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Dec 13, 2015 · In the concluding chapter of his 1967 book, Good and Evil (Great Minds Series), Taylor suggests that we examine the notion of a meaningless existence so that we can contrast it with a meaningful one. He takes Camus’ image of Sisyphus ‘ eternal, pointless toil as archetypical of meaninglessness.
- December
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 –...
- Paterson
They literally create their own meaning to life, by filling...
- Books
• Michael Ruse ~ A Meaning to Life (Philosophy in Action) •...
- Value of Philosophy
One also needs traits like insight, compassion, and...
- December
In seeking meaning to life, the existentialist looks to where people find meaning in life, in course of which using only reason as a source of meaning is insufficient; this gives rise to the emotions of anxiety and dread, felt in considering one's free will, and the concomitant awareness of death.
Apr 23, 2018 · In Arendt’s telling, Eichmann reminds us of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), who randomly and casually kills a man, but then afterwards feels no remorse. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive: the deed just ‘happened’. This wasn’t Arendt’s first, somewhat superficial impression of Eichmann.
- Background
- Nineteenth Century Philosophers
- Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophers
- Early Twentieth Century Analytic, American, and English-Language Philosophers
- Conclusion
- References and Further Reading
a. The Origin of the English Expression “the Meaning of Life”
The English term “meaning” dates back to the fourteenth century C.E. Its origins, according to the Oxford English Dictionary(OED), lie in the Middle English word “meenyng” (also spelled “menaynge,” “meneyng,” and “mennyng”). In its earliest occurrences, in English original compositions as well as in English translations of earlier works, meaning is most often what, on the one hand, sentences, utterances, and stories, and, on the other hand, dreams, visions, signs, omens, and rituals have or m...
b. Questions about the Meaning of Life
The most familiar form of the question(s) about the meaning of life is simply, “What is the meaning of life?” Although the form of the question is one, when it is asked, any one (or more) of several different senses may be intended. Here are some of the more common of them. (1) In some cases, what the seeker seeks is the kernel, the inner reality, the core, or the essence, underlying some phenomenon. Thus one might ask what his essence, his true self is, and then feel that he has found the me...
c. The Broader Historical Background
Although nineteenth century thinkers were the first in the West to put the question precisely in the form “What is the meaning of life?” concern with questions in what may be called “the meaning-of-life family,” that is, ultimate questions about life, the world, existence, and its purpose may be found, in the East and the West alike, almost as far back as we can trace human thought about anything. Thus Gilgamesh (c. 2000 B.C.E.) asked why he must die; the composers of The Rig Veda (c. 1200 B....
Let us turn now to the story of what philosophers from Schopenhauer in the early 1800s to Ayer and Camus in the 1940s have had to say about the meaning of life.
In the early twentieth century questions about the meaning of life continued to be of interest to leading European or “Continental” philosophers.
Anglo-American philosophers in the very late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries continued to be interested in problems of the meaning of life as well.
The dismissal of the question about the meaning of life which was characteristic of Ayer and his generation, and Camus’s idea that meaninglessness doesn’t matter, may be what ironically sparked the recent interest in the question. The natural philosophical response is that surely the question of the meaning of life is meaningful and important: in l...
Ayer, A. J. “The Claims of Philosophy.” Reprinted in The Meaning of Life, 3rd Ed.. E. D. Klemke (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2008: 199-202. (Originally published in 1947)Baier, K. “The Meaning of Life.” Reprinted in The Meaning of Life. E. D. Klemke (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 1981: 81-117. (Originally published in 1947.)Camus, A. “The Myth of Sisyphus.” J. O’Brien (tr.). Reprinted in part in Ways of Wisdom: Readings on the Good Life, Steve Smith (ed.). Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983: 244-255. (Origi...Carlyle, T. 1834. Fraser’s Magazine. available online at Project Gutenberg.Feb 7, 2017 · Among those who misunderstood her notion of the “banality” of evil to mean a trivialization of the outcome of evil rather than an insight into the commonplace motives of its perpetrators was the scholar Gerhard Scholem, with whom Arendt had corresponded warmly for decades.
May 15, 2007 · When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people tend to pose one of three questions: “What are you talking about?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Is life in fact meaningful?”.
People also ask
What if a spiritual realm existed?
Is there a realm to which life leads after death?
Would a life be meaningless if it was unhappy or immoral?
Did Russell think life is meaningless?
Who evaluates our life on Earth?
Why is evil so dangerous?
Our life on earth is evaluated by a supernatural being some call God, who will assign to us some reward or punishment after death. The meaning of our life, its purpose and justification, is to fulfill the expectations of God, and then to receive our final reward.
