Susan Wolf And Meaningful Life

Throughout generations in literature, “to live deliberately” has been the goal and purpose of life. As Alexander Supertramp (aka Chris McCandless) said, “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun” (57).

Nowadays, it seems that we are too busy making a living that we tend to forget how to make a meaningful life. We are all dreaming of some magical things will happen instead of enjoying a beautiful little thing happens around us. The main thing is we don’t know if we will wake up tomorrow when we go to sleep tonight. Therefore, rather than hardly put off a living, reminds ourselves to enjoy every minute of our live as if it is the last minute. Denise Levertov, the author of the poem “Living”, illustrates the philosophy of living a simple life is to live entirely in the present without thinking about what will happen next in the future. The reason for that philosophy is because happiness is not what you have but how you feel toward what you have and how you accept it.

In Susan Wolf’s, “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life” Susan writes what makes a meaningful life, her belief is as followed “Active engagement in objective worthwhile activities.” Wolf believe this is the solution to a happy life instead of a depressing and sad one. Wolf said that both Active engagement and objective worthwhile activities need to be present to have a meaningful life. Thought the page, we will see how Wolf arguments requires both parts to accomplish meaningful life then we will make an objection to the arguments which I will then respond to argue against showing why the objection is false.

Susan R. Wolf (born 1952) is a moral philosopher who works extensively on the meaning of human life and is the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wolf addresses the questions of the meaning of life in hope to distinguish the characteristics and reasoning that gives meaning to life. According to Susan Wolf view about the meaning in life, “I would say that meaningful life are lives of active engagement in projects of worth… two key phrases, ‘active engagement’ and ‘projects of worth’” (Wolf, 205). However, I believe that her proposal leaves out our basic motives and reasoning that’s

You may like to play a particular sport regularly or go walking, cycling or running, for example. If you don’t do these kinds of things, you may have other interests that you enjoy such as a hobby or education or training courses (like this one!) or interests such as reading, socialising with friends or visiting new places. If you think about the things you do, you will realise that you are ‘active’ in many different ways. But do you think of the things that you do as learning or development activities? Sometimes it can be difficult to decide or identify what counts as learning and development activity.

Wolf argues that since meaningfulness in one’s life is a factor in well-being, we should try to increase the amount of chances people can have meaningful lives. To understand why meaningfulness is important in our well-being, we must understand what Wolf believes a meaningful life is. Wolf describes a meaningful life as one that is participating in a project that that is bringing positive value. Also, the project has to be successful and completed to be meaningful. If the project is not completed the life will be considered a meaningless one. Wolf also argues that we should want a meaningful life, that is occupied with a project that brings a positive

She, on the contrary, argues that meaningfulness is the predominant reason of a meaningful life. The Fulfillment view and the Larger -than -Oneself view act as a positive catalyst for constructing her own theory of meaningfulness. She continues, ‘According to the conception of meaningfulness I wish to propose, meaning arises from loving objects worthy of love and engaging with them in a positive way. …One might paraphrase this by saying that, according to my conception, meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness, and one is able to do something good or positive about it’ [2010:8-9]. The former view provides the subjective side of the meaningfulness and the latter view provides the objective side of the meaningfulness. Wolf has argued that all meaningful lives have two sides; a ‘subjective’ and an ‘objective’. These can be categorize into three elements ;(i) subjective attraction, (ii) active engagement, and (iii) objective worthiness. The aforementioned two sides have formed together the meaning of life. She names her concept The Fitting Fulfillment view that requires for experience meaning a person should relate to the object of his passion to the objective value of that object. Only good or positive passion can be act as a

The Activity theory theorizes that when individuals engage and interact with their environment are all things that elderly individuals can be positive to their life and can be a positive sense of self, i.e. retiring may not be so harmful if the person actively maintains other roles, such as familial roles, recreational roles, and volunteer & community roles. They believe individuals should be encouraged to remain active & develop

Rather activities in which people are actively engaged frequently involves stress, danger, exertion, sorrow, for example writing a book, climbing a mountain, training for a marathon and so on. Susan, further said, that doing these things, there is something good about the feeling of engagement; especially, it makes one feel typically without thinking about it such as been alive.

In life, there are many ways you can live, however, the manner in which you live is your choice. In most peoples’ lives, they want to leave this world and say that they were happy and enjoyed every single moment of it. People feel like if they lived a happy life, then that is all that matters. But what if life has more to do than just being happy, what if it was meant for you to change the world or the lives of others? If you changed the life of another person and made them happy, you made a difference. A happy life is a good one, but a meaningful life is fruitful.

On the other hand, I strongly belief that engagement is a much more positive to our society. To begin with, having a connection

The life of engagement may not have visible happiest. It is mainly about expressing your highest strengths in your life. A life of leisure. This leisure may not come if rest and relaxation but in work and dedication. The life of engagement requires for an individual to have the dedication to a job, hobby, or person. Life of engagement is not completely pleasurable like the pleasant, but the pleasure is achieved through the feeling of accomplishing a job or task.

(R) Cain highlights important components of Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s research on the state of being he calls “flow.” Flow is the state in which one feels completely engaged in an activity. Research suggest that we are either motivated by the need to eliminate unpleasant conditions or to work towards an expected reward. However, in flow, an individual can be motivated to work around the clock for multiple days without a specific reason but rather to continue working. The author recommends introverts to discover their flow by using their gifts of knowledge, endurance, and freedom from temptations like money or status. Although introverts often are challenged by finding their strengths, they must stay true to their nature. (C) Similarly, I tend

Life is a complicated twist of suffering, laughing, and learning all merging to tell a great story - or great many stories. Based on this view, "it is not the end goal or outcome of life that gives life meaning but rather the quality of the story, the quality with which one lives out and develops his or her role."

Life as we know it could vanish within seconds. The next day is not promised to anyone that walks on this earth. As we live our everyday lives peacefully, we tend not to think what our mission or purpose in life is. Instead, we think what we must do for that to be a “successful” person. Despite this way of thinking, just think for a second. What makes life meaningful? What is life anyway? These questions dive right into the heart of the philosophical, psychological, and the biological aspects of life and what the true meaning of life is. This is a very arguable topic due to every person’s different perspective on life and what it means to them. In summary, I personally think that life is simply what you make of it and each person’s accomplishments has its own merit