The Meaning of Life
Professor Susan Wolf provides the answer you’ve been waiting for.
What is the meaning of life?
Though quintessential, this question remains widely unpopular in academic philosophy. However, Professor Susan Wolf tackles this inquiry, proposing an answer in The Meanings of Lives. In her work, the author formulates criteria for meaningfulness, claiming that “a meaningful life… is actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged in a project (or projects) of positive value”. As a result, Wolf concludes that meaningfulness is not presumed by merely identifying your own projects as valuable. Instead, claiming that value is objective and derived beyond the individual self, requiring one to act as if there is more to existence than personal experience alone.
To explain Wolf’s account, three characters are posited as paradigms, exemplifying those whose lives are short of meaning. Most controversially, the philosopher exhibits the Bankrupt. This figure is actively involved in a project that is destined to fail, although they are unaware of this. The Bankrupt is akin to a passionate tutor lecturing a long-term student, without realizing that the pupil is intoxicated during the lessons, uninvested in learning altogether. The teacher embodies the Bankrupt as both are blindly mistaken, utterly convinced that…
