Questioning the Meaning of Life

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`Where did we come from?', `Why are we here?', `Where are we going?'. These are questions which surface, centre stage, at some point in most people's lives. For philosophers, and others, they constitute the core problem known traditionally as the Meaning of Life. It might be thought that the first task in considering the question of the `Meaning of Life' is to define the key terms: `Life' and `Meaning'. However, the meanings of `Meaning' are many; and `Life' itself could be seen as not so much a separate entity, but rather, the totality of those meanings to which I have alluded. Anyway, I shall take `Life' in this context to mean HUMAN life, and the meaning of this life as, specifically, the condition of our existence so far as we bring this into question. The question of life's meaning is not simply an exercise in intellectual curiosity; it arises when life is seen as a problem, and it is one that it is imperative to solve. For example, Albert Camus, in his `The Myth of Sisyphus', sees the question as linked closely to the problem of suicide: Why commit suicide? Why not, if life has no meaning? A vivid description of the state of mind behind the question is also to be found in Tolstoy's `My Confession', where the great Russian enquires, `Is there any meaning in life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?' It could even be said that those for whom life has never appeared problematic, have not really found - nor can they ever know - the meaning of life. For these people Life is just a matter of `living', and the question of its meaning simply does not arise. As the question of meaning is not purely speculative, but practical, it is also related to the question of VALUE. The ethical question could be... ... middle of paper ... ... consider the question of the meaning of life is itself meaningless, at least in so far as it seems to be incapable of coherent expression. Notwithstanding the diverse nature of the responses to this question, it is reasonable to expect that it will continue to exercise the minds of many people for a long time to come. BIBLIOGRAPHY Camus, Albert. THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS (Pub. Penguin Books, London. 1975) Hemingway, Ernest. THE ESSENTIAL HEMINGWAY (Pub. Jonathan Cape, London. 1970. pp. 373-76) Nagel, Thomas. 'The Absurd' [in] THE MEANING OF LIFE, [ed.]E. D. Klemke. (Pub. Oxford University Press, New York. 1981. Tolstoy, Leo. A CONFESSION (Pub. Penguin Books, London. 1987) Wittgenstein, Ludwig. TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS (Pub. Routledge, London. 1995) Yeats, William Butler. SELECTED POETRY (Ed. Timothy Webb. Pub. Penguin Books, London. 1991)

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