Some writers have described human beings as participating in the universe waking up or serving as the means by which the universe comes to know itself. In this paper I argue that this idea can be given a straightforward explanation with minimal metaphysical commitments. As long as one grants that the universe has a kind of unity and that human beings are conscious, it is possible to see human beings as vehicles for the universe's consciousness and knowledge of itself. I also argue that this idea can be useful for atheists because it can satisfy what Thomas Nagel calls ‘the yearning for cosmic reconciliation’ (2010: 3) better than secular humanism can.

Up to now, a very large majority of work in the religious philosophy of life's meaning has presumed a conception of God that is Abrahamic. In contrast, in this article I critically discuss some of the desirable and undesirable facets of Traditional African Religion's salient conceptions of God as they bear on meaning in life. Given an interest in a maximally meaningful life, and supposing meaning would come from fulfilling God's purpose for us, would it be reasonable to prefer God as characteristically conceived by African philosophers of religion to exist instead of the Abrahamic conception of God? At this stage of enquiry, I answer that, in respect of the range of people to whom God's purpose would apply, a more African view of God would plausibly offer a greater meaning, but that, concerning what the content of God's purpose would be, the Abrahamic view appears to offer a greater one. I conclude by reflecting on this mixed verdict and by suggesting respects in which non-purposive facets of the African and Abrahamic conceptions of God could also have implications for life's meaning.

Here I speak in favor of the view that life's meaning can be found in the pursuit of pleasure. I first present an argument for this view that is grounded in a traditional concept of meaning. To help ease remaining concerns about accepting it, I then draw attention to four things the view does not imply: (1) that we have a reason to take hedonistic theories of meaning seriously; (2) that meaning can be found in the deeply immoral, the deeply ignorant, or the deeply repulsive pursuit of pleasure; (3) that there is a significantly easier route to meaning than the pursuit of morality, the pursuit of knowledge, or the pursuit of art; and (4) that meaning can be found in pursuits that involve only baser aspects of human nature.

Herbert McCabe was not an academic, he was a teacher and a preacher. He was a scholar also, but aiming to the truth for its own sake and, subsequently, for his own life improvement. Not in order to be ‘up-to-date’ with the intellectual fashions of the moment or to flatter his peers. Therefore he focused on the classics, most of all on Aquinas. The result of McCabe's peculiar intellectual attitude was the vast amount of original and impressive ideas he conceived and conveyed despite having written little, in terms of the number of texts and the length of them. The right tribute of praise to a thinker is the presentation of his/her ideas, the test of truth, coherence, originality and power they have in explaining the reality in which we live. This is one of the things that strikes a reader of McCabe's writings. While it is hard to name a single original idea of many authors in vogue, and of most of them only one, it is easy to name many ideas from McCabe. This paper focuses on two of them: 1) freedom as based on knowledge; 2) the meaning of life.

Attending to ongoing debates about the “meaning of life” in Ecclesiastes, this article determines how Qoheleth addressed meaningfulness by drawing on a threefold scheme of definitions for life’s meaning. These definitions are derived from psychological research and used to argue that all three conceptions appear within the book of Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth was primarily concerned with life’s “coherence,” which depends on predictable and reliable patterns in life that render it sensible, yet he also addressed life’s “purpose” and “significance.” While primarily determining how these three forms of meaning, along with their attendant ideas, are handled within Ecclesiastes itself, this article also demonstrates how resources from psychological research help to resolve debates among biblical interpreters, who agree far more than it at first appears once clearer definitions of “meaning” are employed.

Philosophers of religion have begun to explore the value question of whether God’s existence would add to, detract from, or have no impact on the value of our world. The Meaningful Life Argument is one of the most promising arguments in support of the view that God’s existence would make the world worse, at least for certain individuals. I offer an objectivized version of the Meaningful Life Argument and show why recent objections leveled against it by Myron A. Penner do not apply to this version.

Indian thought conceives of life in four normative stages: of student, householder, forest-dweller and renouncer. A metaphysical theory related to the conception of life-stages is that of the ends or purposes of life: appropriate conduct, material well-being, physical satisfaction and liberation. The theory of the ends of life is reconstructed here in the light of contemporary philosophical discussions about the meaning of life. The first three ends are part of a world-oriented attitude; the last end, of world-transcending contemplation. Among age-neutral and age-specific ways of relating life stages and life ends, that of taking old age as the time for the renunciatory stage is important and is examined in the context of the two main theories of meaning: world-oriented and world-transcending. Old age is secondary to earlier stages in a world-oriented theory, more significant in the world-transcendent one. However, both theories, seen independently, are paradoxical. In a synthesis, the world-transcendence of renunciation in old age is paramount in Indian thought, but worldly action is significant because renunciation depends on the richness of the life renounced. This reconstruction of an ancient ideal is offered as a philosophical paradigm for transculturally relevant attitudes to life in old age.