AGENDA
- Last week of class--we have class meetings on Monday May 4 AND Tuesday May 5. Exam 3 is on Tuesday May 5.
- Our next module
- Cottingham
- Next reading: pay attention to notations
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Recap: Meaning in life authors
- Our meaning IN life authors set aside the meaning OF life -- worries about why we are here, what's the point, etc.
- They focus on which choices, attitudes, activities, etc., are needed for meaning IN life
- Taylor--just need passion for something
- Wolf--need passion plus objective worth
- DeBres--need to recount true life stories (etc)
- Setiya--need presence during atelic activities (etc)
- Kauppinen--need ground projects
- They all think you could meet the condition and have "meaning in life"
- example of someone with meaning in life: Tolstoy, before his crisis began
- Dissatisfied with meaning in life proposals
- But for very different reasons
John Cottingham --"The Meaning of Life and Transcendence" (2022)Thomas Nagel -- "The Absurd" (1971)Rivka Weinberg -- "Ultimate Meaning: We Don't Have it, We Can't Get it, and We Should Be Very, Very, Sad" (2021) -- Also her new book The Meaning of It All: Ultimate Meaning, Everyday Meaning, Cosmic Meaning, Death, and Time
"asking about meaning in life invites us to take a more pragmatic and piecemeal approach, and to look at various activities and pursuits within human life that we may find fulfilling or regard as meaningful. This latter approach typically takes what might be called a radically 'immanentist' perspective: the sources of meaning are to be sought entirely within the sphere of our purely human pursuits and activities." (p. 1)
terminology: immanent (within) vs. transcendent (beyond)
- Existential dimension. We are "thrown" into existence (Heidegger)
Cosmological dimension. "That we are here at all, that the universe exists at all, is a profound mystery that we long to fathom, but we know we will never, and can never, solve. (p. 2)
- Finitude dimension. "we are keenly aware of our limits, our puniness, our mortality, a tiny speck, as Pascal put it, against an infinite backdrop" (p. 2) VIDEO
- Morality dimension. We are morally flawed, subject to moral conflicts
"As finite creatures we reach out anxiously towards the infinite, which we know we can never encompass. We might say that our human mode of being is an interrogative one. What we long for is something that will answer this anxious question, that will bring us completion. If we could have an answer, then we might know the meaning of human life. But – and here is the rub – we also know that such an answer is beyond our human capacity to achieve. So there is an inherent instability or tension at the heart of the question of the meaning of life: we long for it, but we know we cannot have it. We are mired in immanence, yet we yearn for transcendence." (p. 4)
(4) Religious rituals express the longing for transcendence --
"Many traditional spiritual practices can plausibly be understood as aiming to do precisely this. They do not produce a propositional answer to the puzzle of life’s meaning, but they offer a series of formalized procedures and rituals whereby human beings are able to express how they stand in relation to the mystery that confronts them. By enacting their longing for the transcendent, they turn what might have been angry or helpless puzzlement or nihilistic despair into a joyful expression of hope, and thereby find a way of reaching towards the transcendent meaning that is longed for." (p 4)
- Catholic offertory prayer VIDEO
- note he says they express hope, and not necessarily firm belief!
"Nothing in the ritual, to be sure, can guarantee that there is indeed such a transcendent source; and nothing, to be sure, compels us in logic to adopt the path of spiritual praxis (let alone to do so in the specific form described in this liturgical example). But if we resolve to turn our back on any such path, we will, in the absence of some alternative vehicle for expressing the longing in question, be shutting down something in our nature that is not easily silenced. We will have to fall back on purely immanent sources of meaning, which may of course bring great satisfactions in their wake, but which will leave part of our nature unprovided for. And the life of a creature who longs for transcendence but is mired in immanence cannot be a fully meaningful one." (p. 6)
- note that he alludes to "alternative vehicles"
- are there alternative vehicles?
- Tolstoy's life wasn't fully meaningful until his crisis and his longing for transcendence
(6) Transcending ourselves by aiming for something better and grander is a partial solution to the sense of incompleteneess, but "does not capture the deeper character of the human urge for transcendence" (p. 7)
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More religious rituals
Meditation -- Thich Nhat Hanh -- path to kingdom of God and the pure land
Jewish blessings
