Does life have a meaning?
Given meaning, meaning to create, or absurd
Does life have a meaning? Philosophers give 3 main answers: a given meaning, a meaning to create and the absurd. AskPhilosophy presents 15 arguments, from Qohélet (l'Ecclésiaste) to Susan Wolf, reconstructed step by step, logic-checked and verified word for word against their original texts.
The 3 possible answers
Each column is one way of answering the question: what it holds and the philosophers who defend it. Click a column to see only its arguments.
Life has a meaning that does not depend on us: God, nature, the order of the world.
Thomas d'Aquin, Marc Aurèle, Léon Tolstoï, Viktor Frankl…
The universe gives life no meaning, but each of us can give it one through our choices.
Nietzsche, Sartre, Russell, Kierkegaard…
Life has no meaning, and we must live lucidly with that absence.
Camus, Schopenhauer, Qohélet (l'Ecclésiaste), Thomas Nagel
The arguments
Click an argument to see it step by step, with the objections and replies.
A given meaning
Life has a meaning that does not depend on us: God, nature, the order of the world.
5 argumentsA life without a final end is not possible
We always act for some end, and a chain of ends cannot go back forever: there must be a last one.
Either Providence or atoms
With Providence, what happens serves the whole; with atoms, it happens anyway: either way, no reason to be troubled.
When everything seems vain: meaning found again in faith
Reason only compares the finite with the finite; only faith links the finite to the infinite, which meaning requires.
Meaning is not invented, it is discovered
Meaning lies in the world, not in our head: we find it through a work, an encounter, or our attitude to unavoidable suffering.
Loving what is worth loving
A life has meaning when one is actively engaged with something that truly deserves to be loved.
A meaning to create
The universe gives life no meaning, but each of us can give it one through our choices.
6 arguments"The greatest weight": would you want to live your life again?
A meaning we create is worth something only if it survives living our life again exactly: we curse it, or love it enough to want it back.
"It is yours to make sense of"
Without God, no good is written in advance; humans have only themselves to invent values and give them meaning.
Meaning without design: a free man's worship
The world has no purpose; bowing to it is a slave's submission, whereas serving chosen ideals gives life meaning.
A truth for me
An objective truth stays cold and indifferent to my life; to know what to do, I need a truth that is true for me.
Sisyphus and the stone he wants to roll
If Sisyphus loved rolling his stone, his life would have meaning for him, and meaning felt by the one living is real meaning.
Seen from far away, the Earth is a dot: no help will come from elsewhere, the responsibility is ours
Seen from afar, the Earth is a dot with no privileged place and no help comes from elsewhere: the responsibility is ours.
The absurd
Life has no meaning, and we must live lucidly with that absence.
4 argumentsLiving without appeal
The absurd is a confrontation between the mind and the world; suicide, like the leap toward God, ends it instead of keeping it.
A business that does not cover its costs
To want is to lack, and so to suffer; pleasure is only a brief pause in that suffering, so life costs more than it earns.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity
Nothing we do under the sun leaves anything lasting, and the same fate awaits the wise and the fool.
The absurd comes from stepping back, not from the shortness of life
Absurdity comes from the clash between our unavoidable seriousness and an outside view from which it seems arbitrary.
Other philosophers' positions arrive as profiles are completed. No position is presented as the winner.