To ask “What is the meaning of life?” presupposes an affirmative answer to the question “Does life have a meaning?” Asking that question, in turn, presupposes that one has some idea of what the phrase “the meaning of life” could mean. What would it mean for life to have a meaning, if it has one? That’s the question I’d like to consider in this post.
First, when people ask questions about the meaning of life, the term “meaning” usually has the sense of an ultimate purpose or point, as in “What’s the point of it all?” We could also speak of life having an ultimate value, making an ultimate difference, ultimately mattering, having an ultimate raison d’etre, and so forth. Sometimes the point is phrased by asking why anyone should care about life.
Second, that the meaning sought for is supposed to be “ultimate” is important. Things that are ultimate have a “buck-stopping” quality. For example, the “ultimate” cause of all things, if there is such a thing, cannot itself be something that is caused. To ask, “what caused the ultimate cause?” is sheer nonsense, and shows a failure to understand what “ultimate” means. Similarly, to ask for the “ultimate” meaning of life is to ask for something for which it wouldn’t make sense to ask “what is its purpose?”
Third, questions about the meaning of life aren’t usually concerned with the meaning of life in general (“Why should it matter whether being living things?”) or even with the meaning of human life in general (“Why should it matter whether human beings exist?”). The usual intention, rather, is to ask specifically why it should matter whether I exist. That’s the sense in which the question of the meaning of life seems most gripping to many–could it be that my life doesn’t really matter?
Fourth, the usual intent of the question is for some objective ground of the meaning of one’s life–not a mere subjective ground, namely, a mere subjective feeling that one’s life matters, but an objective ground puts that subjective feeling on a firm foundation. Indeed, no one would even become troubled about the question of the meaning of life if all they were looking for was something subjective. The mere fact that they find it troubling that their life might lack a meaning shows that they already place a sufficient subjective value on their own life to take that question seriously. People who commit suicide don’t do so because they think that their life has no subjective value–the mere fact that they seriously entertain suicide (“to be or not to be?”) shows that they already place a high subjective value on themselves. But people do frequently commit suicide if they’ve become convinced that their life has no objective value, if their subjective sense of their worth doesn’t seem to them to be objectively grounded. This was probably the case with Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson.
In conclusion, what we want to know is whether an individual person’s life can have an ultimate and objective meaning, and that of a sort that could matter to that individual. In a subsequent post I’ll consider what that meaning could consist in.