The question of the meaning of life is an old one. However, it is unclear exactly what the question means. Normally, we have little trouble with meaning. Clouds mean rain. Joe meant to warn me. Sentences, words, signs and signals have conventional meanings. The question of the meaning of life is different. It is not simply the definition of a word that we seek. Philosophers and those drawn to various religions tend to be the ones to ask it, and the question can be taken on three levels. We can ask about the meaning of all life, of human life, and of the individual’s life.
I would argue that the question has little meaning when taken in the first two senses. Life has no meaning in itself, it is simply here in the universe. The same goes for human life considered as the life of a natural species. Species come and go in the geological record, and it is not clear what meaning they can have. However, when it comes to questioning the meaning of an individual’s life, then the question comes alive.
Notoriously, in philosophy, the question of meaning is difficult and complicated. What is the Meaning of Being? What is the Being of Meaning? What is meaning anyway? Does it even make sense to ask about the meaning of life? If we decide that the question makes sense, what sense does it make? Various ideas are at play. Anxiety appears to be the motivation.
Sometimes we are worried that all our efforts will be for nothing if life has no meaning. A meaningless life may appear pointless, ‘superfluous,’ or ‘de trop’. Existentialists and absurdist playwrights hammered away at this theme with great gusto.
The question of the meaning of the lives of humans arises more or less acutely at different historical junctures. At times of great religious devoutness, the question is less pressing. Religion has an easier time than philosophy with the question of meaning. First, in religion, the question clearly has meaning; second, the question has an answer, and that answer is a resounding ‘Yes.’ Gods or spirits render mute the question of the meaning of human life, by folding it within a higher-than-animal purpose. We may be the ones asking the question, but the answer has always been foretold. There is actually no question about the meaning of human life.
Philosophy cannot take this way out. The question is a live one. If there is no ‘foreordained’ meaning to life, then what sort of meaning is there? It is not that we have the option of living in a world totally devoid of meaning; for, if that were possible, the question of meaning would not even come up. I can only worry about the possible meaninglessness of life if I suppose or hope it might have a meaning after all.
David Hamlyn, my old supervisor in graduate school, used to remark that we get our first idea of causality from our own powers to make changes in the world around us. You want to roll a rock. You push on it and it rolls. You learn from experience which rock will roll and which will not, no matter how hard you push it. We think of causality as ‘out there’ but our understanding of the concept begins within us.
Similarly, people look for the meaning of human life, and would be glad to find it ‘out there’, ready made, a transcendent meaning that surpasses mere animal existence. This is to get things backwards. We are the ones who bring meanings into the world, and then, looking around, find them there.
Human beings are little meaning machines who cannot help but create and then leave meanings on everything that pertains to a human world. This morning I am sitting, typing on my laptop, in the courtyard of a hotel in Los Angeles, looking out on a beautiful blue-sky, palm tree morning by the pool. The only reason I am comfortable here and now, is that everything around has a fairly stable meaning. My meaning machine is turned on and working. If I were to come down suddenly with early stage dementia, and lose many of the concepts by which I now understand my being in the world, in Los Angeles, beside a hotel pool, I would be as frightened as a small child abandoned in a strange place. The interesting question is not how human life can have meaning, but how it could ever be a worry that it might have none.