Debate: Where does meaning come from?

Meaning comes from God or a transcendent order

Life is meaningful because it has a purpose given by something beyond us. Without that, it would be meaningless.

Best argument

Only a source beyond us can give life a meaning that is not arbitrary or temporary. If everything ends in death and the heat death of the universe, nothing we do seems to matter ultimately. Many religious traditions, and philosophers like Al-Ghazali in his account of his own crisis of doubt, located meaning in a relation to the divine.

Strongest objection

Being assigned a purpose by someone else does not obviously make a life meaningful; a creature designed to serve as food has a purpose but not a meaningful life. And if meaning requires God, the many who live richly meaningful lives without belief seem to be mistaken about their own lives.

Defended by

Al-Ghazali, Leo Tolstoy, Søren Kierkegaard

Meaning is objective but natural

Lives can be meaningful through engagement with things that are genuinely valuable: love, knowledge, beauty, helping others. No cosmic purpose is needed.

Best argument

Susan Wolf argues that meaning arises when you are drawn to something that is genuinely worth being drawn to: when you love something that is actually worth loving. A life devoted to curing disease is meaningful in a way that a life devoted to counting blades of grass is not, however much the counter enjoys it. This fits our judgments about which lives are meaningful.

Strongest objection

Who decides what is objectively valuable? The view needs objective values, which raises all the difficulties of moral realism.

Defended by

Susan Wolf, Aristotle, Thaddeus Metz

Meaning is created

There is no given meaning. Each person must create meaning through their own choices and commitments.

Best argument

Jean-Paul Sartre argued that we are condemned to be free: with no fixed human nature or divine plan, we define ourselves through what we do. Friedrich Nietzsche urged us to become creators of value after the 'death of God'. Meaning made by us is not lesser; it is the only kind that could be genuinely ours.

Strongest objection

If meaning is whatever you choose, then a life devoted to collecting bottle caps is as meaningful as one devoted to justice, provided it is chosen. That seems wrong. And if meaning is invented, it may feel too flimsy to bear the weight of real hardship.

Defended by

Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir

The absurd

Humans demand meaning; the universe offers none. The right response is neither false hope nor despair, but defiant, lucid living.

Best argument

Albert Camus described the absurd as the confrontation between our longing for meaning and a world that answers with silence. Religion and philosophy that promise hidden meaning are a kind of escape. Instead, we should live fully with the absurd, in revolt, freedom and passion, like Sisyphus pushing his rock. See the myth of Sisyphus.

Strongest objection

If life has no meaning, why is revolt better than giving up? Camus's prescription seems to bring values back in through the side door.

Defended by

Albert Camus

Nihilism

Life has no meaning, and no meaning can be made. Nothing ultimately matters.

Best argument

Seen from far enough away, every human concern shrinks to nothing. Thomas Nagel noted that from the perspective of the universe, our lives are absurdly small. If nothing matters from that perspective, our sense that things matter may be an illusion.

Strongest objection

Nagel himself argued the opposite lesson: we can never fully take up the cosmic perspective, and the clash between it and our engaged lives is what makes life absurd, not meaningless. Many nihilists, moreover, go on caring, which suggests that the claim that nothing matters is not one anyone can actually live by.

Defended by

Arthur Schopenhauer, Ray Brassier

Where you stand

Where does meaning come from?

Choose one to see how people answer.

For the full background, variations and open questions, read the entry: Does life have meaning without being given one?.