The Meaning of Life
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” 1
Camus’ quip asks us to consider what makes life worth living. This question is usually answered by suggesting that there is some meaning to life that renders us unwilling to relinquish it.
The phrase ‘the meaning of life’ usually means something like ‘purpose’. Thus, a life is said to possess meaning if and only if it has a point to it, or it fits into a plan of some sort.
Broadly speaking, there are three proposed theories. First, some thinkers have proposed that a life has meaning if and only if it is related to something more valuable that gives it meaning. They claim that there is something that is more valuable than a life. Therefore, a life has meaning. Let’s call this view somethingism.
In contrast, some propose that nothing exists that is more valuable than a life. Thus, there is no meaning to life. Call this view, nothingism. A final view—call it mythingism—proposes that though nothing exists that is more valuable than a life, we are free to choose something that we can treat as if it is more valuable than a life. 2
Somethingism
If the meaning of life depends on something that provides it, then what is that something? There are two proposed answers to this question: God and Human Progress. According to the theistic view, God is more valuable than a human life and can gran
t the human meaning in life if the human is rightly related to Him. For example, Aquinas wrote:
Now here on earth, the simplest elements exist for the sake of compound minerals; these latter exist for the sake of living bodies, among which plants exist for animals, and animals for humans… Now humans
naturally desire, as their ultimate purpose, to know the first cause of all things. But the first cause of all things is God. So the ultimate purpose of human beings is to know God. 3
The idea is that God is much more significant and more valuable than our lives, but God’s purposes for his creation include purposes for every part of his creation. Thus, our lives have divine purpose. Furthermore, God has revealed some of those purposes to us in Scripture and, to a lesser degree, in nature. For instance, the Bible tells us that one purpose for our lives is to know God. Another purpose is to love others. The most important purpose of our lives is to worship the Lord. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it:
Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
According to Christian teaching, we can glorify God through our actions, beliefs, and desires and, because God has given us an idea of how to live a purposeful life, we can be satisfied with our lives. Having meaning, according to the Christian, means having more than temporal happiness. It means having eternal joy (John 15).
The second ‘something’ thinkers have proposed is human progress. For example, the philosopher Hegel tells us that meaning is found in the progress of human history. Life is granted meaning if one participates in the progressive movement of history. Hegel’s view is complicated, but one can grasp the idea by thinking about the nature of change. Hegel thought that change was due to conflict.
First, a conflict emerges between two ideas or forces. Then, the conflict works its way out. Once the conflict resolves, another situation is created in which new conflicts are present. The process of change is a dialectical process. Hegel thought that an ultimate situation could emerge in which there is no conflict and, thus, no change. This situation is called the absolute.
So, how do Hegel’s ideas answer our quest for meaning? Well, consider yourself as a temporal creature living in a particular time of change. Hegel thought that one could discern the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the time, and participate within it. This would give your life meaning. You would be part of ‘making a difference in the world’, furthering the goal of human history toward an ideal human socie
ty.
However, getting on board with progress is more than an individual activity. One must pursue it in a state. Hegel’s ideas led many to perceive the state as the means of realizing the absolute: “Man owes his entire existence to the state.” 4
Hegel’s central ideas were modified by other thinkers such as Karl Marx and embodied in the
twentieth century with horrendo
us effects. Both fascists and communists treated the state as the means to actualizing forms of absolute states. Both conceived of the meaning of life being found in participating in the realization of the absolute through the state. The result was disastrous. Millions of people were killed by the state as a direct result of adopting those ideologies.
If one is going to be a somethingist, theism presents the best view. Further, as I have argued in previous posts, Christian theism is true. God exists, He is of infinite value, and, by being related rightly to him through the gospel, one can experience genuine purpose in life no matter what circumstances one finds oneself in.
Nothingism
Perhaps the clearest articulation of the view that life has no meaning was given by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). Schopenhauer thought that there is nothing in the world that is worth living for. Thus, all that one does, one’s very existence, means absolutely nothing:
“That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence.” 5
Not long after Schopenhauer, another thinker—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)—suggested that there is no such thing as knowledge or objective moral values. Consequently, there is no meaning to be had in life apart from the ‘will to power’, a kind of self-exertion in the world.
“Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers…God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” 6
Far from a tragic event, Nietzsche thought that the death of God was a positive event. It removed the power of Christian moral teaching from the people. The yoke is lifted. We are free to follow our wills. That is all we have. According to Nietzsche, meaning in life depends on objective truth and morality. But there are no such things. Thus, there is no more to meaning than the will to power—the innate human desire for achievement, power, and reaching the highest position in life.
Nietzsche’s view is at least consistent with his underlying beliefs. He is honest about the non-existence of anything in the universe more valuable than one’s life. If there is no such thing, then there can be no meaning in life. There is only one’s will to power. Howe
ver, as I have argued, Nietzsche’s underlying beliefs are false. God does exist.
Mythingism
Mythingists agree that there is no such thing as real meaning but demand that we live as if there is. The broad term for those who hold to this view is existentialism. Existentialists believe that human experience is subjective, reality is not constituted by what is real but what it is to act in the world, and reality is consequent to existence.
Thus, according to existentialist philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980), humans are whatever they choose to be. There is no essential human nature. Instead, human beings have the freedom to determine their own nature. Sartre saw this as a negative aspect
of life. We are “condemned to be free.” 7
So, to find meaning for a mythingist, one must choose something to treat as the thing that gives us meaning. In her book, The Aquarian Controversy, Marilyn Ferguson argues that many people see work as what makes their lives meaningful. However, Ferguson suggests that for work to be meaningful, we have to infuse it with meaning:
“Work is a vehicle for transformation. Through work we are fully engaged in life…that which requires us, which makes us care. In responding to vocation—the call, the summons of that which needs doing—we create and discover meaning, unique to each of us and always changing.” 8
In other words, having meaning in life involves finding the ‘thing’ that makes it feel as if it does in fact have meaning, even though it does not. If that sounds like pretending, that is because it is. One pretends to have meaning in life. It is fundamentally an act of self-deception.
Not all existentialists were atheistic. Indeed, perhaps the earliest existentialist claimed to be a Christian. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) chose to find meaning in God. However, he thought that one doesn’t hold to Christian beliefs due to any rational process. Thus, one’s religious beliefs can provide meaning but not in the somethingist sense. Rather, religious beliefs provide meaning by being chosen by a believer without reason.
Although Kierkegaard’s view is presented as a Christian view, it has one severe fault. Kierkegaard denies that one can possess any justification for one’s theistic beliefs. Thus, there is no way to know if God exists. Such skepticism does nothing to assure the believer that what is believed is true. Further, Kierkegaard at points suggests that what is true is not an objective feature of the universe. Instead, truth is a matter of beneficial belief or subjective choice.
As I have suggested, there are good reasons to reject both skepticism about justification and relativism about truth. Instead, there are good reasons to think that the God described in the Bible exists. And if so, we can experience genuine meaning in life.
It may have occurred to you that in this section, I have been somewhat dismissive of non-theistic philosophical reflection on the meaning of life. The reason is not that those thinkers have nothing interesting to say. Rather, it is that what is often proposed is so inadequate. Although it has the merit of brutal honesty, nihilism is a dreadful answer to the question. Existentialism amounts to pretending that there is meaning to life, and the Hegelian alternative to theism has produced some of the most grievous evils in human history. Philosophy is of high utility for analyzing various views on the meaning of life but has proved fairly useless in providing a non-theistic answer. In contrast, the theistic view as given in the Bible is an altogether superior answer to the quest for meaning.
References
- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1991), 1.
- Based on Manuel Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text With Readings (Mason, OH: Cengage, 2025), 752–774.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, bk. III, ch. 22, paras. 7, 8, ch. 25, para. 11, translated by Manuel Velasquez in Velasquez, Philosophy, 762.
- G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures in the Philosophy of World History, eds. Duncan Forbes, Hugh Barr Nisbet, Johannes Hoffmeister, trans. Hugh Barr Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 94.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, trans. R. J. Hollindale (London: Penguin Books, 1970), 41–50. Quoted in Velasquez, Philosophy, 767.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1976), 95.
- Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel Estella Barnes (New York: Citadel, 2001), 415.
- Marilyn Ferguson, quoted in Os Guinness, Entrepreneurs of Life (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001), 63.