Recent Work on the Meaning of Life*
Published Jul 1, 2002 · Thaddeus Metz
Ethics
109
Citations
4
Influential Citations
Abstract
What, if anything, makes a life meaningful? This question is obviously important but has not received much attention from normative theorists. Although there is relatively little philosophical literature on life’s meaning, there is more than most readers are probably aware. And this literature has reached a point at which it would be useful to reflect on where it stands and where it needs to go. In this article, I survey a particular subset of recent work on the meaning of life. First, I am concerned with writings that take a meaningful life to be one desirable facet of a person’s existence. I set aside those that treat a meaningful life as a purely descriptive property or that discuss the meaning of anything supraindividual such as the human race or the universe. Furthermore, I concentrate on the Anglo-American philosophical literature; I do not address the insights to be found in works of fiction, psychology, religion, or, say, Continental philosophy. In addition, I disregard pieces devoted to applied issues in favor of those with a decidedly