounts to.
So the instructor in this "Ethics" course suggested that what actually makes life meaningful is being related to certain intrinsic values and intrinsically valuable things. So, on that kind of account, a life that is appropriately connected to love, truth, and beauty would be a meaningful life because it would be "valuable" or "worth having," owing to those connections. It would be a meaningful life even if it lacked the kind of importance that Nagel considered to be essential to a meaningful life. Now I do think that being connected to these sorts of intrinsic values is important, but I want to suggest that even they do not get at what is the central concern of questions about the "meaning of life."
In the next part, I'll start to develop an alternative account of what meaningfulness in life amounts to, and I shall begin by reconsidering Nagel's starting point.
Part VI
"Perhaps you have had the thought that nothing really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead." (95)
As I said before, I have had this thought and actually find it to be quite compelling. But I do not think that it is a good place to start thinking about the meaning of life. I think this starting point lends itself to the kind of confusion that leads Nagel to the conclusion that meaningfulness in life is easily discardable.
So think with me, what are the circumstances and situations in which people do seriously think about the meaning of life. Many people, unfortunately, probably associate musing about this topic with the ivory tower and the sheltered, cushioned, comfortable armchair of the academic philosopher. This is a mistake. I suspect that most people who are arrested by this topic are the one's in the middle of severe tragedies. When the company--into which a man has poured his heart and soul for the last forty years and for which he has sacrificed both family and friends--suddenly collapses, he will probably think about the meaning of life. When a woman prepares to bury her third and last remaining child--each one was torn slowly and painfully from her by wasting disease--she will probably wonder about the meaning of life. When a car accident leaves a man paralyzed in all four limbs, he may think about the meaning of life. When a woman is abandoned after twenty years of marriage, she may wonder about the meaning of life. These are people for whom the force of the question about the meaning of life is keenly felt. Indeed, an adequate answer to it may mark the difference between life and death. Since they are inclined to take the question more seriously, they're reflections seem to be a better starting point for pinning down just what we are looking for when we look for the 'meaning' of life.
These individuals will probably not think, explicitly, about the "meaning of life," but they will explore a set of questions, the answers to which form the core of their view about the meaning of life. They will probably be engaged in a process of reevaluating their views about the meaning of life. What, then, is it that they are looking for as they seek to recover from such incredible tragedies? I think, they are trying to make sense of their lives. They may be trying to rationalize what has happened to them. And they may also be trying to justify continuing on. "Meaning" is what makes life intelligible and coherent. When someone is seriously thinking about the meaning of life, he or she is thinking about how to make sense of life.
This is the basic idea. I'll go on to clarify this basic idea and also use it to show why Nagel's approach and conclusion don't really work.
Part VII
When we take seriously that meaningfulness is about making sense of our lives, it becomes clear why it is hard to make comfortable and happy people grapple seriously with the question. Usually, when people are comfortable and happy, they are not in the best position to critically evaluate what is the source of their comfort and happiness. They are just content with the fact that they are comfortable and happy. So it makes sense that, when a philosopher comes along and says to them, "You know, nothing you do really matters, because in two hundred years we'll all be dead," it's hard for the comfortable and happy person to be moved by that. That's why most people who casually ask me about the meaning of life don't really engage seriously with the question. They are comfortable and happy and so, in a sense, are not really concerned with whether life is meaningful or not.
On the other hand, when people are dealing with severe tragedies, the question about whether life is meaningful or not is extremely important. Now some will be made suspicious by this fact. They will wonder whether there isn't something fishy about this "meaning of life" stuff, since it pops up most forcefully when people are facing troubled times. Is it just a crutch or some way of hiding from the true meaninglessness of our existence. But the fact that questions about the meaning of life are felt most forcefully during dark times does not show that there's anything dubious about the meaning of life as a subject of inquiry. In a similar way, the fact that we take doctors most seriously when we are sick does not show that the discipline of medicine is a sham. This fact just serves as a reminder that tragedies are the real tests of worldviews and of one's beliefs about the meaning of life. When you are healthy, it's easy to ignore advice about what you should eat and how much exercise you should get. People may also be very unclear about the reasons and causes of their healthy condition. But when you become sick, these issues move into sharp focus. The test of one's lifestyle-choices comes when sickness arises. Can one just continue in one's habits or does something seriously need to change. Is the sickness just the sort of thing that comes to all people or does it reflect unhealthy choices that you've been making over time?
When the company is flourishing and the CEO is bringing in loads of money and the object of great acclaim and accolades, he will have a hard time taking seriously the thought that the meaningful life does not consist in accumulated material wealth. But when the company has collapsed and he is left with nothing, he is quite ready to consider that possibility. He will likely discover that the story in terms of which he made sense of his life was and is much to small and unstable. He will likely begin to search for another story and another way of understanding his life.
For a CEO who defines his entire life in terms of the condition of his company, the collapse of that company will represent the absolute failure of his life as a whole. For a CEO who has a larger vision of his own life, the collapse of that company may represent just an obstacle to be overcome. For a CEO whose life is defined by the company, there is no possibility of 'overcoming' it's collapse. For the CEO with a larger vision, it is possible to relate even the collapse to other things that are going on in his larger life.
This is why the meaningfulness of life is so important and may, literally, mark the difference between life and death. If one has just experienced the collapse of what one has been building, there is a serious question that must be addressed: Is it worth it to try and pick up the pieces and build again? For someone who is already happy and content, it is easy to say, "Of course you should rebuild and continue. Forget questions about whether there is a point to it all. Life is good and so we should perpetuate it by all means." But for the person who has just experienced the collapse, the prospect of rebuilding--foreseeing that the end of that will just be another collapse--may strike as a task not worth taking up. The issue is not just that this person doubts whether her endeavors will be important or enduring. The issue is that she cannot justify, given her state of mind, exerting herself to build what will ultimately only collapse again.
And Nagel, it's important to see, can offer this person nothing. He writes, ' "There's no point. It wouldn't matter if I didn't exist at all, or if I didn't care about anything. But I do. That's all there is to it." ' (101) It's all well and good for him because he does care about things. But what about the person who doesn't? Can he offer her a reason to care? It seems not. It's just a fact that either one cares or one doesn't, and that's all there is to it.
The real issue, when it comes to the meaning of life, must be something like this: Is there a reason for a person who does not feel the desire to live, to live? This must be a hard question for many contemporary philosophers who think that reasons for doing anything must bottom out in what one desires. What's important to understand is that our desires and our reasons are both shaped by our view of the world. (They also shape our view of the world, so there is definitely some circularity here.) So no single reason can be expected to convince a suffering person that life is worth living. Rather, what the suffering person needs is to come to understand his life as part of a whole story and larger context. He must be able to embed himself in that story and make sense of his life in terms of that story. That is what will likely alter his desires and allow 'reasons' in the more straightforward sense to be compelling for him. Is there a story that can make sense of the very deepest and darkest tragedies in this world? It will not surprise my readers to learn that I think there is. It is the Christian story.
At the center of the Christian story stands Jesus Christ. Because of His love for the world, He descended from His throne on high and took on a human nature. He revealed God's glory and the full extent of His desire for relationship with you and me. Because of his revolutionary teachings and as part of the process of opening that way for personal, covenantal relationship with God, He was arrested by the Jewish religious leaders and sentenced to death on a cross. The Son of God, incarnate, was executed as a criminal. No greater instance of defeat or loss, I expect, has ever been known or ever will be known. And yet that was not the end of that story. Christ's life, and the significance of everything that he did, did not end with his death. They also did not persist in the abstracted way that significant historical influence persists. Rather, Jesus, Himself, returned to life. In this, he demonstrated that those whose lives are appropriately caught up and embedded in the larger context of the will of God do not have to fear ultimate loss or defeat.
I'm am just gesturing at points that could be and need to be developed in enormous detail. Part of what is so amazing about Jesus' story is that He did not feel the need to watch out for Himself, to take care of Himself, to provide for His needs. He trusted so completely in God's watch care and provision that He was able to focus all His attention on being obedient to the will and purpose of His Father. Now so many of us are tempted to give our main attention and focus to the task of providing for and taking care of our own needs. This is understandable, but if that is the context in terms of which we try to make sense of our lives, what happens when we fail? What happens when we lose the job or can't keep the house or have to get financial assistance. If we conceive of the quality of our life in terms of how well we can care for and provide for ourselves (or for those we love, for that matter) what happens when we fail. Does that mean that we should give no thought to ourselves or anyone else? No. But what I am trying to get you to do is to think about the larger context or story in terms of which you understand your life. The Apostle Paul was able to rejoice in the midst of suffering and encouraged others to consider it pure joy when they faced persecution. He understood his life to be embedded in a larger context.
Things are getting more and more jumbled here--I can tell. I'm going to leave that at that. If people have questions they can ask me. And/or I can write more on this later. The point of this was to make some preliminary and clarificatory remarks on the meaning of life, anyway. Hopefully you can see how my approach to these issues differs from Nagel's. He thinks that meaning is tied to importance and, so, comes to the conclusion that if we are unimportant then our lives our meaningless. But I think he has misconstrued the nature of meaningfulness in life.
Now some people do think that being important is what gives their lives meaning. For them, the ultimate loss and tragedy lies in becoming unimportant, and when they do encounter that situation, they will likely begin to question whether importance really is what is key to a meaningful life. But regarding this more general point about the nature of meaningfulness, notice that the view I am offering is quite compatible with the claim that importance is not essential to a meaningful life. To have a meaningful life, my suggestion is, there must be some story or larger context in terms of which one's life becomes intelligible. Now it is possible that, within this story or context, one has a very big and important role to play. It is also possible that, within this story or context, one has an insignificant and unimportant role to play. What matters, for a meaningful life, is not the size of the part, as Nagel seems to suppose, but just the fact that one has a part to play and can make sense of one's life--both the good things and the bad things--in terms of that larger context.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
posted by Metaphysician_delta | 3:07 PM
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