Susan Wolf : Meaning Of Life

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.

It is the dream of all to live a life of greatness; where one belongs, and leaves only the best legacy behind. To have such a life is to have meaning, something which every person looks for. Sadly, due to relentless factors in one’s life this search for meaning doesn’t always work. In Chocolat, Lasse Hallstrom demonstrates how an individual seeks to create a meaningful life, revealing how time and opportunity affect what an individual wants in their life.

Susan wolf interprets a meaningful life as one that has within the basis of an affirmative answer to the basis for an affirmative answer to the needs or belonging that are characteristically described as needs of meaning. She described meaningful lives as lives of active engagement in project worth. Which she divided into groups, first is ‘’active engagement’’ and project worth.

She contends that one needs to be actively engaged in life, more specifically being actively engaged in a worthwhile project, in order for that life to garner any meaning. Objective factors produce meaning but this view asserts that subjective factors (e.g. cognizance, emotion, etc.) should not be excluded because these factors are themselves liable to produce meaningfulness when interacting with objective conditions.

What do I want to accomplish? What does my life mean? Why was I put on Earth? The perpetual search for meaning is the duty of existentialists, such as Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychotherapist who lived in Austria during World War II. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he describes his search for the meaning of life in the midst of extreme suffering in a Nazi concentration camp. In English class two years ago, I read his book, unaware of the effect it would have on my outlook on life.

My second position is that, in determining the origin of life’s value, it is important to consider the relevant ends and purposes to which life works. If we determine, for example, that the ultimate purpose of life is the pursuit and “achievement of excellence” (Bond, 161), or “to subordinate the self and all contingencies concerning the self’s relations with others or the world to a set of imperatives binding on us solely as rational beings” (Railton, 127), then we can provide suitable answers to the question of why life is valuable. My third position concerns one particular answer to the question of life’s purpose. Following Freud’s thesis that “the aim of all life is death” (309-11), I argue that the premise that life is valuable entails that death is necessarily valuable. My fourth claim is that death’s value has no purpose other than itself—death has no end—therefore, death is intrinsically valuable. Assuming that death is one of life’s aims, concluding death’s intrinsic value from life’s value raises a particular problem: either the notion of death having intrinsic value is so absurd that we must abandon the original premise concerning life’s

In the book “Man’s Search For Meaning,” Frankl introduced the meaning of life that he discovered during he suffered in concentration camp. He also mentioned that people find meaningful life by creating work, experiencing something, and by the attitude we toward unavoidable suffering. As a young people, I less advanced in life and less enlightened by experience. I can’t image how many painful memory that he had, and I don’t know in what dilemma he found the meaning of lives. Undoubtedly, Frankl noticed the value of his life, and his difficult life experience helped him know himself, and finally he overcame many difficulties. Thus, for me, I think I can find meaningful lives by achieving self-realization and experiencing more things in my life.

“What is the meaning of life?” Apparently, Wolf finds this question “unintelligible”. Life does not have a meaning as if it’s a word we could define as a language (837). It is difficult to truly define the meaning of life as it is an abstract and obscure topic. Wolf settled on a thought that people who live fulfillingly is what makes life purposeful (843). The events that give meaning to our lives such as, “relationships to loved ones, aspirations to achieve”, this way of thinking are what people strive to bring an individual to find things meaningful. Wolf thinks this is “solipsistic or silly” (842). The mere thought of believing “my life is meaningful because I devote myself to the positivity and happiness that is being brought in to my life,” is somehow useless as one individual is just merely a speck amongst the vast open space, making no difference to the universe (843). To the infinite universe, Wolf proposes that “a concern and aspiration to have one’s life wrapped up with projects of positive value” (847) is her response to how people bring meaning to life. Joy and

It is also stated that no action or project really gives life it’s absolute meaning. In both cases, the seemingly endless nightmare of eternal and pointless activity has now been overridden with the scorching Hell of eternal absence. According to Taylor, humanity feels the deep need to have a destiny, to fulfill an inner compulsion to be doing just what we were put here to do. This idea is what makes life so meaningful. The meaning is in the passion of doing of things, not necessarily in what that doing leads to. As Taylor stated, “The meaning of life is from within us, it is not bestowed from without, and it far exceeds in both beauty and permanence any heaven of which men have ever dreamed or yearned for” (484). The point of living is simply to be living whether that’s doing what one loves to do or simply getting through every day. While agreeing with Taylor, I must add that instead of asking whether life has been good for a certain person, we should be asking whether it has been admirable or if it has been something to proud of. To summarize, we give meaning to our lives by the active engagement our wills have in our

The value of life is about the experiences people go through, the goals that someone makes for themselves, and the people you meet along the way. The question, “What is the meaning of life?” has been asked for as long as humans have been alive and there is no definitive answer as to what the value of life is. People have argued that value comes from how much money one earns, but everyone’s life is different and the goals that they have achieved and the memories and experiences being made during life appears to be way more valuable than money could ever be.

Further dwelling on Viktor Frankl's book, Man’s Search For Meaning, it is realized that man is the real agent of giving a meaning to life. Man achieves the understanding of the meaning of life by experience and the attitude towards suffering because of social existence: “Everyone’s task is as unique as his specific opportunity to implement it” (Frankl 69). People can also

Over the span of our life, we are on a constant search for meaning or purpose. When we finally resolve to call our life meaningful through participating in some “external activities” as suggested by Wolf, we are still haunted by “the feeling of the absurd” as described by Camus (Wong 2, May viii). For example, even if we follow Todd May’s advice and successfully identify some narrative values in our life such as steadfastness, intensity, and inquisitiveness, we may still hold reservations regarding the meaningfulness of our life. The fitting fulfillment and narrative values are essentially limited because they merely focus on the external activities with life, not our mindset which truly shapes who we are and decides whether we are

Meaningfulness can mean so much in everyone’s eyes but I believe meaningfulness is when we “treat others the way we want to be treated” like how Frankl helped those two guys out from not hurting themselves but understanding what life is and soon got to survive from the

It can be widely stated that life holds meaning when the individual living it understands it to matter in some greater sense and when it holds significance outside of inconsequential or temporary moments (King, Hicks, Krull, & Del Gaiso, 2006). A wide range of evidence exists in support of the pursuit of meaningful goals and the determination of direction in life (i.e. establishing a sense of purpose) among adults. More specifically, these concepts have been found to correspond with several positive outcomes within adult populations, namely increased positive affect (PA; King et al., 2006), happiness and satisfaction in life (Heisel & Flett, 2004; Scannell, Allen, & Burton, 2002), psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989; Wong & Fry, 1998; Zika & Chamberlain, 1992), self-efficacy (DeWitz, Woosley, & Walsh, 2009), and resilience (Frankl, 1959; Masten & Reed, 2002). However, the processes found to be underlying these positive

Survival is a choice each person has to make every day: a choice between life or death and a choice to be committed to someone or something. However, the most important choice of survival is the factor that gives each individual their unique purpose in life, something that makes you choose to live. With a question that seems to have no perfect answer, how can one find purpose in such a flawed world? The answer is to simply find meaning from the flaws. Take the failures and successes from life and learn "to accomplish something that is at once meaningful to the self" and spread the newly-found meaning "to the world beyond the self" (33).