What Is the Meaning of Life?

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The question of the meaning of life is perhaps one that we would rather not ask, for fear of the answer—or lack thereof.

Still today, many people believe that humankind is the creation of a supernatural entity called God, that God had an intelligent purpose in creating us, and that this intelligent purpose is ‘the meaning of life’.

I do not propose to rehearse the well-worn arguments for and against the existence of God, and still less to take a side. But even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us, no one really knows what this purpose might be, or that it is especially meaningful.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system—including the universe itself—increases up to the point at which equilibrium is reached. God’s purpose in creating us, and indeed all of nature, might have been no more lofty than to catalyse this process, much as soil organisms catalyse the decomposition of organic matter. In a word, we may be no more than complex fungi or enzymes.

Why It Is Better to Have No Predetermined Purpose

If our God-given purpose is to act as super-efficient heat dissipators, then having no purpose at all is better than having this sort of purpose—because it frees us to be the authors of our purpose or purposes, and so to lead truly dignified and meaningful lives.

In fact, following this logic, having no purpose at all is better than having any kind of predetermined purpose, even more traditional, uplifting ones such as serving God or improving our karma.

In short, even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us—and why should He have had?—we do not know what this purpose might be. Whatever it might be, we would rather be able to do without it, or at least to ignore or discount it. Unless we are free to become the authors of our own purpose or purposes, our lives may have, at worst, no purpose at all and, at best, only some unfathomable and potentially trivial purpose that is not of our own choosing.

This echoes Kant’s insistence that human beings are not merely means to some external end, but self-determining ends in themselves. It is this capacity for autonomy—for rationally determining our own ends—that gives us our special dignity.

Objections

You or others might object that not to have a predetermined purpose is, really, not to have any purpose at all. But this is to believe that, for something to have a purpose, it must have been created with that particular purpose in mind and, moreover, must still be serving that same original purpose.

Many Junes ago, I visited the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the South of France. One evening, I picked up a rounded stone called a galet, which I took back to Oxford and put to good use as a bookend.

In the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, these stones capture the heat of the sun and release it into the cool of the night, helping the grapes to ripen. Of course, they were not created with this or any other purpose in mind. Even if they had been created for a purpose, it would almost certainly not have been to make great wine or serve as bookends.

That same evening over supper, I got my friends to blind taste a bottle of Bordeaux—an evil trick, given that we were in the Rhône. To disguise the bottle, I slipped it into one of a pair of socks. Unlike the galet, the sock had been created with a clear purpose in mind, albeit one very different from—although not strictly incompatible with—the one that it came to assume on that joyful evening.

You might yet object that talk about the meaning of life is neither here nor there because life is merely a prelude to some form of eternal afterlife, and this, if you will, is its purpose.

But I can marshal up at least four arguments against this position:

1. It is not at all clear that there is, or even can be, some form of eternal afterlife that entails the survival of the personal ego.
2. Even if there were such an afterlife, living forever is not in itself a purpose. The concept of the afterlife merely displaces the problem to one remove, begging the question: What, then, is the purpose of the afterlife?
3. Reliance on an eternal afterlife not only postpones the question of life’s purpose but also discourages us from determining a purpose or purposes for what may be the only life that we do have.
4. If it is the brevity or finiteness of human life that gives it shape and purpose—an argument associated with the philosopher Bernard Williams—then an eternal afterlife cannot, in and of itself, have any purpose.

So, whether or not God exists, whether or not He gave us a purpose, and whether or not there is an eternal afterlife, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.

To put this in Sartrean—or existentialist—terms, whereas for the galet it is true only that existence precedes essence, for the sock it is true both that essence precedes existence when it is worn on a foot, and that existence precedes essence when it is used for an unintended purpose, such as a bottle sleeve. We human beings are either like the rock or the sock, but whichever we are like, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.

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The Freedom to Create Meaning

Human life may not have been created with any predetermined purpose, but this need not mean that it cannot have a purpose, or that this purpose cannot be just as good as—if not much better than—any predetermined one.

And so the meaning of life, of our life, is that which we choose to give it.

But how to choose?

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus compares the human condition to the plight of Sisyphus, the mythical king who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll back down again.

Yet Camus reaches one of the most startling conclusions in philosophy: ‘The struggle to the top is itself enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’

Even in a state of utter hopelessness, Sisyphus can still be happy. Indeed, he is happy precisely because, in recognising and accepting the hopelessness of his condition, and embracing it, he transcends it.

The tragedy of Sisyphus becomes the source of his freedom. The universe may not provide us with a ready-made meaning, but this need not prevent us from creating one and living with dignity, courage, and even joy.

How to Find Meaning

In Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl wrote about his experiences during the Second World War.

Tellingly, Frankl found that those who survived longest in the concentration camps were not those who were physically strong, but those who retained a sense of inner freedom and purpose.

Frankl argued that meaning can be found in three principal ways:

1. By experiencing reality through authentic engagement with the world and with other people.
2. By giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression.
3. By changing our attitude towards a situation that we cannot change.

His message is ultimately one of hope: Even in the most absurd, painful, and dispiriting circumstances, life can still be given a meaning, and so too can suffering.

For Frankl, our main motivation is neither pleasure, as Freud had believed, nor power, as Adler had believed, but meaning. After the war, he founded the school of logotherapy—from the Greek logos, meaning ‘reason’ or ‘principle’—to help people discover meaning in their lives.

‘The point,’ said Frankl, ‘is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.’

For a deeper exploration of whether the purposes we pursue are genuinely our own, see What If My Life Is Not Mine?