This Essay Explains A Point Of View On The Meaning Of Life.

Society tends to live day to day without much question of their own existence. Humans are born into the world and without second thought begin to live their lives, but there comes a time when individuals begin to question the reason for their being. In Richard Taylor’s, “The Meaning of Life”, Taylor explores the thought that our existence, when viewed externally without our prejudices, is fundamentally pointless. A thorough analysis of Taylor’s ideas will be given to understand the reasoning behind his thoughts, his argument will then be defended from counter arguments that state that the meaning behind any entity’s life could have any alternative meaning.

    A country singer named Randy Travis once sang in “Three Wooden Crosses”,  “It’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it’s what you leave behind you when you go.” This verse gives meaning to my life and defines what I will do when I am gone. A man by the name of Viktor Frankl writes the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In this novel, Frankl is at one of the dreadful concentration camps during the Holocaust, trying to search for his meaning of life. What gives one meaning to his or her life? One might think they have no purpose in this world however, that is not true. He or she must find the people or concepts that make them happy or give significance to their lives. The meaning of one’s life can be interpreted

And when I need my motivation I often think back to the night at the cabin. The one that got real, real fast. A wave of emotions hit us like a ton of bricks and we were a pile of depressed teens who had their own life struggles emerging out almost unstoppable with all of us crying and trying to help the other. At this moment I knew that humans are all our own little tangled ball of string and we need those around us to help us untangle it so we don’t suffocate. And thus along the way we tie our string together as we have crossed paths, endlessly creating beautifully woven blankets with all of our very important connections that have stopped to help us untie our string. I go back to the moment to us all insane, anxiety stricken, sorrowful mess and think to myself that someday I want to be an art therapist to help people. To help people that need it even when they don’t ask for it when they should. So that one day I can do some good and actually help those around me, so that one day I can help my best friends in any way I can.

Over the years, philosophers have been preoccupied with finding an answer to the meaning of life. I shall focus on three major philosophical views in my essay – Metaphysic, Ethics and Social justice. I will also discuss my personal opinions on the meaning of life. I believe the meaning of life is to give life an importance. All through recently in my life, I have pondered what the meaning is. Why am I and everyone else even on this planet?

Existentialism is a philosophy that focuses on freedom and choice along with individual existence (Mastin). This philosophy proposes that human beings are specifically what they make themselves to be, by the decisions they make. “Humans define their own meaning in life” (Mastin). French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said, “Man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be” (packet 353). Humans exercise their freedom in making reasonable choices in a world that is not so reasonable (Mastin).

In the Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” For millenniums, people sought the meaning of life; devising ideologies and doctrines one after the other, some diametrically opposite to each other, to find the ultimate and absolute purpose of human existence, trying to answer the question of all times: who in the world are human beings? Nonetheless, any possible response goes beyond human understanding; there is still no supreme destination that could be explained in any way but that of faith, hence a way neither provable nor refutable. Once assimilating the complexity of the matter, we’d better stop waiting for the unified solution and focus on setting personal goals and fill their lives with meaning, which would gradually take us to the answer.

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

“For the meaning of life differs from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment…the meaning of life always changes, but…it never ceases to be” (108,111). Victor Frankl, through his own struggle inside concentration camps, explains the belief that mankind is driven by the incessant search of meaning to their lives, even through the direst of circumstances. This search, as written by Dr. Frankl in Mans Search for Meaning, is defined as logotherapy. This form of psychotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence, the fulfillment of one’s own future, and provides a will to live and

According to Neimeyer, humans are “motivated to construct and maintain a meaningful self-narrative, which is an overarching cognitive-affective-behavioral structure that organizes the micro-narratives of everyday life into a macro-narrative that consolidates our self-understanding, establishes our characteristic range of emotions and goals, and guides our performance on the stage of the social world”(Neimeyer et al. 2010). The goal of meaning making is to re-establish a coherent self-narrative and to resolve the incongruence between the reality of the loss and one’s sense of meaning(Neimeyer et al. 2010). In a deeper sense, meaning is “the deep sense we make of things, the way we understand the world, how we articulate the overarching purpose or goal of our lives, the significance we seek in living, the core values by which we order our lives”(Kelley 2010, 877/2016). Inevitably, this goes to the theological perspective of God’s roles and feelings towards our sufferings.

Hamlet: During his bout of madness, declares that there is no meaning in life, that existence is trivial as we are victims of fate.

Presumably, since the beginning of time, we, as human beings, have tirelessly sought out answers toward a greater, predetermined and/or significant purpose in our lives. The question is still unanswered, but the desire remains—what is the point? The contradiction between searching for order, reason or existential purpose and the inability to find any type of purpose in an essentially meaningless and indifferent universe is what French philosopher, Albert Camus, considered “Absurd.” Any hopeful searching for concrete meanings is met with the discouraging and disheartening realization that there are no true meanings. For many of us, the idea of the world being made with no fated purpose or that any individual effort made toward changing the

The reason we search for meaning comes almost innately. In other words, it is as if we end up on the journey for purpose without really trying and when we do try, it is just as exhausting. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, expresses that we should try to question this journey because it is a sign of what he considers to be the ultimate pathway to enlightenment. He states, "this immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another" (Kant, 1). In other words, Kant knows we are all capable of considering the meaning of life but we never take the chance or courage to leap. He also feels that society often limits us to think this way and therefore we all become accustomed to remaining on what Paul Tillich refers to as “the surface” which will be explained in the further noting how experience effects our

“Why are we here, what is the purpose of life?” Questions like these have haunted human beings for millennia. How people answer questions such as these can determine the course of their lives. The answers, of course, are as individual as are people. For me, the answers revolve around three things that I consider the most important in life: to know God, to know yourself, and to know your part or calling.

A person’s purpose in life evolves overtime, and can be change by life’s experience. Without the purpose in life, one can feel lost, out

The universal question since the onset of civilization has always been what the meaning of life is. The answers put forward by people in today's society greatly differ from the answers of the Roman and Greek civilizations of the past. As much as everyone will always question themselves at one point in life about life’s purpose, the contributions of great philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Roman Stoics cannot be left out in the beliefs and theories that give life value. Each of the theories gives a different perspective on the meaning of life. Life without meaning is arguably equivalent to death; in other words, if life has no meaning why live when you will eventually die and just vanish. Over the years philosophers have been occupied in finding the ultimate meaning of life. This paper analyses three major philosophical views; Theism Nihilism and Subjectivism, and personal opinions on the meaning of life. Life without meaning is arguably equivalent to death; in other words, if life has no meaning why live when you will eventually die and just vanish.