Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (Kindle highlights)

The most obvious examples of what I have in mind occur when we act out of love for individuals about whom we deeply and especially care. (p. 4)
I act neither out of self-interest nor out of duty or any other sort of impersonal or impartial reason. Rather, I act out of love. (p. 4)
My claim then is that reasons of love—whether of human individuals, other living creatures, or activities, ideals or objects of other sorts—have a distinctive and important role in our lives. They are not to be assimilated to reasons of self-interest or reasons of morality. (p. 5)
Not all actions that are motivated and guided by reasons of love are justified, however. Not all reasons of love are good reasons. (p. 6)
Roughly, I want to defend the claim that acting in a way that positively engages with a worthy object of love can be perfectly justified even if it does not maximally promote either the agent’s welfare or the good of the world, impartially assessed. (p. 6)
According to the conception of meaningfulness I wish to propose, meaning arises from loving objects worthy of love and engaging with them in a positive way. (p. 8)
According to my conception, meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness. (p. 9)
Even a person who is so engaged, however, will not live a meaningful life if the objects or activities with which she is so occupied are worthless. (p. 9)
Understood this way, the first view, (“find your passion”) may be understood as a way of advocating something similar to the subjective element contained in my proposed analysis of meaningfulness, while the second view, (“be part of something larger than yourself”) urges us to satisfy the objective condition. (p. 11)
My own proposal, that we recognize a category of value that is not reducible to happiness or morality, and that is realized by loving objects worthy of love and engaging with them in a positive way, is offered as a refinement or as an alternative to these more popular forms of advice, and it is easiest to express this in terms that identify the category of value in question with meaningfulness. (p. 13)
Still, the fact that most of us would willingly put up with a great deal of stress, anxiety, and vulnerability to pain in order to pursue our passions can be seen as providing support for the idea that fulfillment is indeed a great and distinctive good in life. (p. 15)
That second view tells us that the best sort of life is one that is involved in, or contributes to something “larger than oneself.” (p. 18)
According to this interpretation, the point is to recommend that one get involved not with something larger than oneself, but rather with something other than oneself—that is, with something the value of which is independent of and has its source outside of oneself. (p. 19)
A meaningful life is a life that a.) the subject finds fulfilling, and b.) contributes to or connects positively with something the value of which has its source outside the subject. (p. 20)
On the one hand, I can think of the substance in Sisyphus’s veins as inducing delusions that make Sisyphus see something in stone-rolling that isn’t really there. On the other hand, the drug in his veins may have lowered his intelligence and reduced his imaginative capacity, thus eliminating his ability to perceive the dullness and futility of his labors or to compare them to other more challenging or worthwhile things that, had the gods not condemned him, he might have been doing instead. (p. 23)
The popular view that takes meaningfulness to consist in finding one’s passion and pursuing it can be taken as a way to emphasize the role that love, or subjective attraction, plays in meaning. The equally familiar view that associates meaning with a contribution to or involvement with something larger than oneself can be understood as emphasizing the role of objective value or worth. (p. 26)
What, if anything, is so good, so distinctively good, about loving objects worthy of love and being able actively to engage with them in a positive way? (p. 26)
Contemplation of one’s mortality or of one’s cosmic insignificance can call up the sort of feelings I have in mind. The thought that one’s life is like a bubble that, upon bursting, will vanish without a trace can lead some people to despair. (p. 28)
The feeling of being occupied with something of independent value, the engagement in an activity that takes one out of oneself, it seems to me, can be thrilling. (p. 29)
If one has to struggle to get enough to eat for oneself and one’s family, to get shelter from the cold, to fight a painful disease, concern over whether one is engaged in projects of independent worth may seem a luxury. The fact that an interest in a meaningful life may not surface until one’s more basic needs are met is no reason to dismiss its importance, however. (p. 31)
By engaging in projects of independent value, by protecting, preserving, creating, and realizing value the source of which lies outside of ourselves, we can satisfy these interests. (p. 31)
According to what I called the Fitting Fulfillment View, a life is meaningful insofar as its subjective attractions are to things or goals that are objectively worthwhile. That is, one’s life is meaningful insofar as one finds oneself loving things worthy of love and able to do something positive about it. A life is meaningful, as I also put it, insofar as it is actively and lovingly engaged in projects of worth. (p. 34)
Elitism and parochialism are dangers that we need to be wary of, especially perhaps when making judgments about the relative value of what other people do with their lives. But we can minimize these dangers if we keep our fallibility in mind, if we regard our judgments as tentative, and if we remind ourselves, when necessary, that the object of thinking about the category of meaningfulness in life is not to produce a meaningfulness scale for ranking lives. (p. 39)
Whereas worries about elitism call our attention to the dangers of thinking one knows which things, activities, or projects have value, the second set of concerns, more purely philosophical, raises questions about the idea that there is such a thing as an objective standard of value at all, or more precisely, an objective standard that distinguishes some projects, activities, and interests from others as being more fitting for or more capable of contributing to the meaningfulness of one’s life. (p. 40)
Though I believe we have good reason to reject a radically subjective account of value, it is far from clear what a reasonably complete and defensible nonsubjective account will look like. (p. 47)
Meaning, I have argued, comes from active engagement in projects of worth, which links us to our world in a positive way. It allows us to see our lives as having a point and a value even when we take an external perspective on ourselves. (p. 58)
Though few people are likely to get meaning in their lives from the abstract project of “being moral”—a passion for morality would be a peculiar and puzzling thing—many if not most people get meaning from more specific projects and relationships that morality should applaud: from being good and doing good in their roles as parent, daughter, lover, friend, and from furthering or trying to further social and political goals. (p. 61)
Perhaps we avoid talk of objective value out of a desire to stay clear of controversy, perhaps out of fear of being chauvinistic and elitist. (p. 64)
One can find the question, What has objective value? intelligible and important while remaining properly humble about one’s limited ability to discover the answer and properly cautious about the uses to which one’s partial and tentative answer may be put. (p. 64)
Wolf distinguishes between happiness and meaningfulness, between a happy life and a meaningful one. (p. 68)
One can of course always be mistaken in thinking that one has fulfilled commitments one has undertaken, whatever their nature. What’s distinctive about the kinds of aesthetic aims I’m talking about is that the possibility of delusion is internal to them, and that by their very nature, clear criteria for success in fulfilling them are lacking. (p. 71)
Of course they’re art. But the question remains whether in any given case the art is of significance or importance. (p. 72)
Something comparable occurs in arguments for philosophical skepticism, where a crucial premise is my inability to rule out some outlandish hypothesis like, for instance, that I’m a brain in a vat. You know perfectly well that I’m not, but the problem is how I could know this. Ordinarily, if you know something and inform me of it, I can thereby come to know it, too. But this doesn’t work in the case of skepticism, and it doesn’t work in the artistic case either. (p. 72)
Though success and failure can make a difference to a life’s meaning, I believe that a life can derive meaning of the greatest value from a project that has failed. (p. 76)
And it seems very doubtful that feelings, good or bad, without intentional content enter into the meaning or meaninglessness of one’s life. (p. 78)
What you mean is what you intend. To say you mean to do something is to say you intend to do it. (p. 79)
It is worth trying on the hypothesis that meaning in life, on its subjective side, is a matter of intentionality. (p. 79)
A second point at which there may be an analogy between the meaning of a life and the meaning of a linguistic utterance concerns communication. Both about someone’s verbal statement and about someone’s life, one can ask what it means to other people. (p. 80)
A third analogy has to do with rational or intelligible structure. (p. 80)
Something similar appears to be true about meaning in one’s life, which seems to be undermined if one’s major purposes do not cohere with each other, or do not remain stable over at least a significant period of time, or are not expressed in one’s actions. (p. 80)
If our lives have meaning, we do not create it all by ourselves. (p. 81)
Wolf bets everything on the existence, or at least intelligibility, of objective value. I would bet against her. I do not think there can be such a thing as objective value in the form that she and many other philosophers hope to find. (p. 96)
From the perspective of hive psychology, modern humans are essentially bees who busted out of the hive during the Enlightenment, and who burned down the last honeycombs during the twentieth century. We now fly around free and unencumbered, calling ourselves atheists, reading Waiting for Godot, and wondering, what does it all mean? Where can I find meaning? A good hive must be larger than one’s self. (p. 101)
One of the great challenges of modernity is that we must now find hives for ourselves. We can’t create them on our own any more than we can create a language on our own. (p. 101)
But what kind and degree of success is necessary for a life to be satisfactorily meaningful? This is a difficult question. (p. 104)
I used a variety of terms to refer to the subjective dimension of meaningfulness: in addition to fulfillment, I spoke of subjective attraction, of being gripped or excited by one’s projects and activities, and of loving them. (p. 111)
Rather than continue the search for a single term to name an attitude or psychological condition that any meaningful life must involve, it might be wiser, if less satisfyingly determinate, simply to acknowledge that there is a range of such attitudes and conditions, which includes love and fulfillment, and which reflects the kind of intentional, but also qualitatively positive, attachment to an object or activity that an agent must have in order for engagement with it to contribute to the meaningfulness of his life. (p. 114)
What is so good about doing what it is in one’s nature to do? Does it matter what kind of nature one has? Does it matter, for example, whether one’s nature is peaceable or belligerent, creative or imitative, social or solitary? These questions are especially pressing if we identify fulfillment with meaningfulness. (p. 122)
By focusing on one activity or project at a time, or on lives that are predominantly bound up with a single project, we were able to illustrate and test our ideas more clearly and more vividly than if we had discussed lives that were, or were noticed to be, more complex and varied. But most lives are more complex and varied. (p. 127)
Some of the activities and rituals that make up our lives may have solely instrumental value—they keep us healthy and sharpen skills that allow us to go on to do other things. (p. 127)
In a multifaceted life, not every activity need contribute to meaning, much less contribute greatly to meaning, in order for a commitment to it to be justified. (p. 127)
I am inclined to think that almost anything to which a significant number of people have shown themselves to be deeply attached over a significant length of time, has or relates to some positive value—that almost anything people find valuable (stably and in significant numbers), is valuable. (p. 128)
Both Haidt’s and Arpaly’s discussions remind us of the fact that when people get deeply interested in something and come to care about it, they focus their attention on it, build activities around it, exercise and sharpen their skills in advancing, protecting, and celebrating it. (p. 128)
As an activity or practice gains recognition and popularity, as traditions develop and groups organize around it, the opportunities for valuable activities involving it multiply: one can not only play basketball, one can coach it, teach it, write about it. Even being a fan can be a strand in the fabric that connects one to others, supplying a ready topic of conversation or just a knowing bond that links one to one’s neighbors or one’s community. (p. 129)
The kind of objectivity that seems necessary for meaning is a kind that implies that one can be mistaken about value. (p. 131)
The discussions of basketball and poetic form suggest, however, that a person’s or a group’s liking something can lead to its becoming valuable. (p. 131)
In arguing that meaningfulness is a distinctive dimension of a good life, different from both happiness and moral goodness, and that the concept of meaningfulness is essentially tied to a commitment to objective distinctions in value, I have tried to show the importance of keeping the vocabulary of meaningfulness and value alive, and of not assimilating or reducing these terms to others that we are more comfortable with in both philosophy and popular culture. (p. 131)
A second point at which there may be an analogy between the meaning of a life and the meaning of a linguistic utterance concerns communication. Both about someone’s verbal statement and about someone’s life, one can ask what it means to other people. (p. 80)