Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:54:34.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fundamental conditions of human existence as the ground of life's meaning: reply to Landau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2014

THADDEUS METZ
THADDEUS METZ*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, B-602 APK, University of Johannesburg, POB 524, Auckland Park, 2006, South Africa e-mail: tmetz@uj.ac.za
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Taking the good (generosity), the true (enquiry), and the beautiful (creativity) as exemplars of what can make a life noticeably meaningful, elsewhere I have advanced a principle that entails and plausibly explains all three. Specifically, I have proffered the view that great meaning in life, at least in so far as it comes from this triad, is a matter of positively orienting one's rational nature towards fundamental conditions of human existence, conditions of human life responsible for much else about it. Iddo Landau has raised important objections to this principle, arguing in particular that contouring one's rationality towards fundamentality is neither necessary nor sufficient for great meaning in life. In this article, I reply to Landau's objections to the fundamentality account of what makes life very meaningful. I thereby aim to enrich reflection about what it is about the lives of Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Picasso that made them so significant as well as to indicate how fundamentality implicitly plays a key role in theistic conceptions of meaning in life.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 111 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, E. M. (2002) ‘The meaning of life’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 51, 71–81.Google Scholar
Cottingham, John (2005) The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Gewirth, Alan (1998) Self-Fulfillment (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Hooker, Brad (2008) ‘The meaning of life: subjectivism, objectivism, and divine support’, in Athanassoulis, Nafsika & Vice, Samantha (eds) The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 184–200.Google Scholar
Hurka, Thomas (1993) Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
James, Laurence (2005) ‘Achievement and the meaningfulness of life’, Philosophical Papers, 34, 429–442.Google Scholar
Kauppinen, Antti (2012) ‘Meaningfulness and time’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82, 345–377.Google Scholar
Landau, Iddo (2013) ‘Conceptualizing great meaning in life: Metz on the good, the true, and the beautiful’, Religious Studies, 49, 505–514.Google Scholar
Mawson, Timothy (2013) ‘Recent work on the meaning of life and philosophy of religion’, Philosophy Compass, 8, 1138–1146.Google Scholar
Metz, Thaddeus (2011) ‘The good, the true and the beautiful: toward a unified account of great meaning in life’, Religious Studies, 47, 389–409.Google Scholar
Metz, Thaddeus (2013) Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Thomas (1990) ‘Metaphysical dependence, independence and perfection’, in MacDonald, Scott (ed.) Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press), 278–297.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert (1974) Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books).Google Scholar
Singer, Irving (1996) Meaning of Life, I: The Creation of Value (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Singer, Peter (1993) Practical Ethics, 2nd edn (New York: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Smuts, Aaron (2013) ‘The good cause account of the meaning of life’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 51, 536–562.Google Scholar
Steiner, Rudolf (1923) ‘Truth, beauty, goodness’, Rudolf Steiner Archive, http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19230119p01.html.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles (1989) Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Taylor, Richard (1970) Good and Evil (repr. Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).Google Scholar
Trisel, Brooke Alan (2002) ‘Futility and the meaning of life debate’, Sorites, 14, 70–84.Google Scholar