The Purpose of Life

A Theistic Perspective

Stewart Goetz

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441144225
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

What does philosophy have to say on the question of the meaning of life? This is one of the founding questions of philosophy and has remained a central problem for philosophers from antiquity through to the Middle Ages and modern period. It may surprise some readers that there has, in fact, been a good deal of agreement on the answer to this question: the meaning of life is happiness. The Purpose of Life is a serious but engaging exploration and defense of this answer. The central idea that shapes The Purpose of Life is Augustine's assertion that "It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains that all men desire to be happy." In working through the ramifications of this answer, Stewart Goetz provides a survey of the debates surrounding life's meaning, from both theists and atheists alike.

1

Clarifying the question

What is the meaning of life?

Several years ago, many of my relatives gathered to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Present at the celebration were some aunts, uncles, and cousins whom I had not seen in 25 or 30 years. I chatted at varying lengths with most of them, but one conversation with a cousin was especially intriguing. After we had exchanged pleasantries and inquired about each other’s families, we turned to discussing our jobs. “So what’s your line of work, Stewart?” my cousin asked. “I’m a philosophy professor,” I answered. Not many people know what to say in response to that answer, and my cousin didn’t either. After staring at me briefly with a good bit of unease, he jokingly shot back “So, what’s the meaning of life?” I smiled, and said “Well, you might be interested to know that there has actually been a good bit of agreement about the answer to that question down through the ages.” “Really?” he responded. “Yes,” I continued, “Many who have thought about the question have concluded that happiness is the meaning of life.” I will never forget my cousin’s reply: It was an extended “Hmmm.”

In the fifth century, the Christian philosopher/theologian St Augustine wrote “For who wishes anything for any other reason than that he may become happy? … It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains that all men desire to be happy” (Augustine 1993, IV. 23; X.1). Augustine’s comment has always seemed to me to be eminently reasonable, and the overall aim of this book is to explain why it is plausible to hold that perfect happiness is the meaning of life. In saying that Augustine’s answer has always seemed to me to be eminently reasonable, I mean literally that: it has seemed reasonable in the sense that it has seemed to me to be convincing in its own right, without any appeal to religion in the form of either a religious text or a special revelation from God to either a particular individual or a group. Thus, while the answer that I will give to the question “What is the meaning of life?” is a religious one, in the sense that it requires God’s existence and creative activity, it will be a religious answer that is arrived at through the exercise of reason alone. In this sense, it can rightly be understood as the result of an exercise in what is broadly thought of as natural theology, which is traditionally taken to be the use of reason to argue for the existence of God. I say “broadly thought of as natural theology” because what I argue in this book is in no way meant to be an argument for the existence of God in the narrow sense of a rational demonstration from either incontrovertible or undeniably true premises. Rather, what I argue is that if we are to believe that life is ultimately meaningful or nonabsurd (and by “ultimately” I mean roughly “in the end, when all is said and done”), then we will be rationally driven to admit that God exists.

To begin my exercise in reason, I turn in the next section to explaining what I think is being asked when someone like my cousin queries “What is the meaning of life?” I summarize three different treatments of this question for the purpose of clarifying what I take to be its most plausible sense. In considering these three answers, I assume that a person who asks “What is the meaning of life?” is concerned about the meaning of his or her own life. Questions about the meaning of life in a broader sense (e.g. “What, if anything, is the meaning of the human race or the universe as a whole?”), if they are of interest to anyone, are not the subject matter of the question that interests me in this book.

Clarifying questions and answers to them

Consider the following three questions:

1 What is the meaning of life?

2 What makes life meaningful?

3 Is life meaningful?

While questions (1) through (3) are similar on their surfaces, they can reasonably be understood to be asking different things. Take (1). A plausible reading of it is “What is the purpose of life?” (2) can reasonably be read as asking “What makes life worth living?” And (3) naturally translates into something like “Does life make any sense in terms of things fitting together in an intelligible way?” Though questions (1) through (3) ask different things, they are interrelated in the sense that how one answers one of them goes a long way toward determining how one answers the other two. At least, that is what I will attempt to establish in what follows. To help answer these three questions, I turn to various philosophers’ treatments of life’s meaning.

In a fascinating discussion of the meaning of life, the philosopher Richard Taylor suggests that to answer the question “What is a meaningful life?” we should first focus on the question “What is a meaningless life?” (Taylor 2000, 167). To answer the latter question, Taylor has us consider a mythical story that was told by the ancient Greeks. According to this myth, a cruel king, Sisyphus, betrayed divine secrets to mortals. As punishment for his betrayal, he was condemned by the gods to roll a stone to the top of a hill, only to have it roll back down, and then once again to roll it to the top, only to have it roll back down again, ad infinitum. If ever there were a meaningless existence, this would seem to be it. Taylor suggests that the reason why Sisyphus’ life seems meaningless is that Sisyphus never accomplishes anything. Hence, it immediately comes to mind that one way to introduce meaningfulness into Sisyphus’s life is to have him get the stone to stay on the top of the hill. In the same vein of thought, it is possible to go a step further and suppose that Sisyphus not only gets the stone to remain on top of the hill, but he also incorporates it into a temple that he is building to the gods. According to Taylor, at a minimum, we learn from the story of Sisyphus that meaninglessness is endless futility in the attempt to accomplish a purpose, goal, or end. In contrast, meaningfulness involves not only the idea of a purpose or goal, but also the achievement, accomplishment, or satisfaction of it. Without the achievement of a purpose one is trying to accomplish, meaningfulness is only a hoped-for reality.

Taylor, however, is not done with the story of Sisyphus. He believes there is more that we can learn from it. Hence, he suggests that instead of altering the story by having Sisyphus get the stone to stay on top of the hill and, perhaps, incorporate it into a temple, we tweak it in a different way. This time, we keep Sisyphus continually rolling the stone to the top of the hill only to have it roll back down again, ad infinitum, but implant a desire in him to roll stones. Taylor admits that such a desire would be strange to us, but we can nevertheless suppose for the purpose of our trying to understand what it is that makes for a meaningful life that Sisyphus desires to roll stones. Given this desire, Taylor says that Sisyphus’ life once again appears meaningful, because in this case he desires that he roll stones and satisfies or fulfills this desire (fulfilling a desire is achieving the desired purpose). Sisyphus’ life is a meaningful one because he satisfies his preeminent desire in life. Taylor goes on to point out that rolling stones is an action or activity and that Sisyphus’ life would be meaningful even if his action never results in the stone’s remaining on top of the hill to be incorporated into a temple. The action itself could be the final purpose that is desired and whose accomplishment makes Sisyphus’ life meaningful.

The myth of Sisyphus mentions the gods, but as far as Taylor is concerned, they are an essential ingredient of neither the story nor what we can learn from it about a meaningful life. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre believes otherwise (Sartre 1995). According to him, the existence of the gods or God is all important. To explain why, he asks us to consider an artifact (he suggests a paper-cutter, e.g. a pair of scissors) that is made by an artisan (a creator or designer). According to Sartre, the artifact exists and has a purpose because it originates with an idea in the mind of the artisan who makes it. In Sartre’s well-known terminology, the artifact’s essence (the content of the idea of the artifact that is in the artificer’s mind) precedes its existence. Like Taylor, then, Sartre believes that what is at the heart of understanding the meaning of life is the notion of a purpose. Unlike Taylor, however, Sartre suggests that the idea of a purpose must be linked to the concept of a human person being an artifact. Thus, a human person can have a meaningful life only if his or her existence is the result of the creative activity of an artisan. Sartre believes that an artisan of this kind is what most people naturally have in mind when they think of God.

Finally, I turn to a thought-provoking treatment of the meaning of life by the philosopher Thomas Nagel (Nagel 2000). Nagel believes that to understand correctly what is at issue in thinking about the meaning of life, we must first be clear about a typical understanding of the concept of absurdity, which he illustrates with the following examples:

In ordinary life a situation is absurd when it includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension or aspiration and reality: someone gives a complicated speech in support of a motion that has already been passed; a notorious criminal is made president of a major philanthropic foundation; you declare your love over the telephone to a recorded announcement; as you are being knighted, your pants fall down. (Nagel 2000, 178)

As Nagel goes on to point out, when one finds oneself in an absurd situation that involves a desire, one typically thinks about trying to change that situation by either changing the world so that it fulfills one’s desire or changing (getting rid of) the desire itself. Similarly, if life is meaningless or absurd because of an unfulfilled desire, one is naturally inclined to think that one might eliminate meaninglessness and introduce meaningfulness either by getting rid of the desire or by changing the world so that it brings about the satisfaction of that desire. As Nagel sees things, however, what it is natural to think in this context is mistaken. The reason it is mistaken has to do with a peculiar quality of being human that ensures that one’s life will be forever absurd. This peculiar quality is the capacity to “step back” and reflectively consider one’s life and question it.

To explain what he has in mind, Nagel has us contrast the practice of justifying the various pursuits in our lives in terms of purposes with the reflective act of questioning the justifications themselves. For example, in life we justify taking aspirin by the purpose that it will eliminate a headache and justify preventing a child from touching a hot burner for the purpose of preventing bodily harm and pain. Absurdity in such contexts would arise if the action taken were not justified by the purpose, in which case there would be a discrepancy or mismatch. However, part of what makes us human is our self-consciousness and the ability to step back and ask higher-order questions from the outside, as it were, about the justifications of our pursuits in life. What we discover with this backward step is that our practice of providing justificatory purposes presupposes that we take those purposes seriously. We are taking those purposes seriously, “whether we are concerned primarily with fame, pleasure, virtue, luxury, triumph, beauty, justice, knowledge, salvation, or mere survival” (Nagel 2000, 178). Each of us lives his or her life with a serious regard for our purposes, even if the purpose were that we not take anything seriously. Now, in light of the distinctive capacity to step back and reflectively consider our lives with their pursuits and justifying purposes, each of us at some point inevitably asks “Why am I taking this purpose seriously? What justifies my doing so?” According to Nagel, it is at this higher level of questioning that a new form of inescapable philosophical absurdity is encountered. As has already been indicated, we judge a situation in life involving a pursuit and its explanatory purpose absurd when that pursuit and the purpose that explains it are mismatched or discrepant (e.g. one person justifies killing another for the purpose of getting the latter’s gym shoes). With the step back, however, life is absurd because we lack a standard of evaluation in light of which we are nonarbitrarily able to justify taking seriously the purposes that we have in life. Thus, there is no nonarbitrary, final answer to questions about the seriousness with which we embrace the purposes that explain our pursuits in life. From Nagel’s perspective, “[t]here does not appear to be any conceivable world (containing us) about which unsettlable doubts [concerning these purposes and the seriousness with which we take them] could not arise” (Nagel 2000, 181). And this is ultimately what makes life absurd. There is a noneliminable discrepancy between the need to have a final nonarbitrary answer (in the form of a standard of evaluation) to the regress of questions about the seriousness with which we approach our lives and the unavailability of such an answer. All of us are such that we will always take our purposes seriously without being able to provide a regress-stopping, rationally convincing answer for why we do so. This inability is, concludes Nagel, just part and parcel of the human predicament. And this would be the case in any world we might inhabit, even one in which all of our desires were fulfilled and purposes achieved. But this philosophical absurdity is not something that either calls for heroism in fighting or should produce despair. It is just part of the irony of being human that our lives are ultimately absurd or meaningless in the way described.

Perfect happiness

With the contributions of Taylor, Sartre, and Nagel as a backdrop, I develop in this section a position on the meaning of life that will make clear what I will assume is being asked when someone like my cousin queries “What is the meaning of life?” To develop this position, it is necessary first to clarify the concepts of an intrinsic and an instrumental good. “Good” (like “evil”) is a value concept, and to say that something is intrinsically good is to say that it is good in value on its own or in itself, where “good on its own” and “good in itself” mean something like “it is good and its goodness is not explained by the goodness of anything else.” Similarly, something is intrinsically evil if it is evil in value on its own or in itself and, therefore, its evilness is not explained by the evilness of anything else.

Corresponding to the concept of an intrinsic good (evil) is the idea of an instrumental good (evil). An instrumental good (evil) is one whose goodness (evilness) is explained by the goodness (evilness) of something else. In the case of an instrumental good, its goodness is ultimately explained either by the intrinsic good to which it gives rise or the intrinsic evil that it prevents, diminishes, or eliminates. An instrumental evil ultimately derives its evilness from either the intrinsic evil to which it gives rise or the intrinsic good that it prevents, diminishes, or eliminates. Given that something is good (evil), instrumental good (evil), and intrinsic good (evil) are logically related concepts in the sense that the concept of an intrinsic good (evil) is the logical opposite of an instrumental good (evil) (however, see the addendum at the end of this chapter). If something is good but not intrinsically good, then it is instrumentally good (and vice versa), and if something is evil but not intrinsically evil, then it is instrumentally evil (and vice versa). From here on, to avoid repetition and the constant use of parentheses, I will, for the most part, discuss intrinsic and instrumental value properties only in terms of goodness.

Given the concept of an intrinsic good, how is it related to the idea of an ultimate or final purpose, goal, or end? The relationship is fairly straightforward. An ultimate purpose or final goal for a person is an intrinsic good, and this entails that an individual pursues that purpose or goal for its own sake. Thus, if X is good and a purpose or goal that one is seeking, it can be asked whether one is pursuing X as a means to something else, Y, which is good. If one is, then one is thinking of X as an instrumental good and not as an intrinsic good. It is an instrumental good because it is sought as a means to Y. Of Y, it can now be asked whether it is sought as a means to something else, Z, which is good. If it is, then it too is an instrumental good. If Z is pursued for its own sake, and not as a means to anything else, then it is a final or ultimate goal and is an intrinsic good.

One other relationship involving intrinsic goodness needs clarification. This is the relationship between what is intrinsically good and desire. Many, if not most, people who have thought about the relationship between desire and what is of value have concluded that desire and goodness are conceptually linked in the sense that desire is ultimately and in principle directed at obtaining something that is intrinsically good (and in avoiding what is intrinsically evil). Stated slightly differently, if something is desired for its own sake, then it is intrinsically good. Given that this is the case and an instrumental good is a means to an intrinsic good, desire for an instrumental good is rooted in and intelligible in the light of a desire for the intrinsic good to which that instrumental good is a means.

With the idea of an intrinsic good and ultimate purpose in hand, we can revisit and assess Nagel’s analysis of the meaning of life, which I summarized in the previous section. According to Nagel, each of us inevitably takes his or her life seriously insofar as we take seriously the purposes that justify our pursuits in life, and we inevitably step back and ask about these purposes “Am I justified in taking them seriously?” Nagel claims that what ultimately makes life absurd is the fact that this question has no satisfactory (nonarbitrary) answer because we lack a nonarbitrary standard of evaluation in light of which to formulate an answer. The only way to terminate the asking of the question is arbitrarily to draw a line and say “Thus far and no further.” But contrary to what Nagel argues, if something is intrinsically good and, therefore, rightly pursued for its own sake, then it is reasonable to maintain that at some point the correct answer t...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Clarifying the question
• 2 Perfect happiness and its atheistic critics
• 3 Perfect happiness and its theistic critics
• 4 Purposeful explanation and naturalism
• 5 The problem of evil
• 6 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index