What Is The Meaning Of Human Life? 904201296X, 9789042012967

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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HUMAN LIFE?

VIBS Volume 109 Robert Ginsberg Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Mary-Rose Barra! Gerhold K. Becker Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum H. G. Callaway Rem B. Edwards Robert N. Fisher William C. Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Hayry John R. Welch

Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull Laura Duhan Kaplan Joseph C. Kunkel Vincent L. Luizzi Alan Milchman George David Miller Jon Mills Peter A. Redpath Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Alan Soble

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HUMAN LIFE?

Raymond Angelo Belliotti

Amsterdam - Atlanta,GA 2001

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of "ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence" . ISBN: 90-420-1296-X ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - Atlanta, GA 2001 Printed in The Netherlands

For Marcia . Angelo. and Vittoria

Le penna della lingua dovrebbe essere immersa nell inchiostro del cuore.

CONTENTS Foreword by Jan Narveson Preface 1. Lexicon 2. Topics 3. Acknowledgments

5 6 7 8

ONE

Meaning and Theism 1. What Is the Meaning of Life? 2. The Existential Problem 3. Theism A. Eastern Theism B. Western Theism C. Assessment of Religious Theism D. Philosophical Theism E. Religious and Philosophical Theisms

9 10 11 14 14 17 18 24 28

TWO

Nihilism, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche I . Schopenhauer and Nietzsche 2. Nietzsche and the Meaning of Life 3. Nietzsche and Value 4 . Preliminary Observations

31 33 36 45 48

THREE

The Myth of Sisyphus 1. Camus, Absurdity, and Sisyphus 2. Sisyphus as Cool Hand Luke 3. Sisyphus as Armadillo 4. Sisyphus as Ironist 5. Sisyphus as Master Architect 6. Sisyphus as Robot 7. Sisyphus as Creator 8. Sisyphus as Grand Transcender

51 51 52 53 54 57 58 60 62

FOUR

The Meaning of Life I. Deflationary Accounts of the Meaning of Life 2. Aesthetic Creativity 3. Telescopes and Slinky Toys 4. Struggle and Suffering 5. Meaning and Significance 6. The Yearning for Legacies

73 73 77

7R 84 85

88

Contents

viii FIVE

Value I. Twin Terrors: Infinite Regress and Radical Subjectivism 2. Realism and Anti-Realism 3. Objectivism and Relativism 4. Molding Alternatives 5. What If Our Values Lack Ultimate Foundations? 6. Critical Pragmatism

93 95 98 102 103 112 114

SIX

Why Happiness Is Overrated 1. Happiness as Flourishing 2. Happ iness as Tranquility 3. Happiness and Sociology 4. Philosophy and Sociology 5. What Is Happiness? 6. Can Everyone Be Happy? 7. What Is the Relationship Between Meaningful Lives and Happy Lives? 8. Is Happiness the Greatest Good ? 9. Are Moral and Intellectual Virtues Needed for Happiness? 10. Is the Desired Conscious Condition, Sustained Joy or Peace , Enough for Happiness?

119 119 120 122 125 126 128

SEVEN

Death I . Death 2. Death 3. Death 4. Death 5. Death 6. Death

Is Irrelevant Is Irrelevant to Value and Meaning in Life Gives Life Meaning Deprives Life of Meaning Is a Transition Is Relevant But Not Determinant

129 129 131 132 135 135 139 140 146 149 152

Notes

157

Bibliography

163

About the Author

169

Index

171

FOREWORD What is left to say about a subject such as the meaning of life? The first piece of advice to give to people trying to get serious about the subject is: remain calm. To talk nonsense about the meaning of life is easy, and to talk sense is not easy. Raymond Angelo Belliotti's What Is the Meaning of Human Life? is a distinguished entry into the field of books on this sometimes hackneyed subject. In this work, you will find extensive and careful discussions of meaningfulness, value, happiness, nihilism, and death, as well as in-depth consideration of the role of theism, the Myth of Sisyphus, and the views of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. You will find that Belliotti is talking sense. You should learn much from his book. The book opens at the right place. Chapter One addresses the bearing of theism on the meaning of human life. Here, after all, is where much of humankind has turned when questions of the meaning-of-life variety arise . Among the virtues of Belliotti's treatment is his delving into Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as the more familiar Western religions. Much of humankind has turned to religion, but the religions to which they have turned are so different, and such large followings have attended the major options and innumerable minor creeds, that students steeped in Western theism are in for a shock. The monotheism favored in the West may not seem so dominant and compelling after this quick excursion into the theisms that other folks accept. On the Western view, roughly , "The meaning of human life is to understand and embrace God's plan : to attain a personal relationship with God, to choose wisely, and through our deeds to merit eternal salvation." You should notice the numerous blank checks in this package . Can we really have, and even if we could would we want, a "personal relationship with God"? True, we would like to live wisely and well, but do we get anything from religion except more admonitions to live wisely and well? And don't we need to figure out those things for ourselves? That we cannot prove the existence of such a being is another matter. Plenty of plausible theories, other than the existence of God, explain why so many people profess religious beliefs . Belliotti does not confine his inquiry to familiar biblical Western religion . He also takes note of such important philosophers as Plato and Georg W. F. Hegel. He concludes with the charitable observation that "For those whose lives affirm [theism's] possibility, doubts are swallowed and the meaning of life is clear." But if you have read with care, those doubts are going to be hard to swallow, and the claim that what the believer believes is clear even to the believer is not one that commends itself. In Chapters Two and Three, Belliotti turns to a set of views that has attracted much press in the last century or so: nihilism, the view that nothing is valuable, and the Myth of Sisyphus, which compares human life to the rolling of a heavy stone up a high hill, only to have it roll down the other side, and then the same cycle repeats itself endlessly. The first view goes in the wake of religion. For those who reject religion : Is there any solid source of direction left in life, in

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the absence of a supreme being to supply it? Left to ourselves, is not life pointless? To Belliotti's credit, he addresses such questions squarely and responds, "No ." We have to work at it, but meaning is possible , frequently attained, and the process of creating and discovering it is often enormously satisfy ing. Chapter Four directly confronts the question of the meaning of human life. Belliotti supplies some sensible answers: "Robustly meaningful lives, the ones to which we aspire, embody interests, projects, purposes, and commitments that produce significance." These undertakings need not be especially important; but the more important, the better. Even the life of a disabled and retarded person has some meaning, but the life of Leonardo Da Vinci has more . Significant lives influence the lives of others; they make an enduring difference. But meaning is not all that counts. Adolf Hitler's life was meaningful, but not valuable. Da Vinci 's and Ludwig van Beethoven's lives were meaningful and immensely valuable. What they produced was worth producing. This view puts the main weight on the notion of value, and, accordingly, that is what Belliotti examines in Chapter Five. He starts by undermining the idea of intrinsic value . We could argue that he aims too high here: that lots of things are intrinsically valuable and no infinite regress is encountered. Listen to a great piece of music on a good day and, with any luck, you will confront intrinsic value . Saying the experience is intrinsically valuable does not mean it will last forever , nor that no one else could possibly hear that music and not see its value. But, still, the value is there. And we can find lots more, all over the place . I am delighted to say that this is the conclusion Belliotti comes to as well. As he says , "a more modest notion of intrinsic value would help. .. [namely] goods that are valuable to people for their own sake, not for any further end." We should hang onto this and not be deterred by expectations of a "final consummation." Instead , we can tie intrinsically valuable goods to human life by noting , with John Dewey, that "achieved goals are not merely endpoints but propel new beginnings." Belliotti adds much insightful analysis of objective values, those that are part of the furniture of the universe and utterly independent of what we want or care about. Such ideas are incredible. We can forthrightly accept that values depend on valuers, valuing beings, and still deny that values are arbitrary, whimsical, or fleeting . Belliotti pours cold water on the idea that we need an objective foundation to live a good life. We are what we are, we work with what we have, and that is enough to get us into valuing and valuation, enough to last us a lifetime. The claim that we need something else is illusory. Belliotti labels this outlook "critical pragmatism," which emerges as a vigorous, plausible view in his skillful treatment. Chapter Six is devoted to happiness. Belliotti 's discussion is of special interest because he argues that happiness is not everything and perhaps not the most important thing, even though it is definitely something. As with his other treatments, Belliotti manages to be sensible about subjects which lend themselves to treatment that is quite the reverse. Should we say that Beethoven, who

Foreword

3

encountered much misery in his not overly long life, was unhappy? Or should we say that his creative power and achievements contributed to happiness? Belliotti proposes that happiness is a combination of "flourishing, a degree of fit between a person's expectations and results, and extended joy or peace." On Belliotti's account, Beethoven was not happy because he lacked extended joy and peace, though his life was highly meaningful. Happiness is not everything, but it is something. Beethoven's life would have been better if he could have been happy , as well as being one of the world's greatest creators, but his life was still great and eminently worth living. That is the important point and Belliotti makes a strong case for it. No book on this subject can be complete without a discussion of death, which Belliotti analyzes in Chapter Seven . Does death obliterate all, and force us to admit that life is absolutely meaningless after all? No. Should we then say that death is of no consequence to us? No. We must live in the realization that we will die, yes. But that realization does not swamp the possibilities of meaningfulliving. Belliotti's treatment of death begins with the extremely plausible suggestion that what is bad about death must be deprivation. Mind you, who is deprived is problematic. Once dead, no sense of deprivation befalls the corpse. But never mind: death's being a deprivation suggests why it is an evil. Is death inevitably and always an evil? Some thinkers argue that eternal life would necessarily be a bore for human beings. Belliotti counters that, maybe, if we retained the energies of us at our best, we could change continually and continue to enjoy life. But we do not need to settle that issue. What we do need to resolve is for whom and how death is an evil or, perhaps, not one. And whatever else, Belliotti points out that death is not the meaning of life. Death is sometimes the terminus of a successful, happy, meaningful life. At other times, death is not unwelcome: when we have done our life's work, are tired, our death is painless, loved ones are on hand to affirm our value, and we have much for which to be thankful. Perhaps such a death and life are the best we can do, but with good luck and reasonably good health to the end, that is enough . You will find this book a rewarding adventure. Few treatments have both the scope and good sense of Belliotti's. I urge you to read carefully and to enjoy the quest for meaning. Jan Narveson Department of Philosophy University of Waterloo

PREFACE He was one of my better students. He arrived at my office appearing haggard, somber, and defeated . He was usually robust, upbeat, and vital. I will call him "Rocco Domanda." Rocco greeted me perfunctorily, then swung the hammer: "What is the meaning of life?" Judging by his mood and demeanor, he needed a literal answer. He was not looking for glibness, low comedy, or silly metaphors. I became more serious as I understood that this was not going to be a bright morning. My first task was to examine more deeply his psychological state . Was he on the verge of depression? Was he courting a nervous breakdown? Had he recently suffered a horrible loss? Why had he become severed so darkly from life's energy? I was tom in two directions . I recognized my responsibility to marshal my resources and those of philosophy to address Rocco's concerns . He had taken several courses from me, we had become friendly, he was an undergraduate of special promise, and we shared the same ethnic background. I owed him much more than I did a stranger or casual acquaintance. The classic role of philosophy is to help people live their lives well. Although overly technical analysis obscured this role in much of the twentieth century, recent philosophical developments have resurrected the connection between philosophy and life. But if Rocco 's problems were acute I could direct him to the counseling center or to the office of student affairs . I would like to report that I wholeheartedly wanted to lead Rocco out of his malaise through philosophical legerdemain and healthy communication arising from our special bond. That would be a lie. Part of me, sadly , hoped the problem and the question would simply go away . Rocco talked about the source of his question . No, he was not enduring a psychological crisis. He had been reading much existentialist literature, not all of which was philosophical, and he was perplexed by the question whether life had meaning and value. He came to me because he thought if anyone had the answer that person would be me. Rocco was not a good judge of character. I told him that the question was too complex for an answer of fifty words or less. I cautioned that he should be wary if anyone responded quickly and confidently to such a fundamental, ambiguous, and overwhelmingly important question . We made a deal. He would enroll in a directed study course with me on the topic of The Meaning of Life. We would explore the literature together, and find better theoretical and practical resolutions. I promised that at the end of the semester I would begin putting together a course on the topic and include it in my regular offerings. The counseling center and the office of student affairs already had too much business. Such is the genesis of this book. As Rocco and I worked our way through a glorious literary and philosophical feast, I decided to formalize my thoughts. My goal is to provide an analytically oriented , philosophical book that is neverthe-

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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HUMAN LIFE?

less accessible to nonspecialists. The book exam ines theoretical issues that have practical implications. I have self-consciously tried to avoid technical analysis. I have sacrificed some philosophical rigor for greater readabil ity. I hope I have succeeded, but only the audience can judge. 1. Lexicon

Throughout the book, I use terms or phrases that should be defined. I do not claim that the way I use these terms must be followed by all speakers of the language . Most of the words are used in several different but legitimate ways in literature and popular conversation. I offer my lexicon only to decrease misunderstanding, not to insist on the one true meaning of the terms . If there is no preord ained or built- in meaning or value in our world then cosmic meaninglessness pervades human life. The cosmic perspective measures human life from the external vantage point of an indifferent observer, perhaps Nature itself. The personal perspective evaluates human life from the internal vantage point of a person living his or her life. If an act is senseless it is unintell igible, it does not fit into the pattern of a person's life. If an act is futile it has a purpose which cannot be achieved or it has no consciously intended end, but needs one to be worthwhile. An act is inherently worthless if it lacks inherent merit. Tedious, menial, unpleasant chores are inherently worthless, although they may take on meaning or instrumental value if performed for an appropriate goal. An act is pointless if not directed toward a goal. Pointless acts can still contribute to pleasure and take on process or instrumental values . An act is trivial if its point is insufficient to justify its performance. An activity may be repetitious drudgery yet have a point. In the Myth of Sisyphus, the gods condemn Sisyphus to push a huge rock to the top of a hill from which it falls down the other side, to be pushed again to the top from which it falls down again, and so on forever . Sisyphus's rolling stones up a hill might have a point except for the fact that the stones upon reaching the top of the hill immediately fall back down . His activity, although pointless and futile, might bear meaning if the activity was valuable for its own sake. The meaning of "meaning" is contestable. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for "point," "purpose," "significance," "sense," "understanding," "interpretation," "intention," and other closely related terms, I argue that a life is minimally meaningful if it embodies enough freely chosen interests, projects, purposes, and commitments to engage the bearer and animate his or her faith in life. Even a minimally meaningful life has a narrative structure as a person organizes his or her energies and resources around interests and projects. A minimally meaningful life is minimally worthwhile. A minimally worthwhile life is one worth living, a life such that we would not be better off dead or never having been born. The activities that bring minimal mean ing must be appropriate to the experience, they must be real not simulated, not induced through external

Preface

7

agency, nor merely hallucinations. But the bar of a meaningful life is quite low. Minimal meaning produces enough satisfaction of desires and interests to block suicide or euthanasia. Lives are worth continuing and minimally meaningful where great achievement is lacking. Some lives are more meaningful than other lives. Robustly meaningful lives, the ones to which we aspire , embody interests, projects, purposes, and commitments that produce significance. A robustly meaningful life is significant, sometimes important, occasionally even exemplary. We, typically, hope not merely to maintain our lives, but to strive for our vision of a good life. To be significant, a life must influence the lives of others in uncommon ways . A significant life leaves historical footprints . To be important, a life must be significant enough to make a relatively enduring difference in the world . These historical footprints express, thereby making more public, the importance of the life. To be exemplary, a life must be meaningful, significant, important, and valuable enough to serve as a model or ideal. The distinction between minimally meaningful and robustly meaningful lives allows us to include , as we should, both a disabled, slightly retarded person and Leonardo Da Vinci into the pantheon of "lives worth living." Thus, meaningfullives need not be significant, important, or valuable lives. Most of us do not have stunningly significant and important lives, although almost all of us do affect the lives of others . Most of our lives fall somewhere between minimally meaningful and robustly meaningful lives. The degree and manner of influence is crucial. To be valuable, lives must be linked to and support value. Some of the more important types of value are moral, cognitive, aesthetic, and religious. Adolf Hitler had a meaningful, significant, and important life. He did not have a valuable life or an exemplary life. A valuable life is always meaningful, but a meaningful life may not be valuable. Hitler's life was meaningful but it is reasonable to view it as valueless in the sense that his collective deeds produced an overall net decrease in value and a stunning decrease in moral value. If our actions fit into a reasonably coherent scheme, are not futile in that we can in principle achieve our goals or at least make valuable progress toward them, and have purposes within our life scheme, we have no good reason to think our lives are meaningless or that they are absurd. Even if life as a whole lacks inherent meaning, particular lives can range from minimally to robustly meaningful. Some lives, however, fail even to fulfill the criteria of minimal meaningfulness. Such lives are literally not worth living. 2. Topics I examine the relationship between meaning and theism in Chapter One. After briefly discussing attempts to dismiss the question of life's meaning on linguistic grounds, I sketch answers provided by Eastern, Western, and philosophical

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theism . The ability of theism to provide (highly contestable) answers to the meaning of life demonstrates that theism is more than its critics suspect. In Chapter Two, I discuss various forms of nihilism, the experience of being radically adrift , without rational foundations, and struggling with hopelessness . Arthur Schopenhauer's challenging form of pessimism and Friedrich Nietzsche's active nihilism are the points of departure. The Myth of Sisyphus is a rich metaphor encouraging discussion of the possible absurdity of human life. In Chapter Three, I accept for the sake of argument the existentialist claim that the cosmos is meaningless: that there is no meaning or value built into our world. The question then becomes whether human beings can create sufficient meaning and value. By analyzing the work of Albert Camus, Thomas Nagel , Richard Taylor, Roberto Unger, and Robert Nozick, I distinguish the cosmic from personal perspectives and review numer ous images of how we can best live our lives in the face of cosmic meaninglessness . In Chapter Four, I look at the work of contemporary philosophers such as Kurt Baier, Paul Edwards, and Irving Singer . I outline why life is like a telescope and a slinky toy, and suggest how we can use the cosmic perspective artfully. I then highlight the role of struggle and suffering in creating meaning, and discuss our yearning to generate worthwhile legacies . The relationship between meaning and value forms the core of Chapter Five. I discuss the notion of intrinsic value and why many philosophers think it is needed to prevent an infinite regress , a series of explanations without end. I examine different ways of viewing the nature, source, and role of value. In Chapter Six, I analyze the relationship between happiness and meaning. By discussing philosophical and sociological approaches to happiness and by examining the work of Aristotle, the Stoics, and others, I argue that happiness is not the greatest good and that as a goal of living happiness is overrated. The final chapter, fittingly , addresses death. In Chapter Seven, I critically analyze several views of the relation between death and meaning. Some philosophers argue that death is nothing to us, some that death provides the meaning of life, some that death deprives life of meaning, some that death is merely a trans ition, and some that death is an ironic part of life. Socrates thought that the most fundamental aim of philosophy was to learn how to die. Perhaps by learning how to die we can learn how to live.

3. Acknowledgments lowe debts of gratitude to Rocco Domanda for energizing my interest in these issues; to Robert Ginsberg for his masterful editing and helpful suggestions; to Richard T. Hull for his good cheer and comprehensive guide to publishing; to Jan Narveson for his generous Foreword to this work ; to Joanne Foeller for her extraordinary word processing skills, editorial acumen, and boundless good will; and to my family , Marcia, Angelo, and Vittoria, for being my one true thing .

One MEANING AND THEISM Start laughing, run out some bad puns, polish up the sarcasm. What else could an author of a book on the meaning of life expect? When people ask me what I am writing, I cringe before sheepishly admitting the title of this work . The topic invites ridicule. Writing about the meaning of life invites two equally offensive responses. The first: "The question itself is confusing and meaningless. You are foolish for pursuing a Holy Grail without the right question, much less the right tools ." The second: "You are a pretentious fool or an unintended comedian for taking on such a question. The answer is beyond our comprehension. Wasn't that the point of Monty Python's film, The Meaning ofLife?" Everyone seems firmly convinced that nothing startling will result from an inquiry into the meaning of life. The question is too daunting for human understanding. If people had something stunning to say about the meaning of life they would be busy giving press conferences or promoting their own cult or at least selling a product to enhance meaning for $19.95 (plus $9.95 postage and handling) on television. Also, professional comedians such as Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, and Monty Python in movies have successfully spoofed the pretensions of those who obsess on the meaning of life. The popular image of meaning of life inquiries typically conjures someone undertaking a long, hopeful journey to a mountaintop in Tibet, finding a famous sage, asking the question, and hearing the wise one reply innocuously: "The meaning of life is . . . a bagel (or a chestnut, a leaf, a raindrop, or some other strained, unhelpful metaphor)." Beneath the laughter, cynicism, and apparent dismissal lies uneasiness. We are uncomfortable because at a deeper level we are terrified by the question. If the question has no answer, then to what do our lives amount? If the answer is embedded in the universe, a purpose preordained by God or Nature, can we live as we have been? If the answer lies in our own creativity, a purpose springing from human ingenuity, are we strong enough for the task? In any case, seriously confronting the question threatens our mundane lives of responsibilities and routines punctuated by distractions and entertainments. A critic might recoil and insist that those who are vigorously engaged in living find no need for philosophical reflection on the meaning of life. To ponder the question, under this view, is a symptom of psychological crisis. We worry about the meaning of life when we have lost our zest for living or when, like philosophers and other academics, we have too much time on our hands . This position is unpersuasive. One way of being engaged in life is to be so filled with a sense of meaning, purpose, and value , to be so much in tune with the rhythms of the universe, that our exuberance and visceral certainty that our

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lives make sense renders philosophical reflection on these matters unnecessary. In such cases, the critic's point has some force. Although even here philosophical reflection is important to assess and to justify what we are doing. But another way of being engaged in life is to be so immersed in daily habits, routines, and distractions that we fail to reflect. We make our lives more animallike by throwing ourselves into patterns that we experience as necessary and self-evident. Our failure to reflect on what we are doing is not the product of our overabundant sense of life, but the result of a weakness of the will, a relinquishment of freedom, a life of bad faith. We are not Zorba the Greek, we are Zeke the Pseudo-Armadillo. Reflecting on the meaning of life may be spurred by psychological crisis but it may also arise from an acute awareness that Henry David Thoreau was correct: most people do lead lives of quiet desperation. The human condition is unique in that we can evaluate and enhance our lives by confronting ultimate questions that resist simple resolutions. To renounce the quest is to close off an important sense of human meaning . 1. What Is the Meaning of Life?

The quest ion is difficult to understand because it is so complex. Our answers could focus on the origins of the universe , the purposes of all life, the point of human life, the significance of an individual life, or how to understand any of these . Answers to such questions must do more than explain why there is something rather than nothing . A scientific account of the origins of the universe might not tell us whether there is a plan for the universe, an embedded meaning that human beings can discover but not create . Even if we cannot explain why there is something rather than nothing it may be possible (or impossible) to create a purely human meaning in our lives. If asked for the mean ing of a natural phenomenon we might respond by citing its genesis , how it came about, its likely consequences, or what it will probably produce. The question "What is the meaning of life?" is better understood as asking for the purpose or value of human life, or perhaps life in general. The notions of meaning and purpose, however, are distinguishable. "Meaning" can stand for how we understand or make sense of our lives in an ongoing way. " Purpose" can stand for the goals or ends, or the highest or final end, toward which we strive. Meaning, then, would be process-oriented, while purpose is goal-oriented. Nevertheless, purpose and value are linked with making sense of and understanding our lives, or life in general. The complexity of the question, along with the different meanings of "meaning," leads some thinkers to conclude that the question itself is ill-formed or even meaningless. Careful linguistic analysis can deconstruct the inquiry by casting grave suspicion on the formulation of the question. Some philosophers would argue that actions within a life have a meaning, but life itself does not. We can ask for the meaning of a word in a language and make ourselves under -

Mean ing and Theism

11

stood . But we cannot ask for the meaning of the whole language: "What is the meaning of Latin?" is unanswerable because we neither understand the question nor can we conceive of what an acceptable answer would amount to. We can, however, answer "What is the purpose of Latin?" One of the purposes of Latin is or was to permit communication. To ask for the meaning of life is to ask what is the point, purpose, significance or sense of particular lives. But the question, even if difficult to form and understand clearly, is not easily dismissed. Because they touch our deepest fears and hopes, inquiries into the meaning of life cannot be dissolved by semantic fiat. Understanding the issues surrounding the meaning of life focuses attention on a nest of questions: Is a purpo se, plan, or destination embedded in the universe? Ifnot, does that mean human life is ultimately pointles s or absurd? What ideals , norms , actions should inform human life? How can I understand and make sense of my life in an ongoing way? Is human life in general, and my life in particular, justified by the objective conditions in the universe? Must a life be infinite to be worthwhile? Is permanence a condit ion of meaning? Is the universe indifferent to the deepest human yearnings? Is life merely "sound and fury, signifying nothing? " Can human beings experience a final culmination, enduring value , and a rational and just universe? What is my destiny, if any? Do I really matter? I do not claim that the question "Does life have meaning?" is logically equivalent to any of the other questions, or to all of them taken together. I am not making a logical or seman tical claim . Instead, I claim only that the question of life's meaning rivets our concern on a host of issues, the most important of which are listed above .

2. The Existential Problem In the undergraduate course on the topic that I teach, I ask my students during the second class session to call out what they think might provide meaning in life. Each semester the cand idates are the same . In no particular order they are : good family relations, friends , marriage, children, health , material well-being, professional success, engaging work, commitment to social causes, spiritual or religious conviction, leisure time, education, high intelligence, creative opportunities, a sense of community, political and personal freedom, failures as well as successes, aesthetic appreciation, self-esteem, a measure of control over our lives, and a few others . Putting aside a few confusions in the list over causes and effects of a meaningful life, it is a reasonable catalogue. My innocent question, however, is a set up. I then ask the students whether it is possible for someone to have all or most of the factors on the list, yet be plagued by a profound sense of meaninglessness. They , wisely, sense that the answer must be affirmati ve, but, typically, are reluctant to go out on that limb. Most wait for the next trick.

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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HUMAN LIFE?

Enter Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), the embodiment of existential cris is. The great Russian novelist, the master wordsmith of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and much more, was seemingly blessed. He had a good family , uncommon intelligence, stunning professional success, material well-being, good health, and most of our reasonable catalogue of meaningfulness. Yet he was, around the age of fifty, tormented by the thought and psychological experience that life was meaningless. Tolstoy was plagued by the four horsemen of self-doubt: aware ness of human mortality, lack of control of the things he most valued, absence of ultimate justification s for his actions, and an acute sense that his life might in the end add up to nothing. Tolstoy was threatened by his inevitable death , the fragility of the things and people he valued, and the apparent lack of foundational justification for his actions. Finitude, cont ingenc y, and arbitrariness haunted him. Sooner or later there would come diseases and death (they had come already) to my dear ones and to me, and there would be nothing left but stench and worms. All my affairs would sooner or later be forgotten, and I myself should not exist. How could a man fail to see that and live . . . . A person could live only so long as he was drunk; but the moment he sobered up, he could not help seeing that all that was only a deception, and a stupid deception at that! I Tol stoy saw no way out of this human predicament. He entertained four possibilities. First, if we remain ignorant of the facts then the meaninglessness of human life would not affect our enjoyment of our existence. But ignorance was not an option for Tolstoy or any other educated or intelligent person . Once we are aware of the facts we cannot retreat to the safety of ignorance no matter how hard we try. Second , we might find consolation in enhancing our power and privilege. By focusing on personal and professional successes, through immersion in material pleasure, and by reveling in our relat ive advantages over others, we might avoid the pain of meaninglessness. But the road of invidious social comparison is only a diversion from the inevitable truth. We are all born to suffer, die , and be forgotten . Power and privilege do not alter the facts , they only divert our gaze . Third, suicide is always an option . Although Tolstoy sometimes called this the choice of "strength and energy," it is difficult to see this as a solution . Suicide evades the problem of a life by ending it. It does not, typically, create meaning as much as it capitulates to the felt absence of meaning. Fourth, the choice of endurance or "weakness" : continuing to push on, hoping against hope that the meaning of life would make a surprise appearance in the future . Tolstoy solved his distress by appreciating the lives of simple, uneducated people. Peasants, wanderers, monks, and social dissenters were his models. They had difficult, beast of burden , lives yet their religious faith gave them a "consciou sness of life" that connected them to meaning. Only religious faith, not reason , can make life meaningful. Tolstoy vowed to link his being with spiritual

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conviction and action. He espoused humility, vegetarianism, and the value of manual labor, while rejecting luxuries, violence, coercion, and material accumulation. He also advanced the ideal of chastity, while recognizing that the nature and circumstances of people would not permit widespread compliance. Love of fellow human beings was a more important value than the ambition, vanity, and lust of individual success or the insulating consolations of an honorable family life. Sentimentalizing the life of peasants and glorifying faith in God permitted Tolstoy to celebrate personal immortality and a grand design, and to reinstate foundational justification for human action . Critics see Tolstoy as evading the tragedy of life through flight to an imaginary world. Putting that issue aside, Tolstoy's crisis is significant. First, his life illustrates vividly that a meaningful life does not automatically result from the fulfillment of typical human desires. More is required. Second, his solution to the problem of the meaning of life demands a "consciousness of life" or a "faith" that cannot be rationally supported all the way down. Third, his life demonstrates a trinity of the deepest human aspirations: the yearning for a final culmination, a connection to enduring value, and a rational and just universe (which I will call "Tolstoy's trinity"). Fourth, Tolstoy accepts the theistic assumption: either God exists as the creator of meaning embedded in the universe or there is only chaos and meaninglessness. Tolstoy concluded that the meaning of life is to discover a way to live such that the question of life's meaning no longer arises . Find a better way to live and the ultimate questions wither away. Tolstoy was incorrect. He did not take his own counsel about ignorance seriously enough: once we are conscious of the questions, we cannot suppress them, we cannot forget forever . The only solution is to find a way that permits us to ask the ultimate questions, struggle with tentative solutions, yet continue to live energetically. The path of denial through continually distracting engagement reduces us to bestial living. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the great English philosopher and economist, also discovered that his greatest goals suddenly seemed hollow. A child prodigy and committed social reformer, Mill refined the work of his father, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham. His version of utilitarianism strove for the greatest good for the greatest number. Identifying the meaningful life with the happy life, Mill's faith in life was shattered when he asked himself and answered a simple question: 'Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' . . . 'No!' At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down . . . . The end has ceased to charm , and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for ... I was thus . .. left stranded . . . without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out

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to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also as little in anything else.i Mill's crisis was spurred by his realization that his intellectual achievements and activities could not produce the pleasurable psychological state he identified with a meaningful life. He had kept his principles, but lost his faith. The question "What is the meaning of life?" is about the cosmos and about ourselves. To find out about the cosmos we must distinguish the world from ourselves. The answer to the question deeply influences how we should live. Therefore, the question itself arises from the human condition, from psychological curios ity, often from crisis . The question is not merely an abstraction fueling intellectual reflection . One answer is that a Supreme Being or Nature builds a human teleology, or overriding purpose, into the cosmos . If so, the further question is whether an external purpose that supposedly applies to everyone should issue any persuasive imperatives for me. Another answer is that the cosmos is inherently meaningless, but that the meaning of human life is the search for and creation of meaning itself. If so, the further question is whether all meaning is equal or, if not equal , how does meaning relate to value . A third answer is that the cosmos is inherently mean ingless and, thus, human life is meaningless regardless of our best efforts to delude ourselves with frantic activity and joyful amusements. 3. Theism

While theism is usually understood as belief in a God or gods, I will use it in a broader sense . A view is theistic if it holds that preestablished meaning is built into human life, a transcendent world or being informs human destiny, and that destiny yields a plan of life on earth and an overriding human purpose. Religious theisms include formal organ izations, elaborate rituals, discrete ceremonies, and, sometimes, methods of conversion and political goals, whereas philosophical theisms are speculative systems without membership criteria . Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are examples of religious theism. Platonism and Hegelianism are examples of philosophical theism . A. Eastern Theism As do all major religions, Buddhism has many variations and sects as its influence is widespread throughout Asia. I will outline classical, generic Buddhism with the disclaimer that my sketch will not accurately depict all versions of this religion .' Buddhism begins from the Four Noble Truths : life in this world is predominantly suffering and dissatisfaction; the source of suffering is the craving or desire connected with ego-attachment; suffering can be overcome through the

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cessation of craving and ego-detachment; and the way to overcome suffering is contained in the Eightfold Path. Suffering predominates in this world and is most keenly experienced in death, illness and disease, old age, separation from loved ones, the presence of others who are malicious, unfulfilled desires, and frustrated cravings. The source of such suffering lies in misunderstanding the nature of worldly phenomena and, especially, in misconceiving personal identity. The Eightfold Path has three stages . The first stage is the proper frame of mind (right views, right aspirations). The second stage is ethical action (right speech , right conduct, right livelihood) . The third stage is proper meditation needed for transcendent experience (right effort, right mindfulness, right contemplation). Buddhism, because of the Four Noble Truths, undermines our attachment to the self and to strong notions of individuality. Our belief in a substantial, persisting self is false, but this is good news because the belief in such a self fuels our ego-attachment and relentless cravings. We are only a shifting set of physical features, feelings, attitudes, emotions, moods, and so on. No permanent, unchanging substratum supports and unites human features . Nor is the self a pure consciousness distinct from bodily and psychological processes. Conscious experience depends on our perceptual equipment. The self plays no explanatory role in human activity . Nor is the notion of an abiding self required by other Buddhist beliefs . For example, the doctrine of dependent origination holds that all existences and phenomena of this world orig inate dependently through a chain of causation. So all existences and phenomena in this world are mutually related, nothing exists independently. Buddhism is a religion of selflessness and egolessness because it denies any permanent existence in this world and rejects , especially, belief in the existence of a self or ego that persists permanently apart from your body at death . The doctrine of karma contends that we reap what we sow . If something bad happens to me that I seemingly do not deserve, the law of karma insists that I am responsible because of what I have done in this or an earlier life. Buddhists can explain the notions of rebirth, moral desert , liberation, and the afterlife without resorting to the existence of an enduring self. Rebirth is merely a continuation, with a different body, of that shifting set of features and dispositions comprising human beings . Since only our physical packaging has changed we are still morally responsible for past deeds. When we are purified, by discharging our karmic debts , we are liberated from the round of rebirth . Our reward is the cessation of craving and ignorance, and transcendence to Nirvana. All worldly pursuits are temporal and cause suffering. True well-being lies in the midst of everyday life only when we observe existence and phenomena of I this world as they are. Renouncing social comparisons and the undignified scramble for privilege and social power, Buddhists insist that happiness is possible even under the worst conditions. The meaning of life is to be found in the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path, understanding the doctrines of dependent

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origination and karma, living in robust gratitude to all other existences, yet realizing the impermanence and nonsubstantiality of existences and phenomena of this world. The Buddhist goal, then, is the escape from suffering, ignorance, and desire and the attainment of enlightenment. The state in which we attain enlightenment is Nirvana, perfect tranquility devoid of all suffering. Abandoning all worldly desires and attachments through the realization of the impermanence and nonsubstantiality of this world, the enlightened Buddhist glimpses on earth what can be fully realized after death. Nirvana is understood in several different ways: as the neg ation or cessation of fam iliar worldly existence; as total extinction ; as peace and tranquility as such; as part of everyday existence once the Noble Truths are understood and the Eightfold Path is embraced. Lacking eternal souls and without an anthropomorphic creator, human beings can hope only to attain a transcendent, permanent state wherein their sense of individual ity evaporates. In some versions of Buddhism, the (noncraving) quest for the eternal, universal, and transcendent replaces craving for the impermanent, individual, and earthly. In other versions, liberation is not a matter of escaping from this world to another, purer one, but of embracing a proper perspective on this world fueled by a sense of the insubstantiality of things and selves, and the futility of recurrent striving. Another leading relig ion of Asia , Hinduism is the dominant theism of India. Even more varied than most religions, Hinduism is defined by Vedic scriptures and participation in a certain social structure: priests, nobles/warriors, merchants, and laborers/artisans are the four main castes. Knowledge of the Veda is restricted to the first three castes. Below the four castes are outcastes or outsiders who traditionally were excluded from temple worship and educational opportunities. The caste system has softened because of social changes and globalization, but nevertheless persists. Although belief in reincarnation and the eternity of the soul or se lf is nearly universal in Hinduism, Hindu theology rang es from belief in a divine Absolute to atheism. The central claims of one expression of Hinduism, Advaita Vedanta, have much in common with Buddhism: Human beings are enslaved in a horrifying cycle of rebirth through the karmic deserts of our actions fueled by des ires . Liberation from this cycle can occur only when we are enlightened as to how we and the world really are . Nothing is real except Brahman, un itary , seamless, ineffable being. Things we ordinarily take to be real belong to the world of appearance and illusion. Individual selves are also appearances, reflections of a single, pure consciousness, atman . Since reality is one, Brahman and atman must be identical. Belief in the existence of the apparent world is due to ignorance as we superimpose on Brahman/atman what does not belong to it. Because we are enslaved by the cycle of rebirth through desires that depend on our false belief in the physical world and individual selves, liberation is attained through experiencing the identity of Brahman and atman, thereby overcoming the delu sion that there is a world. Thus, nothing is real except a single, ineffable mode of

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being, pure consciousness, which is to be experienced in a self-luminous flash which is itself liberation. The finite individual , on this view, has limited intelligence and a constricted outlook. The true human personality is spiritual. Spiritual experience does not destroy anyth ing of permanent value such as "the individual." Instead , it enables human beings to shed their limitations. What we commonly take to be the individual overflows only with finiteness and limitation, while the unitive nature of Brahman makes us aware of mutual involvement, infinity , and transcendence. Human beings typically do not know that ultimate Reality is one infinite Spirit (Brahman) which appears in empirical life as the world of matter and the group of individuals. The Spirit does not create directly the things of the world . Nor are the things of the world and souls the transformations of ultimate Reality . Relation between the spirit and the world of souls is the relation of appearance to reality . Outside the Spirit, which has no traces of anthropomorphism, everything is unreal. The human destiny is to realize the unitive experience. Human beings are infinite. We know our finite limitations and resist them . The infinite in us struggles to realize itself. We have intimations of the unitive experience in significant moments of our aesthetic experience. The meaning of life is the realization of the unity of existence and translation of it into our lives. When we merge with the Absolute we lose individual consciousness but we gain cosmic awareness and eternal bliss. Without getting bogged down in the complexities of Asian theism, six common ideas form its framework : the mundane world is predominantly suffering and illusion; there is a comprehensive account of ourselves and wider reality that will dispel the ignorance in our everyday beliefs and exhibit the unsatisfactoriness of existence founded on those beliefs; human beings are trapped in a cycle of rebirth or transmigration; the doctrine of karma, a universal law of nature that embodies ultimate justice based on moral desert, rules; everything in the mundane world has an explicable place in an intelligible whole; and liberation from the cycle of rebirth to a timeless, unchanging, unconditioned state is possible through enlightenment and discharging karmic debts . B. Western Theism Christianity worships an anthropomorphic divinity who embodies all positive human qualities amplified to their highest degree." Understanding divinity in male-gendered terms, Christians believe that God is all-powerful, all-good, allknowing , and created the cosmos as an expression of His love. The first human beings inhabited a paradise , but, upon disobeying God's prohibition to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, fell from grace and were relegated to the world as we know it. Human beings have free will to choose rightly or wrongly and they will eventually be judged in accordance with their earthly deeds. Thus, this world is a proving ground and its trials and sufferings are opportunities to dem-

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onstrate moral worth. Weare responsible for our actions and God will evaluate us according to our moral desert . We will earn eternal bliss or eternal suffering. Many of those earning eternal bliss will first spend time in purgatory where they will, through suffering, cleanse themselves of sin. Our souls are immortal, our souls define who we are, so we enjoy personal immortal ity. Although specific, detailed descriptions are lacking, heaven is the state of eternal happiness that brings full, lasting satisfaction to the whole of our being through our union with Jesus Christ together with all members of His mystical body. Those who earn redemption will have their bodies restored in glorified form. But the essential part of heavenly bliss does not involve bodily activity, thus neither senses nor imagination are required . The beatific vision , the intuitive apprehension of God as He is in Himself, and love are the activities of the nobler, spiritual human aspects. In the beatific vision God Himself replaces ideas and sense impressions so that He is in direct contact with the human mind. A secondary feature of beatific vision is that we retain our past histories , cleansed of imperfection and sinfulness. Thus, we retain our affections for our backgrounds and contacts, we have continuing knowledge and love of the created beings with whom we had relationships in our earthly lives. Our restless, desirous spirits attain eternal serenity as our potent ialities are fully realized so that no unfulfilled element remains . The meaning of human life is to understand and embrace God's plan : to attain a personal relationship with God, to choose wisely, and through our deeds to merit eternal salvation. Earthly life embodies Tolstoy's trinity of hopes: our final culmination is judgment day when we will be evaluated in accord with our moral deserts ; our connection to enduring value is our immortality and opportunity for eternal bliss in the presence of a divinity who is all-good; and our universe is rational and just because, ultimately, the perfect judge with complete knowledge will assess our lives and reward or punish us according to our own free choices . Judaism and Islam, the other great Western theisms, cling to similar narratives. Judaism and Islam do not recognize Christ as the son of God, and many other details distinguish the Western theisms : which scriptures or holy books are taken as sacred ; which figures are identified as prophets; what type of political association, if any, follows from religious commitment; what imperatives the divinity has set forth; whether the divinity anoints a chosen people; and so on. But the Western theisms share a common framework : monotheism, belief in personal immortality, an account of Tolstoy's trinity, the prize of salvation and eternal bliss, a preordained design (including a human purpose) built into the cosmos , and a clear understanding of the purpose of human life on earth . C. Assessment of Religious Theism Eastern theisms are less successful in the West because, among other reasons, they undermine robust individualism. Most Eastern theisms insist our notions of

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individuality are illusory, self-defeating, or both . The quest of life is to soften, even eliminate, ego-attachment as preparation for a higher, better unity. Doctrines such as rebirth and karma explain certain problems, such as the problem of evil, by contending that the universe responds to our choices with perfect justice: in this life or another we will all face the consequences of our actions . Tolstoy's trin ity of yearnings is satisfied . But Eastern theism begins from the perspective that the cosmos embodies a final culmination, a connection to enduring value , and is rational and ju st. It is unclear whether Eastern theism captures what the cosmos actually is or projects upon the cosmos our own deepest aspirations. We would like the cosmos to rule on strict moral deserts, to link us with enduring value, to offer a blissful final culmination to human life. Whether the cosmos reflects our deepest yearnings or is merely indifferent remains an open question . Doctrines of rebirth and karma answer some of the questions of the problem of evil and the inequities of daily life: Why do the innocent suffer? Because they are not innocent , they deserve to suffer based on their past deeds and unfulfilled karmic debts . Why is so much suffering in the world? Because we have much unfulfilled karmic debt. Why do bad people sometimes benefit? Either they are not as bad as they seem or they will eventually suffer long term for their short term windfall. If things don 't even out in this life they will in the next life, or eventually. Human beings are the captains of their fate, the sole masters of their destinies. These doctrines, however, raise puzzles . Consider the notion of rebirth. If my life force persists through numerous lives and bodily manifestations, in what sense do "I" maintain personal identity and thus personal responsibility for deeds in past lives? Eastern theism may respond that a person is a conjunction of an eternal self with a series of material bodies that are its various incarnations. The eternal self is pure consciousness, with feelings, intelligence, and the like, understood as subtle operations of matter . But if "I" am so distant from my past lives that I cannot recall them, even under regression therapies, my connection to my lengthy history becomes more and more abstract. My sense of personal responsibility becomes only theoretical, not existential. Consider the notion of karma. If I see people suffering should I help them, thereby doing a good deed and brightening up my karmic scorecard, or should I let them suffer so they can discharge their karmic debts? The distinction between good and bad deeds becomes fuzzier under the doctrine of karma . Ironically, embracing karma may engender less sympathy and compassion for those less fortunate : Bob is destitute . He is homeless, diseased, friendless, starving, isolated, and in terrible pain. Gee, he must have been one miserable slob in his previous lives. These observations do not disprove Eastern theism. But they call into question whether theism of any sort is an account of Reality or merely a reflection of our own hopes . We yearn for Tolstoy's trinity ; theism provides narratives to satisfy those hopes . Does that mean theism is true?

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Western theism is much more individualistic than Eastern theism . Although the cosmos is unified , as part of the Supreme Being's grand design, human beings are individuals who do not suffer the cycle of rebirth . Tolstoy's trinity is affirmed, but without doctrines such as karma and multiple lives. Ultimate rationality and justice is embodied and dispensed by the supreme being : we each get one shot at life and are then evaluated by the Master Adjudicator. Some contemporary philosophers, such as Irving Singer and Kurt Baier, insist that theism is no help in the quest for a meaningful life.' If meaning is preordained by a deity, the laws of nature, or both then human beings are instruments or tools in a scheme not of their making . If our earthly tasks are assigned by outside agents, all life has a merely instrumental meaning. We ourselves were fashioned with a predetermined destiny . Our choices are only to celebrate the grand design in humble supplication to powers greater than ourselves or resist the divine plan. We are either toadies who curry favor out of fear or fools who risk eternal retribution . I do not accept this criticism of theism. In theistic accounts, the grand design is not merely a script imposed by a stronger force. The grand design exemplifies Truth , Goodness, and Reality themselves. We cannot simply go along with the drama tongue in cheek. Instead, we should internalize the norms of the divine plan, make them our own, and celebrate our connection with the ground of all being . We are mere instruments only if we are used. But we are not used if we cheerfully affirm a grand design that exudes the highest values . Human beings would be more than tools because of our free will: through our choices, creativity, comm itments, and actions we can make the divine plan our own. Western theism need not demand debasement of the self or a negative attitude toward the universe. Eastern theisms have a tougher but not impossible road to travel on these matters . Once people accept the eastern understanding of self, the unity of the cosmos, the paramount value of transcendence, the doctrines of rebirth and karma , and the like, they can moderate suffering and realize their full potentialities in their moral and spiritual life. Eastern theism is a nonanthropomorphic way of connecting to value, meaning , and truth . Eastern theism need not be viewed as providing a merely instrumental purpose for human beings . My limited defense of theism against an unfair form of philosophical attack must not be taken as a call to set up the revival tents, juice up the chorus, and rev up the testimonies. Theisms can always be called into question. First, no theism can be proved. Proofs for the existence of God are often energized by fear of an infinite regress , for example , a chain of causation and movement that never ends unless an unmoved mover or uncaused cause stops the chain . Infinite regresses terrify some philosophers because they provide no ultimate explanation of events on earth. But all such proofs, at best, can only conclude that there is an uncaused cause of some sort, not that the God of JudeoChristianity or Allah of Islam is that first cause . Moreover, even the conclusion that there is an uncaused cause depends on eliminating, usually by logical fiat,

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the possibility of an infinite regress . Perhaps an infinite regress is the (non)explanation. Finally, the Supreme Being of Western religion can itself be viewed as an anthropomorphic infinite regress. Eternal and complete with no origin, the Supreme Being is every bit as mysterious an explanation of the cosmos as an infinite regres s. Has religion substituted a living, eternal, infinite being for the infinite regress of causation and motion it feared ? Insofar as a supreme being or nature itself is a first cause it invites further questions: What is God's purpose in creating a meaningful world ? Does a more ultimate purpose even than God 's purposiveness exist? Theists might respond that as the ground of all being God would not be in a relationship with Truth, Goodness, Meaning, and the like. God would be identical to and the source of these values. But that identity and ground remain mysterious and beg the question against the nontheist. In sum , proofs for the existence of God typically beg the question against the possibility of an infinite regre ss and after concluding that an uncaused cause exists affirm faith in a Supreme Being . Therefore, these exercises do not demonstrate the existence of a first being . Second, scriptural accounts and religious experiences are likewise unreliable. The methodology of appealing to scr iptures in sacred texts is questionable. Often , advocates take single scriptural passages as decisive for all moral cases that might relate to the passage. But there are grave difficulties in doing so. Questions about the original context in which the passage was used, about how the passage's context may have been shifted by later authors, and about how a scriptural passage relates to other passages on the same topic abound. Much like the proclamations of the Delphic Oracle, the writings in sacred texts admit different interpretations. Such writings have a deep historical dimension, they arose at a time in a place under social circumstances. The existence of scriptures shows at best that certain people deeply believed certain things, including the existence of a Supreme Being , and interpreted certain events in certain ways in their time . Religious experiences fare no better as demonstration of theism's truth . Having unusual experiences can be interpreted and can be accounted for in different ways . They provide little or no evidence for the existence of divinities. Even a visit from a seemingly powerful being, one who can perform extraordinary deeds beyond human efficacy, does not establi sh the qualities of the Western God. Is this powerful being a demon, a semi-god, or truly all-powerful, allknowing, and all-good? Third, explanations other than the reality of gods can be offered for the prevalence of relig ious commitment. In the nineteenth century, the masters of suspicion undermined theism with relish . Karl Marx (1818-1883) called religion "opium for the masses," a way to divert the pain of proletariat life by focusing on a better world after death ." Part of the ideological superstructure that serves the interests of the dominant classes, religion distracts the disenfranchised from the misery of their social condition, forestalls revolutionary fervor, and rein-

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forces prevailing economic systems . Marx, himself pursuing a quasi-religious grand redemption of the human race, argued that the functions religion serves will wither away once the communist paradise on earth is realized. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), although far from original on this issue, argued that we create gods, they do not create us.' We project our own deepest yearnings and fears on an indifferent universe, conjuring up various theisms to soften the human condition. Religion is thus an illusion that makes life palatable for many people. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) viewed the creation of the major Western religions as the revenge of the herd." The masses of human beings, resentful and fearful of those more noble and excellent, devise religion as a way of humbling their betters . Slogans such as "the meek will inherit the earth" and "the wealthy are as likely to pass through the gates of heaven as a camel is of passing through the eye of a needle" warm the cockles of the resentful masses and calm the haughtiness of the powerful. Religion, under this view, is a method born of ill motives to install and reinforce a particular system of values that glorifies equality, mediocrity, and social domesticity. Fueled by a lowest-commondenominator mentality, religion honors herd values to the detriment of potentially noble types. To ensure general compliance with these values, religion invents an all-powerful Supreme Being with strong retributive leanings : to fall out of line is to risk eternal suffering. Such an enforcer, who knows everything and can do anything, gives pause to even the most powerful on earth . Nietzsche concluded that the rise of science and the disaggregation of fervent religious conviction, the kind that truly animates everyday social life, showed that belief in God is no longer worthy. Human beings have created social conditions, including technological achievements, that undermine intense religious commitment. Priests, ministers, and rabbis now preside over the "death of God" as they orchestrate rituals that lack the power to energize daily life. Fourth , the major religions invariably have tensions, ambiguities, and conflicts within their fundamental doctrines. The good news is that these frictions permit flexibility and adaptability to changing social circumstances. The bad news is that they diminish the clarity of the theistic message. Take the Christian notion of heaven. The state of eternal bliss is paramount in the theology because it is the final culmination of a meritorious life, the clear connection to Meaning, Truth, and Value, and the ultimate demonstration that the cosmos is rational and just. Heaven must conjure satisfactions that are understandable now. So the theology maintains that the bodies of those earning redemption shall be restored in a new, glorified form. Also, we retain our past histories, cleansed of imperfection and sinfulness. Thus we retain our affections for our backgrounds and contacts, we have continuing knowledge and love of the created beings with whom we had relationships in our earthly lives. But heaven is nonmaterial and unchanging so its crux is the intuitive apprehension of God as He is in Himself, and love. As a complete state, heaven permits our desirous spirits to attain eternal serenity.

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Can we demonstrate courage, compassion, and sympathy in heaven if there are no dangers to confront, no suffering to moderate, no fears to allay? Do the virtues evaporate in the other world? What does one do in heaven? While the beatific vision, the direct apprehension of God, is appealing, is it really an activity? On earth we plan , create, strive, succeed, fail. In heaven we apprehend .. . eternally. From an earthly standpoint the notion of full actualization, having all our potential realized, is, happily, an impossibility. The process of life would end if human beings were somehow complete. If boredom is the shriek of unused capabilities can it also be the murmur of no more capabilities to use? Would heaven be boring after , say, the equivalent of five or six million years of apprehending the same? How does one kill time in eternity? None of this demonstrates logical error in the Christian notion of heaven. Surely it is reasonable to hold that there will be considerable mystery in describing and understanding a transcendent phenomenon in earthly terms . But the questions highlight the difficulty of even conceiving of what many take to be the highest human aspirations: the link with eternal Value, Meaning, and Rationality. Is the quest by its very nature outside the human condition? Fifth, religious conviction may be taken as a matter of faith. But faith is not the absence of reason. Instead, faith is conviction and action not fully supportable by reason. Faith is not mysterious. Faith is required for life. Reason cannot establish itself. Even robust reliance on reason requires a certain faith. Faith, then, is not the opposite of reason, evidence, and probable belief. Religious faith is a type of but does not define faith. Religious faith is not created out of nothing. People who claim such faith can trace it back to a religious experience, acceptance of sacred texts, a particular socialization process, events in their lives from which it emerged, and the like . The basis of religious faith, then, is one or more of the sources already discussed. Religious faith , by definition, can neither be rationally proved nor disproved. But religious faith is still subject to examination . The sources of faith are always subject to scrutiny. One cannot invoke religious faith as if it were a safe, unassailable oasis that ends discussion. Nevertheless, Marx was incorrect in thinking that religious conviction would wither away once an ideal social scheme was realized. While religious conviction may well serve the functions Marx alleges, it also reflects a more enduring human concern: the search for meaning, understanding, and an antidote to finitude . Even in an ideal social scheme, human beings must struggle with their mortality and their need to connect with Tolstoy's trinity. Tolstoy accepted a theistic assumption: either God exists as the creator of meaning embedded in the universe or there is only chaos and meaninglessness. We may substitute Nature or the Absolute for God in some of the Eastern theisms. This assumption holds sway over many people. Just as fear of an infinite regress compels many thinkers to embrace a first cause or unmoved mover, refusal to resign themselves to cosmic meaninglessness leads some thinkers, such as Tolstoy, to embrace theism. Great Western philosophers, such as Plato and

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Hegel developed interesting versions of the meaning of life under the influence of the theistic assumption. D. Philosophical Theism Plato's (428-347 BC) view of reality and knowledge was influenced greatly by mathematics." Geometry investigates the form of lines, triangles, and squares, instead of particular objects that are linear, triangular, and square. Instead of examining particular things in space, geometry studies the form of spatiality itself. Applying the mathematical model to the world of objects, Plato observed that we call many different things by the same name . For example, objects of different color, shape, size, and material are accurately called "desks." But what is it by virtue of which we can do this? Plato concluded there must be a form of deskness just as there is a form of lines . The form of deskness is the essence, or defining characteristics, of desk . The form of "desk" is whatever an object must embody to be a desk. Forms, or universals, give particular objects their being and permit us to recognize particular objects as what they are . Forms exist even if the particulars on earth which exemplify them do not exist, but the reverse is not true. Put differently, forms preexist particular objects, particular objects partake of or participate in forms, and this participation is the cause of the particular object being what it is. Plato 's belief in the transcendent world of forms is fueled by several convictions. First, he takes goodness to be more real than evil. Second, he insists that only permanent, unchanging, general entities can be the foundation of knowledge and reality. Third, he is a committed dualist who believes our souls, not our bodies, define us. Fourth, he believes only the doctrine of forms explains the diversity of particulars in this world . Fifth, he understands the transcendent world of forms to be the only alternative to skepticism about values and truth. Without a stable, fixed foundation for being, morality, and knowledge the specter of radical doubt looms frighteningly. Running through these five convictions is a clear preference for the unitary, universal, eternal, infinite, unchanging, ordered, intelligible, and contemplative over the diverse, particular, temporal, finite, changing, disordered, physical, and active . But what does all this have to do with the meaning of life? Plato thought that the forms constituted a reality higher than this world. To explain the diversity of particular things on earth, forms are not merely abstract ideas; instead, they comprise the highest reality in a transcendent realm. The highest form is the form of the good which is the final and highest reality, the foundation of all other forms and all particular things. Whereas our world is material, changeable, transient, flawed and particular, the transcendent world of forms is immaterial, changeless, eternal, perfect and universal. Our world is an imperfect image or a copy of the world of forms, While knowledge of earthly objects is always partial and contestable because of the flux of our world, knowledge of the forms is always complete and final because of the stability of the transcendent world. Un-

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fortunately, the transcendent world is beyond full human understanding. We can enjoy glimpses of the world of forms through insight, philosophical reflection, and dialectical argument, but cannot capture once and forever the rapture or detail of the transcendent world while immersed in earthly life. At times, Plato, influenced by Eastern theism through his predecessor Pythagoras, suggests that at death the soul travels to the transcendent world and apprehends the forms directly, without use of sense perception. The soul, if pure, remains in the transcendent world or, if impure, transmigrates into another human or animal body . Once reunited with body the soul forgets the grand knowledge it gained in the transcendent world. Learning and education in this world then becomes a process of dimly remembering what the soul once knew vividly while in the world of forms . The meaning of life consists of virtuous living, nurturing our souls through philosophical investigation and reflection, and purifying our spirits in preparation for the transcendent world . Although Plato understands that precise renderings of our continued existence in the other world are speculative, he is confident that our souls are immortal. The parallels between Platonism and mainstream religions are clear. Replace the form of the good with an anthropomorphic God or the Absolute, substitute a version of heaven or Nirvana for Plato's transcendent world, spice up the Platonic soul with religious metaphors, and the compatibility between Plato and the great religions is striking. This is unsurprising because the mainstream religions and Plato's notions are fueled by the same human aspirations I have been calling Tolstoy's trinity : a final culmination, a connection to enduring value, and a rational, just cosmos. An extended critique of Plato's metaphysics is beyond the scope of this inquiry . But among the more common questions raised, some of which troubled Plato from the outset, are the following: Why and how does a perfect reality cause a lesser reality, our world, to emerge? Does reality admit different degrees? Is Plato projecting his class and personal preferences, instead of discovering an independent truth? Is Plato rebelling against the deficiencies of the human condition by positing a nobler, eternal world? What can we make of the mysterious notions of the soul's "apprehending" the other world and a particular object's "participating in" a form? Does Plato's view fail as an explanation of the diversity of particular things in this world because it duplicates this diversity in the realm of forms? Are general terms, rather than identifying forms residing in a transcendent world, names we give to a class of particular objects? Do the forms really explain the world as it is, or do they stand above ordinary experiences and merely chronicle their failures? Do forms of negative properties, say the "non-human," exist? Are these so vague as to reduce the theory of forms to absurdity? Do relations between forms exist? Do these relations require forms, which bear relations that require forms, on to infinity? Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) advanced a different version of philosophical theism." Finite objects and beings are transitory manifestations of the

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Absolute, which is called at various stages and in different dimensions Mind, Reality, Reason , Idea. Unlike the Western God, Hegel's Absolute is not a transcendent reality that stands independent from the world and complete from the beginning. Instead, the Absolute develops through time, as the goal and result of an histor ical process. The Absolute comes to know itself through the movement of finite reality . Every concrete particular is a moment in the development of the Absolute. Thus, human beings make an historical contribution to the life of the Absolute and to Its awareness and freedom . We are necessary for the Absolute to become aware of Itself. Unlike the Western God, the Absolute has no meaning apart from the cosmos. The Absolute in full development is the integrated unity of all that is real, conscious of everything, infinite, free, and self-conscious. The self-actualization process has three main stages. First, as Idea-In-Itself, or Absolute without the world, the Reality is abstract, has no particularity, and is aware only of being self-contained. Second, as Idea-Outside-Itself, or Absolute with the world, Reality exhibits order, pattern, and an evolving human consciousness. Third, as Idea-Conscious-of-Itself, or Spirit, the Absolute is self-conscious, concrete, aware, free, and the world includes developed collective human consciousness. At this stage, human beings share recognition of their mutual interdependence and collective identity . Each nation represents some phase of the Absolute as it expresses itself in temporal events. The predominant nation in any era represents the dominant phase of the Absolute as It develops rationally. The course of history is the incarnation in human form of the Absolute , which apart from that history would remain undeveloped, potentiality without even self-awareness. Hegel's Absolute is not grander and more powerful than the natural world; instead, It becomes manifested only in the world. The progress of history is necessary and inevitable, but not linear : we experience backings and turnings , not merely straightforward advances . The cosmos reflects a developing rational Mind, acting to make Itself more concrete, more self-aware, more free. Neither random nor absurd , the cosmos embodies high rationality and intelligibility. For Hegel, the meaning of human life is clear. We can know and appreciate the ideal of Reason and the growth of the Absolute. We can advance those ideals through earthly struggle with good and evil. Our lives are in a sense the lives of the Absolute as the Absolute comes to know Itself by creating more life and by exhibiting order and purpose . History is on a nonlinear march , advancing the freedom and self-activity of all, a movement toward maximizing justice, beauty, and love. Human beings, therefore , play important roles in the triumphant historical drama that is earthly life. Again , Tolstoy's trinity is satisfied. The final culmination is the complete self-actualization of the Absolute. Human beings are not only connected to enduring value, but play an indispensable part in developing that value . And the cosmos strides cheerfully through time toward increasing rationality, justice, beauty, and truth.

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Hegel's scheme may fulfill Tolstoy's trinity but provides few consolations. The individual is a tool for grander purposes: I help the Absolute gain selfconsciousness and full development, but what does the infin ite do for me? Am I not a miniscule cog, one of trillions of drones, who labors in the cosmic hive only to evaporate into the void at death? The meaning of my life is purely instrumental and impersonal. In Hegel's scheme, the individual plays a role in the self-realization of the Absolute. But our lives are then means to another's good . Our fulfillment is only partaking of a Grand Fulfillment which we will not experience directly. Our meaning, value, and fulfillment is outside us. . An Hegelian might argue that we enjoy the fruits of historical progress as earthly life storms along to higher forms. But history can be interpreted in numerous ways. Faith in inevitable progress is only one such way and not necessarily the most convincing. The nineteenth-century faith in progress, captured by Hegelian metaphysics and Darwinian evolution, may be less compelling today. While scientific and technological innovations are striking, the condition of the environment, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the disaggregation of confidence in fervent religious belief, the unsettling of a robust sense of community, and the explosion of accessible information, distort the promise of Hegel's triumphant historical march. Technological and ideological developments in the twentieth century have also radically intensified everyday pressures. Many find themselves alienated from the comforting, if often illusory , certitudes of the past. Marx , Freud, and Nietzsche had earlier disaggregated the redeeming unassailability of religious meaning by pressing their suspicions that latent economic, psychological, and cultural motives underwrite, indeed create, religious conviction. Later , the rise of Fascism, Naz ism, and Socialism amplified the risks inherent in state control of the individual and family. The explosi ve hegemony of instrumental reason and abstract systems of control facilitated a crisis of the spirit as anxiety transformed itself to addiction. Refined technology mocked itself by producing weapons which threaten a humanly inspired apocalypse. Lived experiences, especially of the body, are too often eclipsed by ersatz media-inspired substitutes: virtual realities, blatant commodifications, and images understood vicariously. The enormous increase in information finds no parallel in expanded wisdom. Too many of us seem unable to reconnect ourselves with or to re-create wholesome realities. The human search for meaning is caricatured by capitalist hucksterism, pop psychology, the sham transcendence of a drug culture, and craven flight from individual responsibility. Cynicism and thorough skepticism are falsely enshrined as insight. The citadel of the self is under siege. Perhaps I am getting carried away. Let us stipulate that Hegel is correct: history skips happily along the path of (nonlinear) progress. Still, his meaning of life requires great collective identification. Individuals must be satisfied even though they may not realize the fruits of the final triumphant moments. We also find it more difficult to identify with the Absolute than to identify with the God of Western religions. Whether the possible abstract benefits to future people and

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to the Absolute Itself are sufficient to vivify a person's sense of meaningfulness now is questionable. The serious question "Can an individual have a robust sense of meaning in a Hegel ian context?" arises only after we have accepted the soundness of Hegel 's narrative. But why should we? Imagine an enormous area with, say, twenty million people clustered within. None of these people has ever been exposed to Hegelian philosophy. The master of ceremonies asks the people to each write down what they take to be the story of the universe. They may make use of or ignore gods, demons , scientific evidence, myths, and the like, as they see fit. They may repeat a common narrative or invent a new one. After an appropriate time has elapsed, the master asks the people to hand in their stories . How many would tum in tales similar to Hegel's Absolute? My point is that Hegel 's narrative is not so obvious as to command immediate agreement. We could argue plausibly that Hegel's system depends on his rather unusual convictions and preconceived ideas. Perhaps he looks at the human condition in search of meaning. Determ ined to locate that meaning in this life, for, after all, the great Eastern and Western theisms have already advanced narratives locating it in a transcendent realm, Hegel understands the primacy of Tolstoy 's trinity . Convinced that meaning in this life must be revealed, Hegel seeks evidence in the histor ical record . Reading that record in the way most charitable to his initial project, Hegel concludes that nonlinear progress defines the march of earthly events. But what could underwrite such progress? One answer might be the Laws of Nature or the God of Western religions. But this answer takes us right back to the traditional theisms . We might as well tear up our paper and terminate the exercise. Another answer is a nonhuman entity which needs and therefore can underwrite historical progress . Enter the Absolute with Its unique characteristics of development. A critic would insist that Hegel has put the rabbit in the hat: he has assumed from the start that human life has meaning, that this meaning manifests itself on earth, then he creates an interesting, original narrative to support his assumption. None of this disproves Hegel 's narrative or demonstrates the impossibility of the Absolute. But it may undermine a reader's inclination to accept the tale. Not that a mass following needs to be undermined. Hegel's Absolute has not drawn a huge audience. While his dialectical method, faith in historical progress, suspicion of two-valued logic, and psychological musings influenced many subsequent philosophers, most importantly Marx, Hegel's specific depiction of the Absolute has been less successful. E. Religious and Philosophical Theisms The grand theisms of history and Tolstoy's vivid description of his psychological crisis underscore brilliantly the human yearning for a final culmination, connection to enduring value, and a rational , just cosmos . Tolstoy's trinity is at the center of the search for meaning. The influential theisms of the West and East

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have for centuries convinced many thinkers that life has preordained meaning, purposes infused by powers infinitely greater than human will. Unlike some philosophers, I think that theistic solutions offer possibilities beyond instrumental meaning. Charitably interpreted, theism can fulfill the deepest human yearnings. Theism, however, requires a leap of faith many human beings will resist. Plagued by doubts and unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, questions, athe ists and agnostics remain unconvinced by the seductions of religion . Are the metaphysi cal presuppositions of theism believable in the modem era? Is relig ious faith a slogan for a certain kind of sociali zation? Are religious narratives truly a discovery of the nature of the cosmos, or a projection of our own deepest needs? Do religious institutions and doctrines serve the interests of the dom inant groups in society? Are they ideological drugs, ways of easing the misery of life? Are they powerful devices to stave off revolutionary thought and action ? Instead, are they the creations of the vengeful masses geared to leveling the extraordinary few? Are theisms rationally compelling given their numerous internal tensions, conflicts, even contradictions? If we really studied the historical genesis of religious belief, doctrine, and institutional power, would faith be undermined? Is the true foundation of religion our psychological needs, the smoke and mirrors of vivid fables, and mysticism? Neither theists nor nonbelievers can rationally prove their claims or disprove the counterclaims of their opposites. Theism will always appeal to many people because of the attention it pays to Tolstoy's trinity, our deepest human aspirations. Whether modem social conditions permit robust belief in a Supreme Being, the type of faith that vivifies everyday thought, choice, and action, is an issue beyond the scope of my inquiry. For those whose lives affirm that possibility, doubts are swallowed and the meaning oflife is clear. Many people will forsake the theistic solution for reasons good or bad. Some people will argue that if God exists then God would not insist on human beings following only one creed and set of rituals. Other people will not separate the historical record of Western religions from the belief in God . The institutions of organized religions will repel them. Utterly convinced of cosmic meaninglessness, the absence of any preordained or inherent purpose in the world, these critics of theism will still feel the urgency of Tolstoy's trinity . But new questions become compelling. Are the deepest human yearnings ignored by an indifferent cosmos? If the universe is inherently meaningless, is human life meaningless? Or can human beings forsake reliance on the gods and nature and create their own meaning? Some thinkers doubt whether human beings are immortal. They will be more concerned with living life fully now , regardless of whether they will be happily surprised later that there is an afterlife. Tolstoy's trinity, nevertheless, attracts most of us. But is it possible to find meaning if Tolstoy's trinity is only fantasy ?

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If theism is true we want to find meaning. If theism is false we want to find meaning. We want to live a life that it so valuable and worthwhile that it will be rewarding on its own terms, and a Supreme Being, if one exists, will want to reward it further in an afterlife . How can we accomplish this? We must examine the range of alternatives in the literature, the legacy of moves and strategies available, the solutions others have embraced. Remember, ours is not the first existential confrontation with meaninglessness. All reflective human beings at some point glumly greet the same predicament. We should try to learn from the great thinkers of the past. But, ultimately, as Jean-Paul Sartre insists, we are condemned to our freedom. We must choose a path, forge a journey, and sculpt our own souls. We shall now examine the road map to meaning that history bequeaths us.

Two NIHILISM, SCHOPENHAUER, AND NIETZSCHE William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, contains one of the clearest, most eloquent expressions of the sense of cosmic meaninglessness: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death . Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. I One response to belief in cosmic meaninglessness and the rejection of theism is nihilism. First appearing in the mid-nineteenth century in Russia, "nihilism" bears numerous historical meanings.' Existential nihilism holds that no religious or philosophical system provides firm guidance for human life or assurances that values are adequately grounded. Human life is at its core meaningless because the cosmos is purposeless. Our recognition of this intensifies the absurd human condition: the confrontation between rational humans and an indifferent universe. The world does not care about our hopes, fears, dreams, and experiences. While suicide is one possible response, it admits weakness and incapacity. A better response is human pride and rebellion, accompanied by human solidarity, which rejects despair in a self-conscious revolt against cosmic purposelessness. We should contemplate and defy our absurd situation in order to maximize life's intensity. Human beings give meaning to their existence not by eliminating the absurd , for that is impossible, but by refusing to yield meekly to its effects. Although the absurd prevents a fully satisfying existence it does not prevent the creation of meaning through rebellious activity in the name of justice and human solidarity. Skeptical nihilism claims to be a belief in nothing. I say claims because the belief in nothing is itself a belief. Skeptical nihilism emerges from the observations that fuel existential nihilism, but it refuses to substitute a program of pride, rebellion, and solidarity as a prescribed alternative. Thus skeptical nihilism denies that any alternative can ameliorate the human condition: continued human existence is not even a sham immortality; instead, it multiplies zeros by more zeros.

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Anarchistic nihilism is closely related to skeptical nihilism. This version of nihilism concludes from the lack of inherent cosmic meaning and value that humans are free from all rules and ideals: anything goes, all is permitted. The only limits upon human beings are their own physical and mental deficiencies. Epistemological nihilism occurs when our highest values and foundations of meaning devalue themselves: when cultural conditions largely caused by taking those values and foundations seriously ultimately no longer sustain fervent belief in them . Epistemological nihilism is often the trigger, because it heightens the sense of inherent cosmic purposelessness, for one or more of the other forms of nihilism. Epistemological nihilism is accompanied by a sense that no future human discovery can produce lasting values and foundations for meaning. Moral nihilism is a form of epistemological nihilism. Moral nihilism occurs when the dominant moral values collapse, either by devaluing themselves or from external pressure. Moral nihilism could occur in the absence of a broader epistemological nihilism. Passive nihilism is a paralyzing, pessimistic inertia resulting from acknowledging inherent cosmic purposelessness. Passive nihilism is sometimes accompanied by the belief that life embodies no good, or that the path of least resistance and minimal effort is a prescribed response to the human condition: avoiding suffering, striving for banal contentment and easy acceptance become paramount. Passive nihilism is more likely to produce a yearning to withdraw from the world, often in anticipation of a better afterlife. Active nihilism accepts inherent cosmic purposelessness as the springboard to creative possibilities: reveling in radical contingency, embracing the human condition fully while recognizing its tragic dimensions, understanding the process of deconstruction, reimagination, and re-creation, and rejoicing in liberation from imposed values and meanings are at the heart of active nihilism. Instead of minimizing the importance of any particular lifetime, as does spiritual nihilism, active nihilism places paramount value on this life. I do not claim this list of historical uses of "nihilism" is exhaustive. Some of the uses detail the loss of inherent cosmic meaning, some are reactions to that loss, some are mainly philosophical or theoretical doctrines, while others track psychological moods or movements. Most people who are nihilists in one of these senses are also nihilists in other senses . Skeptical, anarchistic, and passive nihilism are the most radical forms . They capture a mood of despair over the emptiness of human existence and perceive no solutions. Other forms, such as moral and epistemological nihilism, can either help fuel the more radical forms or spur the invention of new forms of justification. While yet other forms , such as existential and active nihilism, can animate dynamic ways of life that counsel human beings to create their own meaning. The different moods nurtured by the forms of nihilism result from different reactions to the theistic assumption and to Tolstoy's trinity. The theistic assumption sets forth two alternatives: either God exists as the creator of meaning

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embedded in the universe or there is only chaos and meaninglessness. Tolstoy's trinity is the yearning for a final culmination, a connection to enduring value, and a rational and just universe. The radical forms of nihilism most closely embrace the theistic assumption and most deeply yearn for Tolstoy's trinity. After rejecting God's existence and the presence of embedded cosmic meaning, they conclude there is only chaos, emptiness , and triviality. A mood of despair follows as closely as darkness follows sunset. Existential and active nihilists reject the theistic assumption and have a more ambiguous relationship to Tolstoy's trinity. They may yearn for the trinity, but do not regard it as necessary for human meaning. A mood of liberation, a sense of anticipation, a return to earthly exhilarations may stoke the quest for humanly created meaning. To illustrate the difference, we need only compare the viewpoints of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

1. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche Nietzsche is concerned with the links between the conditions and fulfillment of culture and a tragic view of life. Nietzsche's tragic view of life was influenced significantly by Schopenhauer who was in tum influenced by Buddhist thought. Schopenhauer's outlook is pessimistic.' Human life is beset with universal, unavoidable suffering which prevents fulfillment of basic needs and wants. Life itself, not merely mortality and fear of death, renders human existence problematic . Although our world of appearance yields the illusion of individuation, Reality , as thing-in-itself, is a primal unity without individual parts. Our notions of space, time , and causality are functions of the way the human mind actively shapes and organizes sen sory material, they have no independent existence as sub stances or categories of Reality. For Schopenhauer, individuality itself is a grand illusion. Life is a totalit y to which all creatures belong as expression of a oneness in flux. We are aware of ourselves as self-moving and active, as direct expressors of wills . Schopenhauer took this inner consciousness to be basic and irreducible. What we will and what we do are one phenomena viewed from the different vantage points of inner consciousness and body , respectively. He extended his notion of will, seeing it as definitive of the fundamental character of the universe, in order to undermine those who insisted on the underlying rationality and morality of the cosmos. Schopenhauer tries to reorient philosophy away from the dominant rationalism of his day to greater emphasis on unconscious, biological forces. He denies the inevitability of human progress and the perfectibility of people. He insists that human beings are doomed to an eternal round of torment and misery. Striving is the basic nature of the will , and no finished project can end striving. Because striving is incapable of final serenity, we alternate between the lack of fulfillment we feel when not achie ving temporary goals and the sense of

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letdown and boredom we feel when we attain them. Schopenhauer concludes, along with the Buddhists, that we should minimize our attachments to and withdraw as much as possible from this life. Although Nietzsche tries to distance himself from Schopenhauer, his own views on suffering, the pervasiveness of will, the lack of final resolutions, the role of strife , and the contingency of individuation owe much to Schopenhauer's work . Nietzsche, however, is an active nihilist while Schopenhauer is a passive nihilism. The difference between these two forms of nihilism can be illustrated by the ancient Myth of Sisyphus." Condemned by the gods to push a huge rock to the top of a hill from which it fell down the other side, to be pushed again to the top from which it fell again, and so on forever, Sisyphus was doomed to futile , pointless, unrewarded labor. His immortality was part of his punishment. His consciousness of the futility of his project was his tragedy. Sisyphus's life is representative of human life: repetitious, meaningless, pointless toil that adds up to nothing in the end. The myth portrays the eternal human struggle and indestructible human spirit. Although Sisyphus is not mortal , that deepens and does not redeem the absurdity of his life. While human life bears more variety than Sisyphus's life, the matter is only one of small degree . While some humans take solace in producing and raising children, that can be viewed as more of the same : adding zeros to zeros. Schopenhauer would counsel Sisyphus to withdraw from his task of endlessly pushing the boulder up a hill, and, failing that possibility, to detach himself from the task as he performs it. Nietzsche would advise Sisyphus to affirm his fate, to desire nothing more than to do what he is fated to do eternally, to luxuriate in the immediate texture of what he does, to confer, through attitude and will, meaning on an inherently meaningless task. Schopenhauer fails to see that value and meaning need not be permanent to be real; that process renders fulfillments independently of attaining goals; that the attainments of great effort and creation do not instantaneously produce emptiness ; that suffering is not inherently negative but can be transfigured for creative advantage. Schopenhauer claims human desire is unquenchable. Much like Plato's tyrannical man, we create new desires soon after we fulfill earlier desires. We always want more regardless of how many desires we fulfill. Thus we are frustrated either by failure to fulfill our desires, or we are bored once we fulfill them, or we are creating new desires that lead to the same self-defeating alternatives. What is the state to which Schopenhauer aspires? Does he secretly yearn for a condition of never-ending bliss? Does freedom from suffering require that we want nothing more? Many would find such a life deadening. A life devoid of new projects, adventures, journeys, and goals lacks creativity: bland contentment replaces vigorous thought and action. Perhaps suffering is produced not by the process of seeking fulfillment of new desires but by the taming of our desire-

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creating mechanism. Having unfulfilled desires need not be painful ; it is often exhilarating. We imagine rewarding new situations and pursue them vigorously. We find fulfillments in the process and, often, in achieving the goal. Our insatiability ensures that we continue to imagine and pursue rewarding projects, rather than being limited to contemplating earlier fulfillments. Whether the new desires we create produce suffering depends on what they are and how we pursue them, not solely on their presence. A crude dualism infects Schopenhauer's analysis . He separates human experience into desires and results. Human beings desire what they lack or what they seek more of. This sense of deprivation itself is a type of suffering. When we act to attain our desires we either fail or we succeed . Ifwe fail we deepen our suffering. If we succeed in attaining our goal we may experience temporary satisfaction . This satisfaction, however, is soon followed by boredom. Our striving, willful nature cannot find contentment. Final seren ity is available only in the tomb or womb . The crudeness of Schopenhauer's dualism lies in his categories. Human life is not experienced as a series of discrete pursuits of isolated goals. The process of striving itself yields satisfactions independently of attaining its goals. Upon being attained, goals propel us to new projects. Boredom results from inactiv ity, a loss of faith in life, and a lack of imagination. But human beings live in a continuous process of desires, finding appropriate means of satisfying those desires , and failing to achieve or attaining the ends we seek. As a continuous process, the categories of desires, means, and ends are fluid . What is called an end in relation to a particular means is itself a means to another end. What is an end with respect to a particular desire is itself a desire leading to pursuit of another end. The continuous process , at its best, energizes our spirit , manifests our faith in life, and reveals our imagination . Schopenhauer talks of our incessant striving as if it were a disease to be eradicated through withdrawal. But human beings are not static characters trying to find a fixed point called "contentment." If contentment suggests inactivity, a final termination, or a mere savoring of the past then it does conjure terminal boredom or retreat from the world. If we understand contentment more robustly we will underscore its compatibility with continuous activity and self-creation. Contentment is not a final resting point , but a positive self-appraisal: an acknowledgment that we are on the proper course, a savoring of the past seasoned with hope for the future, a satisfaction with the self we are creating. Schopenhauer failed to understand that if we create an endless supply of rewarding projects, our lack of final satisfaction bears joyous tidings . Whereas Schopenhauer tacitly accepts the criteria of hedonism and permanence , Nietzsche embraces the criterion of power: exertion , struggle and suffering are at the core of overcoming obstacles, and it is only through overcoming obstacles that human beings experience, truly feel, their power . Higher human types joyfully embrace the values of power, while "last men," Nietzsche's male-

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gendered notion of embodied banality, and utilitarian philosophers extol the values of hedonism . The highest amb itions of last men are comfort and security. They are the extreme case of the herd mentality : habit, custom, indolence, egalitarianism, self-preservation, and muted will to power prevail. Last men embody none of the inner tensions and conflicts that spur transformative action. They take no risks, lack convictions, avoid experimentation, and seek only bland survival. Utilitarian philosophers, although not themselves last men, unwittingly fuel the herd mental ity with their celebration of pleasure, happiness, and egalitarianism.' Nietzsche's tragic view of life understands fully the inevitability of human suffering, the flux that is the world, and the Sisyphus-like character of daily life. Yet it is in our response to tragedy that we manifest either a heroic or a herd mentality. We cannot rationalize or justify the inherent meaninglessness of our suffering. We cannot transcend our vulnerability and journey to fixed security. We are contingent, mortal beings and will remain so. We are free, however, to create ourselves: we bear no antecedent duties to external authority, we are under the yoke of no preestablished goals. We need not recoil squeamishly from the horrors of existence, instead, we can rejoice in a passionate life of perpetual self-overcoming. Art can validate our creativity and laughter can ease our pain and soften our pretensions. 2. Nietzsche and the Meaning of Life For Nietzsche, the meaning of life is not found in reason, but in the passions: in aspects of life that are of ultimate concern, our creations, devotion to worthwhile causes, and commitment to projects . Our instincts and drives creat e our meaning. Conscious thought can obscure our creativity. The meaning of life, for Nietzsche, focuses on stylist ic movem ent graceful dancing , joyful creation, negotiating the processes of a world of flux with panache and vigor - instead of goal achievement. We cannot reach an ultimate goal. But we can develop through recurrent personal and institutional deconstruction, reimagination, and re-creation . Our exertion of our wills to power in the face of obstacles, with the knowledge of inherent cosmic meaninglessness, and with profound immersion in the immediacy of life, reflects and sustains our psychological health . Personal and institutional overcomings will permit us to become who we are: radically conditional beings deeply implicated in a world of flux. By aspiring to live a life worthy of being repeated in all details infinitely, we joyously embrace life for what it is and regard it, and ourselves, as part of a grand aesthetic epic. Whether self-mastery and self-perfection are the sole focus of the will to power, they are the prime concerns of Nietzsche's work . Neither state idolatry nor discredited supernatural images can provide human beings enduring conso-

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lations for their unresolvable existential crises . Instead , a new image of human beings is necessary. Nietzsche's desiderata for higher human types includes the ability to marginalize but not eliminate negative and destructive impulses within oneself, and to transfigure them into joyous affirmation of all aspects of life; to understand and celebrate the radical contingency, finitude, and fragility of ourselves, our institutions and the cosmos itself; to regard life itself as fully and merely natural, as embodying no transcendent meaning or value; to harbor little or no resentment toward others or toward the human condition; to confront the world in immediacy and with a sense of vital connection; to refuse to avert our gaze from a tragic world -view and, instead, to find value not in eventual happiness, as conceived by academic philosophers, but in the activities and processes themselves; to refuse to supplicate oneself before great people of the past but, instead , to accept their implicit challenge to go beyond them; to give style to our character by transforming our conflicting internal passions into a disciplined yet dynamic unity ; to facilitate high culture by sustaining a favorable environment for the rise of great individuals; to strive for excellence through self-overcoming that honors the recurrent flux of the cosmos by refus ing to accept a "finished" self as constitutive of personal identity ; and to recognize the Sisyphus-like dimension to human existence: release from the tasks described is found only in death. Given the human condition, high energy is more important than a final, fixed goal. The mantra of "challenge, struggle, overcoming, and growth," animating and transfiguring perpetual internal conflict, replaces prayers for redemption to supernatural powers . Nietzsche promotes the individualism of the highest human types while understanding that values are initially established by peoples. Human beings create the value they embody by living experimentally and by nurturing an environment that propagates great people and high culture . Existence and the world are justified as aesthetic phenomenon in that the highest artistic creations are great human beings themselves. To understand the new human image Nietzsche celebrates, we must examine the roles of laughter, love, pity, and suffering. Laughter is an appropriate response to the human condition. Laughter reminds us that we do not inhabit a special place in the universe, that our inclination to take ourselves too seriously is misplaced, that our quest for certitude is futile, that the cosmos is indifferent to our standards and aspirations, that despair is the refuge of passive nihilists, and that when allied with wisdom life offers us possibilities for the robust, active nihilism that constitutes high culture . A tragic worldview should be accompanied by appreciative comedy. To laugh at ourselves spices our affirmation of life. Nietzsche tells us that "the spiritualization of sensuality is called love.:" To love is to affirm, to affirm is to value, to value is to find meaning. First, we must learn to love ourselves. Second, we must love the earth . Third , we must love life itself. Fourth, we must love eternity. Fifth, we must love others, especially

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friends . While Nietzsche disparages the purity of such love, for love always involves self-interest and the will to power, and sometimes results in inadequate self-creation, he appreciates that love can nurture the lovers ' quest for perfection. Nietzsche warns of the dangers of sexual love, reiterates his appreciation of friendship, and underscores his view of salutary love as a yearning and struggle for perfection. Pity is the enemy of salutary love. The decadence of pity is the elevation of the sharing of suffering and the marginalization of striving for mutual self-perfection. Salutary love requires hardness and exertion because it focuses on the recurring struggles of mutual self-perfection and self-overcoming. Pity reneges on amor fati (love of fate, love of life): it desires that things were otherwise, refuses to transfigure suffering into spiritual advantage, devalues life, and indulges weakness. Beyond its general complicity in the herd mentality, pity masks its motives : its grounding in feelings of superiority, negative evaluation of its object, and disguised resentments. For Nietzsche, love must elevate, it must transform the lovers into lifeaffirmers and self-overcomers. At its best, love strives for the particular unrealized ideals embodied by specific people. Love does not focus on an abstract, disembodied, universalizable ideal. Instead, love recognizes the particular unrealized ideal of the beloved. The aim of love, then, is mutual nurturing of each lover's specific ideal possibilities, nurturing which requires hardness, toughness, and clear focus on love's purpose. Transforming suffering, struggling with multiplic ity, and overcoming satisfaction are at the core of self-mastery. Healthy love cannot degenerate into the banal contentments of last men. But critics will sense a cold calculation in such love. The description could just as easily be appl ied to weightlifters who are training partners. For Nietzsche, the lover is a helpmate, perhaps even a co-creator, but always from a distance. Nietzsche's notion of love fails to implicate our souls . At best, it vivifies our mutual creativity and provides mutual inspiration for seekers of greatness. Also, Nietzsche claims that "What do you love in others? - My hopes ."? Some thinkers will remain unconvinced that Nietzsche's version of love involves concrete people. If the beloved is transformed into an idealized image of my aspirations, then what is love's object? My fantasies of being a higher human type? My projections of what I can be? My speculations of what the other can be molded to be? Once a person holds, as Nietzsche did, that the self is neither substantive nor fixed , love assumes the form of self-overcoming: a striving for self-mastery and self-perfection which requires deconstruction, reimagination, and recreation. Lovers should facilitate their beloved's quest for self-overcoming. Love should not idealize , in the sense of seeing what cannot be or of glorifying the beloved's character of the moment. Thus, the lover is not and cannot, for Nietzsche, be fixated on the beloved's static self-understanding, but, instead, promotes the beloved's particular unrealized ideals . What critics insist is a con-

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crete, particular person is, for Nietzsche, an illusion. For him, struggle, affirmation of becoming, and creat ive reconstruction remain paramount. Purely romantic love is a flight from our world, a temporary escape from suffering, as dangerous a narcotic as heroin . Nietzsche understands the selfdelusions of romantic love, how it is grounded in possession and power, how it mendaciously conceals its aims behind the conventional pieties of herd morality. Critics would respond that love is neither cynical mutual use for individual greatness nor a caricatured romanticism. Love must involve an expansion of subjectivity: opening access to oneself and yielding a measure of privacy; intimacy and sharing; common activities and mutual benefit; and, most of all, establishing a common good and forging an identity . What Nietzsche fails to understand is how love binds parties to a new identity, which is more than a renewed quest for individual greatness. When I love another, I seek more than my self-perfection and the other's self-perfection, I seek our perfection. Love cannot be an arm 's-length, mutual aid exercise in individualism. Lovers cannot be creators in lontananza ("in the distance"). No, love widens our subjectivity and creates a new identity that immediately embodies its own unrealized ideals. And the unrealized ideal possibilities oflovers-bound are never merely the sum of the unrealized ideal possibilities embodied by the two individual lovers . Critics will insist that Nietzsche's lovers are always at a distance, they avoid the intimacy and soul-searing experiences that bind individuals into a wider subjectivity. He offers us friendship, love of the cosmos, love of self, love ofetemity, love of the earth , but what does he know about deeper, more intimate love? Yes, he can nitpick about the common motives and frailties of lovers, and how sexual love often ends in frustration and mutual destruction . But that gives only the dangerous, not the healthy, side of love. Perhaps Nietzsche's depiction is calculatedly onesided because he lacked the personal experiences to complete the picture. Nietzsche recognizes a decadent form and a life-affirming form of love, just as he recognizes decadent and life-affirming forms of other emotions. Our motives, as always, are important for distinguishing the two forms. Nietzsche does not fall prey to a pedestri an dualism because, first, he views decadence and life-affirmation as matters of degree that admit numerous intermediary forms and, second, he understands that we all embody elements of decadence and lifeaffirm ation. Part of our life struggle is to confront and overcome the last man within each of us. In the case of life-affirming love, Nietzsche celebrates the mutual pursuit of self-perfection, while his critics prefer to focus on the lovers' amplified identity . Nietzsche understands that greatness necessarily involves suffering and the overcoming of grave obstacles. He evaluates peoples, individuals, and cultures by their ability to transform suffering and tragedy to spiritual advantage. We cannot eliminate suffering, but we can use it creatively. Suffering and resistance can stimulate and nourish the will to power. By changing our attitude toward suffering from pity to affirmation, we open ourselves to greatness. For Nietzsche , joy and strength trump the happiness of the herd.

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Nietzsche's new image of human beings is not projected for or achievable by all. His vision is an explicitly aristocratic ideal that is pitched only to the few capable of approximating it. Greatness and genius are fragile and vulnerable: they bring about their own destruction but arise stronger than ever. The thrust of Nietzsche's thought is that we can formulate entirely new modes of evaluation that correspond to new, higher forms of life. The value of humanity is establ ished by its highest exemplars and their creations. The higher human forms are extremely fragile and rare: self-control, mastery of inclinations, resisting obstacles, experimentation, and forging a unified character require recurrent destruction (and re-creation) of self. We can never transcend our conditionality and the lack of inherent meaning in the world of Becoming but at least a few of us can loosen the limits of contingency, experience fully the multiplicity of our spirits , forge a coherent unity from our internal conflicts, and learn to overcome ourselves and our institutions : theoretical insight can be turned to practical advantage. The Ubermensch (overman) is Nietzsche's male-gendered symbol of human beings overcoming themselves to superior forms. Nietzsche does not give us a definite description, but the overman represents a superhuman exemplar that has not yet or rarely existed." The overman would be joyous, in control of his instinctual will to power, able to forge an admirable unity and style out of his inherent multiplicity, severe with himself, in control of his desires, a sublimator and refiner of cruelty, an unrepentant bearer of great suffering, a pursuer of "truth" who is aware of the essential unity of truth and illusion, a creator and imposer of values and meaning , who experiences his existence as self-justifying. The overman will remain faithful to this earth and not defer gratification in hopes of transcendent salvation in another world, he will possess great health and be able to experience the multiple passions he embodies, he eschews the easy path of last men, he understands the value he creates is what he embodies, he celebrates a justified self-love, he is free from resentment and revenge , he wastes no time in self-pity, he is grateful for the entirety of his life, he understands and maintains a clear distance between himself and the herd, and he exemplifies the rank order oflife. The overman "shall be the meaning of the earth" in that the overman endows life with value and redeems the inherently meaningless tragic existence of the species . In sum, the overman is a higher mode of being that approximates the human aspiration for transcendent greatness. The overman embodies the virtues of the active nihilist. He relishes recurrent deconstruction, reimagination, and re-creation. The notion of overman, as symbolic, dynamic, indeterminate, provides an ideal toward which to strive . The overman symbolizes a refashioning of our sensibilities and aspiration in service of an enhanced life. The overman points a direction rather than specifies a goal. Nietzsche warns readers not to view the overman as an evolutionary necessity or as an idealistic type of higher man.

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But why is self-overcoming anything more than a symptom of discontent, insecurity, and desperation? Is it only the wearing of different masks, the playing of different roles, the stra ined thespianism of those lacking a sense of self? For Nietzsche, human beings are not limited to one best kind of life. We must all discharge the burden of forging our own life. Nietzsche denies the presence of a substantive self lingering beneath appearances. We are our "masks." He thinks higher types should aspire to be the most interesting series of masks they can create. To accept a particular mask or role as definitive of who you are during a lifetime is to truncate artificially the mult iplicity we embody and to accept the life-denying, illusory world of being. To live beyond yourself in selfcreation is to forge a complex, subtle character that is worthy of "strutting its hour upon the stage" many times, even eternally. Nietzsche's attitude of amor fati is not achieved through rational argument. Instead, it focuses on the rapture of being alive . Amor faa is an experience animated by faith, not cognitive discovery. Amor fati demands active response. First, at least, human beings have the freedom to order their interior life, their responses, to the thought of leading a life worthy of being repeated in every detail over and over again . Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence embodies this theme . While lower types adopt passive nihilism, higher types will embrace the entirety of life and view the lack of inherent cosmic meaning and infinite redemption as liberation from external authority. Even the Stoics recognized that nature could not control some things : our attitudes toward events in the world . Second, unlike the Stoics , Nietzsche glorifies the passions as robust manifestations of the will to power. To become who you are, to self-overcome, and to destroy, reimagine, and re-create require an active nihilism that elevates the present into a fated eternity. Third, higher types will recognize that passive nihilism or fatalism rests on the life-denying illusion that the " individual" is separate from the world. On the contrary , the thought of eternal recurrence underscores the individual's complete immersion in the world of becoming: cosmic fate is not external to us, it is us. Eternal recurrence is the test determining whether one truly loves life. Would you live the life you now lead, in all its details, over and over again ? The test can make a difference in your life as you ask now and in the future : "Does this action merit infinite repetition? Am I becoming the kind of person whose life deserves to be lived repeatedly? The thrust of the test is to affirm life in all its dimensions, to love that we are alive, to aspire to excellence. Instead of inputting a crude determinism to the acceptance of eternal recurrence, we can view acceptance as free act: affirming the immediate moment, the present, willing its return and the return of every other "moment." By visualizing the present moment in terms of eternity, Nietzsche challenges us to embrace the ceaseless world of becoming in which eternity does not freeze our choices but, instead, fulfills the present with endless possibility. The kernel of truth in Nietzsche's eternal recurrence is that regrets about the past and postponements for the future deaden our spirit of adventure and renege on our comm itment to continual self-creation. Thus, the eternal recur-

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renee, in typical Nietzschean fashion, bears ambiguous tidings. For those of us clinging to the influences of religion and conventional morality, which have historically sought to marginalize the self, the thought of eternal recurrence will lead to despair and self-abandonment. For higher human types who can will the return of even the small, ugly, and petty, the thought of eternal recurrence facilitates self-mastery. But if no substantial self underwrites the complex impulses Nietzscheans sanctify, then what do we abandon or master? The mantra of "multiplicity, conflict, and self-overcoming" remains mysterious. Nietzsche insists that as long as we have the desire to be in a world lacking inherent meaning then cosmic purposelessness loses its power to drain us of energy and we can confer our own meanings and purposes. But rebelling against our fate is different from gaining a desire to live that fate. To rebel against fate is to say and act: "I do not desire my fate but I will resist my fate and all desire for it. My life will gain meaning by fighting for the impossible dream - the vanquishing of an unvanquishable fate." To desire to live fate is to say and act: "I will rejoice in my fate and desire nothing else . I will become my fate by willing nothing else . Amor fati!" Perhaps Nietzscheans are not rebels, but supplicant collaborators. Nietzscheans respond that we must have the requisite desire not merely think we have the desire . Nietzsche is challenging higher types to search their spirits, to test their mettle, and to discover whether they can summon the desire, followed by actions, that can transform their lives. In affirming eternal recurrence we are willing the flux of life and acknowledging the unity of opposites. What is eternal is the inherent flux and chaos of the world of becoming. Affirmation leads to our willing creatively what we had previously muddled through unconsciously. We become who we are through this affirmation: by altering our attitude we take responsibility, although not in the Christian sense, for the people we are. Nietzsche 's talk of eternity, willing the world, self-overcoming, and transcendence bears the fragrance of secular redemption: religion for those who have lost their theological faith but retained their need. Furthermore, a suspicious "this is the best of all possible worlds" aura surrounds eternal recurrence. How can I, or anyone else, affirm the horrors of slavery, genocide, the subjugation of women, and intractable racial and ethnic strife? How can we love everything in life? Much in the universe is alien to human life. To love ourselves and everything else is either a phony platitude, not intended to be taken literally but said only for its tranquilizing effects on listeners, or inconsistent, because our interests and the interests of other life forms are incompatible. You might argue that everything is at least a candidate for love, but that is a platitude squared, as uninteresting as saying "I love everyone." Such "love" is no love at all. Love discriminates; it recognizes unique relationships, perceived special qualities. Love takes time, effort, knowledge of the other, and a network of shared activities that preclude universality. No human being can truly "love everyone." Even someone so sensitive and giving who might love

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everyone, even the most despicable among us, would have the time to establish the prerequisites of love with only a few. Perhaps God can love everyone, but God has infinite knowledge, is beyond time, and is all-good . Likewise, to say that everything is a candidate for love means only that nothing is ruled out as a possible love-object from the outset. So what? Prior to knowing other people, few of us hate them as a starting point. A person who says, " My default position is to hate everything, although I might change my mind on a few things or people if they prove their worth," is deeply disturbed. For Nietzsche, when we take responsibility for ourselves, by willing eternal recurrence and by becoming who we are, we are also willing and creating the world. Given Nietzsche's conviction that the world lacks inherent meaning, purpose, and order, we must become as gods : imposing order on chaos, creating meaning . This gigantic responsibility, along with the necessity of willing the return of the ugly, petty, and small, and directly facing cosmic meaninglessness, creates the "great weight" that lies upon our actions . The choices of active versus passive nihilism are transformed into human alternatives: to be finite gods or to self-annihilate. Because these alternatives form a unity (as do all opposites) the choices are not as clear-cut as I have been imagining them. The texture and shadings of Nietzschean transcendence, eternality, and world creation are much different from religious versions . The focus is on this world, the premises are cosmic meaninglessness and a tragic view of life, the eternality is recurrent flux, and the transcendence is the process of destruction, reimagination, and re-creat ion. In sum, Nietzschean redemption is nothing more than a response to the lack of religious redemption, a message of affirmation to nudge away the nihilistic moment: no cosmic congratulations will be sent, but higher human types , who embody the proper attitudes, do not need any. Nietzsche understands suffering and the horrors that I have catalogued. But given the unity of opposites and the interrelatedness of events and things in the world, we cannot edit life to fit our preconceptions. To affirm life is to affirm the entirety of the cosmo s. We must accept the sour with the sweet. So much in Nietzsche depends on accepting the interrelatedness of the events and things in the world. But that belief is quest ionable, not merely on the cosmic but also on the personal level. Consider three outlook s or attitudes on life. First, general exuberance: affirm ing the idea of life, recognizing fully the human condition, acknowledging mortality and inherent cosmic meaninglessness, but choosing vibrancy over despair. Second, specific exuberance: affirming my particular life as a whole, but still harboring desires to edit out certain events that seem now to have been wrong, unnecessarily hurtful to others or self, without redeeming value, or prudentially disastrous. Third, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence: to affirm and to be grateful for every aspect, part, and moment of my particular life, to want to be who I am and all the moments connected thereto eternally, and to want nothing more deeply . Critics could argue that Nietzsche 's choice creates problems. To love each part of my life equally is to dull the instincts of evaluation Nietzsche otherwise

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prizes . To want to be who I am eternally reneges on the commitment for recurrent self-overcoming. To love the world and self unconditionally is to demand agape: unwavering love that creates value in its object through the act of loving . Agape exists independently of the merits or demerits of the beloved, it overcomes all obstacles and endures all threats . Mistaken perceptions of value, defects in love's object, or the ingratitude of the beloved cannot erode the unshakeable certitude of the lover. But agape generates troubling paradoxes: If the beloved's properties are irrelevant, then whether a person is truly the object of love is unclear. For stripped of all constitutive, individuating attributes, what remains of personhood other than an abstraction called "humanity"? Agape, if wrongly amplified, offers much consolation but little growth. It is the love exhibited by innocents, gods, or maybe parents. To rest affirmation of amor fati on feelings of gratitude for being alive is misguided. Lacking an antecedent notion of what, if anything, is genetically and culturally due to us from parents, formative environment, and the world, we can in every case fantasize about what we might have been and be resentful of being short-changed and deprived, rather than grateful for who and what we are. If preoccupied by the gap between our real and fantasized selves , we are likely to blame the imagined discrepancy on others or the human condition itself. My point is that no matter who we are we can always imagine a better life than the one we enjoy . If Nietzscheans claim that to imagine a better, or even different, life is to imagine a different person they may tacitly embrace a notion of substantive self. Unless we cling strangely to the unreasonable doctrine that all events equally constitute who we are, we can affirm our identities and the world while desiring to edit out some past events . The larger point is that general and spec ific exuberance can be readily affirmed . Neither attitude relies on vestiges of gods , religion, or hope of transcen dent salvat ion. Given the choice between life and death, or between life and eternal nonbeing, I choose life and I choose the world . Even without being able to edit out the worthless or destructive parts of my life and the world, I choose life and the world over nothingness. I can also choose eternally my life and the world rather than nothingness. My choice is hardly idiosyncratic, most people living in reasonably decent circumstances would agree . My choice does not distinguish me as a higher type, nor does it generate gnashing of teeth or squeals of divinity. Amor proprio (self-esteem) does not require "amorfati!" Accord ingly, if eternal recurrence required only attitudes of general and specific exuberance it would lack panache. But, Nietzscheans would point out, it requires more : eternal validation of everything that constitutes life and "me" and the desire for nothing more . Is eternal recurrence a human desire? Critics will argue that it is an unconditional yearning in the context of a thoroughly condi tional world , a vacillation between circular and linear time as convenience dictates , and a dangerous rationalization of the horrors of the past. Supporters of Nietzsche admit there is a dark or tragic side to eternal recurrence . That is why it bears the "greatest weight. " The world would, of course, be

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more cuddly if we imagine it without its past horrors and atrocities. But it would not be our world. In our world the will to power manifests itself in many ways, including cruelty and physical violence. Edit out the historical events that make us squeamish and we also eliminate the impulses that, when sublimated and refined, produce our greatest cultural achievements. Given the unity of opposites and the impossibility of a world with only refined manifestations of the will to power, you either affirm this world, with all its horrors, or you imagine another world which edits out unfavored events . But aspiring to the latter is nothing more than secular Christianity and is just as illusory . Understanding this makes eternal recurrence vivid. To love this world and ourselves, we cannot flee to fictions or utopias. Instead, we must recognize our vulnerability to the tragedies of life. This doesn't mean we take sadistic glee in cruelty and violence. Instead, we should luxuriate in the immediacy of the moment by using the legacy of the past to create something valuable and meaningful. Although the past is unalterable, the ways we might respond to the past are numerous. By creating an interesting, valuable self and by advancing culture now, we can elevate the past in the only available way: we can use the materials of the past to affirm life. Remember, we cannot view our lives or the history of the world as a series of discrete moments that can be judged independently of one another. Adopting amor fati does not compel us to isolate and remember fondly the atrocities of the past; instead, we underscore the tragic nature of life but nevertheless joyfully embrace this world. Part of this quest is self-overcoming, which is not fueled by discontent or negativity. Instead, self-overcoming is part of and not distinct from the self. It does not presuppose a fixed, substantial self, but rather recognizes the self's participation in the world of becoming. To affirm eternal recurrence is not to renege on self-overcoming but to demand it. Once we understand and embrace this world , passive nihilism and abject fatalism cease to be viable options. Nietzsche's grand individualism, however, is dangerous. Physicians understand that insecurity, a relentless striving for achievement, chronic impatience, intense competitiveness, and deep hostility increase bodily stress and their presence is the best predictor of several diseases. These characteristics are much more likely to be embodied by people alienated from others than people intimately connected to others. The path to health, wisdom, and joy is reached by broadening our boundaries and widening our subjectivity. The moral of this story: our inner deconstructions, reimaginations, and re-creations must ultimately invigorate the quality of our participation in the external world. Otherwise, internal explorations are tepid exercises in abstraction and narcissism. Are Nietzschean relationships robust enough to ensure mental and physical health?

3. Nietzsche and Value For Nietzsche, we see the world through values, not facts. We are by nature valuing creatures who order our values specifically to our conditions of life.

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Values are not merely subjective, we do not impose them upon the world. Nor are values objective in the sense of being pure discoveries of a preexisting order. Our world has no value apart from our living in it. Values are species and culture specific: we value what we need to live and flourish . The meaning of life is found only in the highest human exemplars. They embody the life of creativity in its fullest, a life without final satisfaction, complacency or fixed tranquility. To create is to project ourselves beyond current self-understandings and to resist final serenity. Such a life is never finished, although numerous projects are completed, in the sense of being abandoned. The slogan "amor fati" captures Nietzsche 's highest value, a maximally positive attitude toward life. We should be drawn to life so powerfully that we celebrate life in all its dimensions, sufferings and joys alike. We should not seek to edit out tragedy or revise the past. For Nietzsche suffering does not have an antecedent negative value. The value of suffering or joy or any state in between is mostly up to us." Influenced by aesthetic values, he advises us to evaluate our lives in their entireties. To edit out the pain from our life is to want to be a diffcrent person , which betrays a lack of love for our life and life generally. To desire to live our life as it has been, time and time again, is the psychological test. If we had full knowledge of our lives, only the robust will pass this test. The inner power that either attracts us or repels us from life is a person's measure. The greater the attractive power , the greater the person who embodies it. As his highe st basic value, Nietzs che' s amor fati is not derived from more basic reasons or rational argument. Those who are most strongly attracted to our world, the only world for Nietzsche, will find it most valuable. Nietzsche insists values are created by valuing beings. Feeling, judging, or wanting something to be valuable, however, are neither necessary nor sufficient for that something being valuable. Our subjective responses are not the source or cause of value . For Nietzsche power is the objective measure and source of value. The highest power is the life-affirming power that draws us to life. The inner power that attracts or repels is the ground for positive and negative value. Ends whose achievement increase the individual 's overall power are of higher value than goals whose achievement decreases that power. The inner power itself that draws a person to the goal defines positive value . Nietzsche denies mind-independent value, but does not succumb to a purely subjectivist account. But what is power? Primarily, power is exercised by extending influence, dominating an environment, self-overcoming and mastery. The activities them.. selves are the goal, not some further condition that results after the activities are finished. Increasing the vitality with which life forms are drawn to their goals is an increase of power and thus value . The unconditional glorification and love of life itself, amor fati, expresses the greatest power and is thus Nietzsche's highest value . If we embody Nietzsche's highest value then the question of life's meaning loses its force." For Nietzsche, Tolstoy's problem was the loss of amor fati . Once lost, no rational argument or demonstration of objective meaningfulness

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suffices. The solution to the problem of the meaning of life is grounded in attitude not cognition. Other values are values only if they nurture a maximally positive attitude toward life. Art, knowledge, morality, perhaps religion are values insofar as they increase the power that moves us to affirm life. They also add products of creative activity that can serve as foci of life. Our pursuit of these instrumental values and the products that result both show and sustain a maximally positive attitude toward life. This highest value is a precondition of meaning in life, a meaning which the instrumental values provide. Nietzsche 's relative ranking of instrumental values changed during his career. In his early period (1872-1876: Birth of Tragedy to Untimely Meditations), he rated aesthetic values far above cognitive values . In his middle period (18781882: Human, All Too Human to first parts of Gay Science), he ranked cogn itive values above aesthetic values . In his final period (1882- 1889: Zarathustra to Ecce Homo), he again rated aesthetic values above cognitive values , but not as far above as in the early period . Nietzsche places aesthetic values above cognitive, moral , and religious values because he is conv inced that art, music, poetry and literature have greater prospects for increasing amor fati. Art transforms our vision, dislodges us from the mundane, and elevates our sense of possibility. Creativity, originality, principles of design, the ability to enchant , provoke, stimulate, and compel awe and wonder energize our positive attitude toward life. The ability of art to inspire from many perspectives draws our senses and emotions, not merely our intellect. Art increases our love of life through our involvement with its creations and by energizing our spirits beyond this involvement. The existence of uncommonly valuable human beings, such as excellent artists, increases our love of life. Cognitive values, such as truth, knowledge, consistency, can also vivify our positive attitude toward life. Nietzsche, however, suspects that cognitive values can narrow and universalize. They can mute our enthusiasm for life by replacing mystery with dogma . At their worst, cognitive values take us away from this world into a realm of abstraction that claims superiority. Too often, the cognitive values dismiss the sensual and emotional to elevate the intellectual. Nietzsche also prizes the martial values of strength , conquest, endurance, vigor, discipline, and competition. The warrior spirit embodied by the noblest spirits is necessary for self-mastery and to resist the herd mentality. At their worst , however, the mart ial values can destroy the constraints required for the higher values. Moral values are more problematic. By universalizing and generalizing its judgments and demands, morality contrasts itself to the originality, uniqueness, and extraordinary sought in art. Universal moral principles cannot provide meaning in our lives because they speak only to what is general about us. If morality provides only general value available to all, then my life has no more or less meaning than the lives of others who fulfill moral demands as I do . Moreover , that the world would be a better place if the greatest artists , musicians,

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poets, scientists, and philosophers had devoted their lives instead to caring for the less fortunate and destitute is inconceivable. Morality's leveling effects encourage mediocrity which threatens aesthetic and cogniti ve values . Nietzsche's vitriol is reserved for herd or slave moralities that are fueled by egalitarianism, motivated by resentment of the gifted, and determined to impose themselves on everyone. He recognizes that social constraints are necessary to realize higher values . A properly nuanced "morality" that encourages aristocratic achievement may even be a precondition of attaining the higher values . Such a "morality" would not of itself provide the meaning in life, but would encourage the higher values that do. Religious values, for Nietzsche, develop and nurture moral values. He scorns Christianity for its emphasis on other-worldly values . Conjur ing a perfect supreme being, aspiring to an eternal reward where suffering and obstacles fade away, and yearning for a static, complete, risk-free self, such religions tum us away from this world . At their worst, they demonize a maximally positive attitude toward this life. They picture this life as mere preparation for another, higher state of being. Religions claim their values are highest and thus invert Nietzsche's ordering. Nevertheless, we can imagine a deflated religion , based solidly in this world, which did not invoke an almighty enforcer, and which reinforced an aristocratic morality through myths and symbolism. If so, Nietzsche 's highest value could be honored through religion . Nietzsche shifts away from Western religion to a view of life that tests the limits of a finite being . The process might be viewed as counseling us to tum away from the other world and God, and tum toward this world and the aesthetic project of making ourselves into gods. Nietzsche has a quasi-religious, at least spiritual, view of life in a slightly different form: the longing for transcendence fuels his philosophy.

4. Preliminary Observations At first glance, Schopenhauer repels contemporary readers. Sketches of him reveal a bitter, pursed-lip, wild-eyed, lunatic. He looks like Scrooge before the visits from the Christmas spirits tum him soft. His appearance and philosophy match well. But we can learn much from his concerns and his approach. He poses a real challenge to those who insist life is meaningful even though theism is problematic. Schopenhauer forces us to sharpen our understanding of the relationship between means and ends, the value of fixed goals , and the link between desire and fulfillment. Nietzsche was an impressive stylist, although his life was not as glow ing as his writings. In contemporary terms, he talked the talk, but could not walk the walk . Some of his work is adolescent, includes fantasies of supermen and heroism, and is too incredible upon which to base a real life. But his depiction of the grand artist, whose most important creation is the self, ignites our sense of transcendence.

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But is the project of the grand artist meaningful? If my self is ultimately unimportant can my ravenous artistic pretensions be justified? And why continual self-making? Am "I" merely a series of masks without substance? Is life just a big joke? If so, why would I want to live the same joke over and over again in every deta il? Also , how do we create value? Does that just mean if I want something to be valuable then it is? But why would I want it, instead of something else, to be valuable in the first place ? Maybe Nietzsche is protesting too much . Maybe he is trying to convince himself of something, that life has mean ing, that he seriously doubts . Nietzsche cannot be swallowed easily in the entirety. His picture is overly romantic at times, although he would insist he was not influenced by the Romantic movement. He often failed to give credit to those who influenced him the most. We must also be wary about replacing one common type of striving, the grand materialist who greedily and grasp ingly latches on to every dollar he can, with another type of striving, the grand self-aggrandizer who just as greedily latches on to every form of recognition or honor in the hope that doing so inflates the self. Schopenhauer might have fallen prey to the same theistic assumption that plagued Tolstoy. Nietzsche denies the theistic assumption but substitutes what looks like a quasi-religious veneration of transcendence. Fueled by unabashed elitism, Nietzsche places the meaning of human life on the greatest exemplars, which relegates the rest of us to derive meaning from our efforts to nurture the greatest exemplars. The meaning of life for most of us is, then, purely instrumental : we are tools of the greatest exemplars. Nietzsche, ironically, conjures flashbacks to Hegelian theism. That we are only instrumentally valuable is hard to accept for those of us who are not the greatest human exemplars. Lingering doubts remain: Can't we render all human achievement, even the grand self-making of the greatest human exemplars, insignificant? To answer this question, we must revisit the Myth of Sisyphus, examine cosmic and personal perspectives, and confront the challenge that human life is absurd.

Three THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS Albert Camus (1913-1960) revitalized the ancient myth of Sisyphus. Condemned by the gods to push a huge rock to the top of a hill from which it fell down the other side, to be pushed again to the top from which it fell again , and so on forever, Sisyphu s was doomed to futile, pointless, unrewarded labor. His immortality was part of his punishment. His consciousness of the futility of his project was his tragedy . Sisyphus's life represents human life: repetitious, meaningless, pointless toil that adds up to nothing in the end. The myth portrays the eternal human struggle and indestructible human spirit. Although Sisyphus is not mortal, that deepens and does not redeem the absurdity of his life. Some might think that while human life bears more variety than Sisyphus's life, the matter is only one of degree . While some human beings take solace in producing and raising children, that can be viewed as more of the same : adding zeros to zeros . Throughout this chapter I will assume , with Camus, that the cosmos is inherently meaningless, that value and significance are not built into the fabric of the world. Thus I will not appeal to religious or philosophical theism to provide a metaphysical foundation for the meaning of life.

1. Camus, Absurdity, and Sisyphus Camus argues that human life is absurd . Absurdity involves ridiculous incongruity . Extreme irrationality, a striking disharmony or discrepancy between states of affair s, and unrealistic pretension typically constitute the absu rd. My favorite examples of absurdity come from the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The first: Due to a lack of horses in the kingdom, King Arthur is followed by a servant who skips along, cracking coconuts together to evoke the sound of hoofbeats. The second : Arthur must fight the Black Knight who guards a bridge and refuses to let the men pass . The King reluctantly but skillfully cuts the Black Knight limb from limb until all that remains is a torso . As King Arthur and his men pass over the bridge , the Black Knight , actually Black Torso , continues to threaten the King and screams at him to return and fight like a man. Camus argues that human beings desperately crave inherent value, meaning, and rationality, but discover only a neutral, meaningless, indifferent cosmos. The enormous gap between human needs and an unresponsive universe is the crux of absurdity. Once we recognize the absence of a master plan and the absurdity of our existence, we underscore our own insign ificance, our alienation, and lack of ultimate hope . Our acts are ultimately futile. The absurd is not a philosophical concept, but a lived experience. Camus concludes that we cannot transcend or destroy the absurd , but we can forge and manifest our characters by our response to it.'

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Three choices are available. We can seek the false consolations of religious or philosophical theism. This strategy of denial permits us to pretend that human life is not absurd. Camus views this choice as inauthentic and weak: it seeks flight in fantasy as a distraction from robust confrontation with our fate. We can also commit suicide. But Camus views ultimate despair as cowardly: peering into the profound void and feeling the hot breath of nothingness, we cravenly evade our fate by ending our lives. Camus understands that most human beings continue to act on their preferences, values, and concerns despite cosmic meaninglessness. If nothing human matters from a cosmic perspective we must still decide how to live and what to do . Camus's preferred authentic response requires awareness of the absurd, living life in the face of our fate, affirming life through rebellion, maximizing life's intensity, and dying unreconciled. Sisyphus embodies the existential hero . He relentlessly confronts his fate, refuses to yield, denies psychological crutches, embraces no doomed hopes for release, and creates a fragile meaning through endless rebellion. Camus imagines Sisyphus "happy" as the "struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." Camus's account oscillates between two descriptions of how human beings might create meaning in their lives . Both descriptions admit that adopting a cosmic perspective, looking at the whole of Sisyphus's task or the human task from the external vantage point of an indifferent world, provides only the bleak answer that life ultimately adds up to nothing. So we must develop personal perspectives that evaluate human life from the internal vantage point of people living it. 2. Sisyphus as Cool Hand Luke Paul Newman played the lead role in the film, Cool Hand Luke. Luke is a victim of the brutality and sadistic discipline of his chain-gang wardens, but also of the indirect cruelty arising from the idolization of his fellow prisoners. He treats his jailers with defiance, endures their abuse, escapes only to be recaught, wins the admiration of his fellow prisoners, struggles mightily to maintain his pride and will , but is eventually hunted down and killed. This movie fits well much of Camus's description of one of Sisyphus's possibilities. Camus advises Sisyphus to meet the gods of the myth with scorn and rebellion. He must condemn the gods for condemning him. Fueled by resentment and bravado, Sisyphus refuses to bend or to beg for relief. He cannot live within a cosmic perspective from which his life is insignificant, so Sisyphus revels in his hardness and endurance. He creates virtues out of contempt, pride, and strength. Like a stubborn army recruit sentenced to continually dig and fill the same hole in tum, Sisyphus's victory is in his refusal to seek the consolations of ordinary humans. He will not admit defeat or yield . He will not ask his tormentors, whom he regards with disdain, for mercy: they can control his body but cannot influence his mind . Sisyphus lays a patina of defi ance on extraordinary

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mental toughness. His attitude is a monument to the human spirit: authenticity leavened by determination. The image invokes mixed blessings. Some of us will admire Sisyphus's heroism and defiance as he distances himself from typical human reactions. He has proved himself superior to his peers and has denied the gods the added satisfaction of watching him writhe in misery . Other people will not embrace Sisyphus's self-styled martyrdom and victimization. Fueled by resentment, utterly detached from commitment beyond rebellion, intolerant of lesser responses, and keenly aware of his punishment, Sisyphus embodies a destructive romanticism. Is Sisyphus a robust battler or is he a fugitive from life? Does the martyrdom of Sisyphus bear victory or does it confer additional power on the gods' decree? Sisyphus is and his project does all of these. Critics might insist that to assume this perspective is to reject life. But others will rejoin that we should never embrace the oppressor. And if cosmic meaninglessness reigns then life is an oppressor. All that remains is the refusal to yield.

3. Sisyphus as Armadillo Animals are busily engaged with the basic struggle to survive. As far as we know, few animals become bored with life. But animals do not reflect on or remake their context. I am invoking the armadillo as a metaphor for another of Camus's recommendations for Sisyphus, but any animal would do. I choose the armadillo as a tribute to a leftist political slogan in the southwest: "The only things in the middle of the road are white lines and dead armadillos." Camus advises Sisyphus to bask in the immediacy of his life, to engage in the process of living to the fullest extent, to immerse himself in the textures of experience. Sisyphus should avert his gaze from questions of what he is accomplishing by hurling himself into his task with gusto . He must pay close attention to the rock as it travels and to the textures of his journey. By luxuriating in the process of life and by living in the present, to the extent possible, Sisyphus makes the rock his own . He is so thoroughly engaged in his task that the meaning of his life is singleminded engagement. From this perspective, Sisyphus is too busy and too fascinated with the wonders surrounding his journey to focus on contempt for the gods : "each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that nightfilled mountain, in itself forms a world.") Here Sisyphus brackets the cosmic perspective and forgets about his punishment. No longer fueled by resentment or preoccupied with scorn of the gods, Sisyphus basks continually in the wonder of the moment. This image softens the condemnation of the gods by ignoring it. The gods ' victory is diminished by its irrelevance to Sisyphus's life. Sisyphus apprec iates his life and finds joy, even meaning. He rejects bitterness, refuses to view his world nihilistically, and chooses engagement. The risk, however, is dehumanization through inadequate reflection. Bracketing the cosmic perspective, without a robust sense of past and future, and

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oblivious to other possibilities, Sisyphus becomes more beast and less human being. Perhaps Sisyphus is relatively happy or innocently contented, but nevertheless dehumanized as his givenness destroys his transcendence. Sisyphus works busily in his chains, but does not recognize nor remake his context. An important message lies at the heart of the image . Human beings too often project into the future while immersed in the everydayness and routines of life. We ignore the textures of the immediacy of life as we busily fulfill our daily schedules and fantasize about a better future . In the meantime much that is valuable in life flows through our fingers . Sisyphus's obsession with the moment threatens his humanity, but maybe he has little choice given his fate. We have more freedom of focus. Even if total immersion in the armadillo image is dehumanizing, a dose of it is healthy given the structure of our lives.

4. Sisyphus as Ironist Thomas Nagel locates the absurdity of human life differently from Camus. Camus views absurdity in terms of the human relationship with an inherently meaningless cosmo s. Nagel views absurdity as within human beings themselves. While engaged in our projects, we journey through life with grave seriousness, yet are always capable of expand ing our perspective and regarding our projects as arbitrary. We thus experience internal conflict as our ability to transcend ourselves collides with our inflated pretension." Nagel, with Camus, does not take human reason or immortality as redemptive. Reason compl icates our chances of finding meaning in life because it casts doubt on the ultimate significance of our projects. If our finite lives are absurd then extending them eternally makes them infinitely absurd. Nagel 's engaged seriousness is a personal perspective and his reflective transcendence is a cosmic perspective. Remaining fully within our personal perspective would permit us to evade the absurd . But Nagel insists that we cannot consciously take this approach. Only abject ignorance, such that we reflect insufficiently to arrive at the cosmic perspective, or loss of memory, which allows us to forget the cosmic perspective, evades the absurd. But neither can be achieved by act of will. Moreover, projects wider than self such as concern for family, state , revolution, and intellectual innovation fare no better than smaller projects. All purposes can be doubted from the cosmic perspective in the same fashion as can an individual life. Nagel advises us to respond with irony . The absurdity of our lives is distinctively human . Animals lack the ability to transcend themselves and arrive at a cosmic perspective. They cannot see themselves as merely animals and cannot question the ultimate significance of their activ ities. We should approach our absurdity with irony, appreciating the incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs . Our personal perspective still sustains seriousness of action but it is laced with wry amusement. Neither self-styled heroism

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nor despair are fruitful. Both are, at best, cosmically unimportant and, at worst, romantic and self-pitying. I am convinced, however, that Nagel's notion of the absurd is not an inevitable part of the human condition. For those of us committed to religious or philosophical theism the gap between the cosmic and the personal fades away . The seriousness of the personal perspective would be validated by the rewards of a theistic-cosmic perspective. But I will push this remark to the margins for the moment, and accept Nagel 's nontheistic notion of the cosmic perspective. The idea that life is absurd depends on our own pretensions. If we pretend that the cosmic perspective is illusory then our actions within the personal perspective may seem absurd because they take themselves to be more than they are. But this pretens ion is not inevitable . Once we reflect on the two perspectives and recognize their presence we can still act vigorously. We can act vitally within the personal perspective while later retreating to the cosmic vantage point to place our act ions "in perspective." Doing so is neither absurd nor pretentious; it is living life fully, with faith and humility, combining engagement with reflection . Nagel's notion of absurdity centers on the contrast between reality and pretension. The popular notion of the term is the incongruous, ridiculous, or extremely silly. Neither notion captures a truth about human life. Camus and Nagel have different temperaments that influence their view of the absurd . Camus is dramatic and romantic, Nagel is measured and tranquil. Nagel reminds us that the absurdity of our lives is our unique feature . But why approach the absurd with wry amusement or calm irony? Can the alleged absurdity of our lives perm it a practical advantage? If we are deeply absorbed in a project, the cosmic perspective fades away, at least for the period of engagement. We do not simultaneously invest great energy, concern, and passion into a project and judge it ultimately pointless. We need not and typically do not claim our creations embody ultimate value even after the investment we have expended in the process of creation. No inflated claim exists for the cosmic perspective to return and debunk. Thus no necessary absurdity plagues human life. Nagel, therefore, has no good reason to assume irony is the appropriate response to the human condition. Human temperament, conditioned by varying education and socialization, is more elastic than that. We can ignore the problem, unless we are already aware of it, or we can reconceive the problem creatively for practical advantage. What is for Camus and Nagel a problem can be seen as another avenue for human possibility. By creatively transforming the problem into an opportunity we exemplify the meaning in life the problem supposedly calls into question. The vast discrepancy between the personal and cosmic perspectives can be bridged by intermediary perspectives. Global, national, communal, and familial perspectives, among others, are available. Part of the secret of life is to move artfully among these perspectives. Consider the expression "thi s too shall pass ." Although having religious origins, the phrase is offered by even nontheists as a condolence.' The point of the offer is to ease suffering. As a positive reminder

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that the occasion for suffering is cosmically less important than it momentarily seems and that time moderates most pain, the phrase advises the sufferer to see the event from a broader perspective. "Put it in perspective": the phrase is not offered because of its cognitive content that in a finite life all transitory things perish. Imagine that your best friends have achieved an extraordinary goal which they have pursued with great effort for a long time. They have won the Nobel Prize, found true love, published their first book, accepted glorious jobs, or given birth to a greatly desired baby. Upon hearing this wonderful news, you tell them "this, too, shall pass." From a cognitive standpoint, the phrase is just as true now as in the case of the sufferer. But, unless we are classical Stoics, it is hideously inappropriate. Your friends would wonder about your motives . Are you trying to destroy their joy? Are you expressing your resentment, envy, or jealousy? Are you really their friend? While the cognitive value of the expression is stable, its practical and moral values vary. Uttered as condolence, the phrase is an appropriate attempt to lessen pain by broadening perspective. Uttered after great achievement, the phrase is an inappropriate attempt to trample joy by broadening perspective. By selecting perspectives for appropriate purposes we can soften the pinch of the absurd . Moreover, once we are aware of the gap between cosmic and personal perspectives it is unclear whether our situation is truly absurd. Living our lives in full light of the various perspectives from which they can be viewed need not produce any ridiculous incongruity, extreme irrationality, striking disharmony, or unrealistic pretension. Perhaps our situation is not absurd once we are able to adjust perspectives appropriately. When considering life as a whole we should be wary of the images emerging from the cosmic perspecti ve. Viewing human activity from the vast expanse of a cosmic perspective ungenerously shrinks our achievements. Just as view ing a building from afar with a telescope or taking a photo from a wideangle lens renders the structure small and insignificant, so too placing human activity in a cosmic framework lures us into comparisons with Sisyphus. But fairness, perhaps pictorial accuracy, requires symmetry. We should not demand cosmic significance to redeem human lives that are being viewed from an otherworldly cosmic perspective. We would not measure the size of a building from a photo without adjusting for scale. Likewise, when minimizing human activity from a cosmic perspective we should recognize that a meaningful human life does not require what seems significant from that perspective. A meaningful human life requires what is significant from a human perspective. To think otherwise is like seeing a photo of a building and concluding the structure measures three inches by five inches .

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5. Sisyphus as Master Architect Richard Taylor deepens the understanding of the Myth of Sisyphus by imagining two changes. Taylor suggests that Sisyphus's life would be redeemed, in the sense of having a point, if he could move rocks to the top of the hill and create a majestic and enduring temple. Then his labors would culminate in a lasting goal and "one could not say that the life of Sisyphus was devoid of meaning altogether.?" But Taylor adds that once Sisyphus succeeded in this task , once his temple was finished , infinite boredom would follow. If Sisyphus did nothing thereafter but contemplate and bask in what he had done "we have a meaning for Sisyphus's existence . . . yet . . . that which is really worthwhile seems to have slipped away. :" Thus, even if a lasting end could provide purpose and meaning, the meaning would be overwhelmed by boredom with the outcome of the work. Prior to assessing Taylor's suggestions, we should stipulate the following: an act is inherently worthless if it lacks inherent merit. Tedious, menial, unpleasant chores are inherently worthless, although they may take on meaning or instrumental value if performed for an appropriate goal. An act is pointless if not directed toward a goal. Pointless acts can still contribute to pleasure and take on process or instrumental values. An act is trivial if its point is insufficient to justify its performance. An act is futile if its point cannot be achieved as such or because it has no consciously intended end but needs one to be worthwhile." An activity may be repetitious drudgery yet have a point. Sisyphus's roIling stones up a hill might have a point except for the fact that the stones upon reach ing the top of the hill immediately fall back down. Moreover, an activity may be pointless and still bear meaning if, for example, the activity is valuable for its own sake . Sisyphus's acts of pushing the rock are worthless in that they are drudgery unredeemed by an appropriate goal ; pointless in that they aim at no end ; and futile in that Sisyphus cannot achieve any particular point and is compelled by the gods to act on desires that he cannot make his own . Taylor obscures some issues. His picture might be true if Sisyphus were allowed no further activity, but the boredom would issue from the lack of activity and nothing else . If the God s permitted Sisyphus a variety of ongoing creative projects, and periods of rest and renewal, he might find meaning even if his creations were not permanent. Sisyphus may find meaning in self-actualization as he realizes his possibilities. On this variation of the myth , Sisyphus would not have a static character, but could view himself as an architect whose self is his greatest creation. While the achievement, followed by indefinite contemplation, of one permanent project may demolish temporary meaning because of boredom, that is not the human condition. Furthermore, focusing on permanence masks the way nonpermanent values are nevertheless values: successful openheart surgery does not eliminate eventual death, but is enormously valuable, at least from a human perspective. Sisyphus's life differs importantly from human life. Unlike Sisyphus's efforts, human activities sometimes have worthwhile results . Moreover, both the

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product and process of our activities are important. Sisyphus does not enjoy the doing of his acts, while we often do. Many human achievements, although not eternal, endure. Human beings often realize worthwhile results, savor them, continue to be influenced by them , and reenergize with new projects. Overly influenced by the cosmic perspective, Taylor suggests a lofty standard for meaningfulness. 6. Sisyphus as Robot Taylor considers another possibility. Suppose Sisyphus's labor does not culminate in an enduring product, but the gods, mercifully, "implant in him a strange and irrational impulse; namely, a compulsive impulse to roll stones."? After the gods inject him with a substance that alters his character and drives, Sisyphus is obsessed with rolling stones up hills . He wants deeply, perhaps even needs, to do precisely what the gods have condemned him to do. Sisyphus's labor no longer strikes him as punishment and he is guaranteed endless fulfillment. An observer might still insist that Sisyphus's life was pointless, repetitious, meaningless toil that adds up to nothing, but Sisyphus's view is different. He is doing forever precisely what he wants to be doing. We could say that Sisyphus's life is objectively meaningless but subjectively meaningful. From his altered stories of Sisyphus, Taylor concludes that "activity .. . has a meaning if it has some significant culmination, some more or less lasting end that can be considered to have been the direction and purpose of the activ ity."!" Although he adds that an existence that fails this test, one that is objectively meaningless, can still seem meaningful to the people living it depending on their state of mind and the feelings driving their labors. Human life, says Taylor, resembles the life of Sisyphus: "Each man's life resembles one of Sisyphus's climbs to the summit of his hill, and each day of it one of his steps ; the difference is that whereas Sisyphus himself returns to push the stone up again, we leave this to our children."!' Noting that human achievements are impermanent and that each apparent culmination of effort merely occasions added labor of the same kind, Taylor cannot conclude that human life is objectively meaningful. Taylor adds glad tidings. Once we consult "our own wills, our deep interest in what we find ourselves doing" we find "an inner compulsion to be doing just what we were put here to do, and to go on doing it forever.,,12 The point of our lives, their subjective meaning and justification, is "simply to be living in the manner that it is [our] nature to be living ."!' The meaning of life swells from within us; it is not conferred from without. Against Taylor, the injection of a substance by an alien force does not provide subjective meaning: coercion is not fulfillment, addiction is not selfcreation. Taylor's use of the subjectively meaningful, objectively meaningful distinction needs sharpening. He suggests that no human life is objectively meaningful from a cosmic perspective, but that (all? some?) human lives are

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subjectively meaningful from a human or personal perspective. What are we to say about people whose inner compulsion to be doing just what they were put here to do fades, perhaps because they recognize the meaninglessness of their lives from a cosmic perspective? What are we to say about those who judge their lives meaningless when they are not, at least when evaluated from a human perspective? Extreme cases might be labeled mentally unbalanced. Other cases are more problematic. The core of Sisyphus's travail, then , is not the difficulty of his task but its pointlessness and endlessness. His task has no further significance than repetition . To repeat the same insignificant patterns endlessly is a metaphor for human life, or at least for some human lives. Death, mercifully, prevents our labors from being endless. And here is the first lesson of the fable: infinite life is not necessarily a good . To imagine Sisyphus pleased by his task because he has been hypnotized or because the gods fiendishly inject him with a serum that produces such effects, is to compound his tragedy. His satisfaction does not make his life meaningful. Instead, he has been deluded into believing that his life is meaningful. The task itself has not changed: endless, pointless, insignificant toil. What has changed is Sisyphus's attitude toward the task. But the change of attitude has not come from Sisyphus. Instead, it is induced externally by an unfortunate divine plot. The horror of this change in the fable is that now Sisyphus is satisfied with a meaningless life. Another part of Sisyphus's agency has been destroyed by the serum : he is unable to evaluate his task for what it is. Perhaps ignorance is bliss in some contexts, but not here. The gods have added to, not subtracted from, Sisyphus's degradation. If we suppose, with Taylor, that all human lives are objectively meaningless from a cosm ic perspective, it is still possible that they are objectively mean ingful from a human perspective. A life would be objectively meaningful from a human perspective if it satisfied whatever criteria define a meaningful life from that perspective. Having satisfied that criteria, however, people could still take their lives to be subjectively meaningless. This judgment of subjective meaninglessness could issue from several errors : people may understand the criteria of an objectively meaningful life, but believe falsely that their lives fail to satisfy the criteria; people may believe falsely that the criteria of an objectively meaningful life from a human perspective are much loftier than they are, and judge correctly that their lives life fail to measure up; or people might insist, incorrectly, that because all human lives are objectively meaningless from a cosmic perspective they are meaningless as such . In these cases , clearer thinking, proper philosophical distinctions, and time spent analyzing the Myth of Sisyphus, may remedy the ills. But what are we to say about people who make no epistemological error, understand the criteria which define an objectively meaningful life, judge correctly that their lives fulfill that criteria , yet insist that their lives are subjectively meaningless? Leo Tolstoy, for example, had it all. And he knew he had it all.

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But he was still overwhelmed by meaninglessness. Feelings bordering on despa ir in such cases are not easily cured by philosophical speculation. What is missing are the energy, engagement, love of life, marriage of activity and conviction, and pure act of faith necessary to feel, not merely rationally calculate, meaningfulness. Tolstoy's problem was psychological and perceptual, not epistemological, He had lost his faith in life, and his vision was distorted by preoccupation with the cosmic perspective. What are we to say about people who insist their lives are meaningful, although they fail miserably to satisfy the criteria of objective meaningfulness? They have the energy, engagement, and so on that Tolstoy temporarily lacked, but observers are hard-pressed to understand why. We could say that their lives are subjectively meaningful but objectively meaningless and leave it at that. Or we could say that sincerely feeling our lives are meaningful is enough to make our lives meaningful. Perhaps in such cases there should be no further reference to outside criteria. Or we might be led to adopt minimal objective criteria: as long as people have interests, purposes, projects, or relationships, regardless of quality or value, that keep them engaged with life, then their lives are meaningful.

7. Sisyphus as Creator In a later essay on the topic , Taylor claims the meaninglessness of Sisyphus's existence flows from "a world without history, a world that is ... devoid of time. 14 Adjusting his earlier account, Taylor argues that even the building of an enduring temple is not enough to invest Sisyphus's life with meaning. Not only must Sisyphus be aware that he is erecting the beautiful temple but it "must be something of his own , the product of his own creative mind, of his own conception, something which, but for his own creative thought and imagination, would never have existed at all.,,15 Nature as such lacks creative activity until infused with human beings who can think, imagine, plan , and execute things of worth. Although underappreciated, creative thought and activity exist in degrees and are not rare. But creative genius is rare: "The work of the vast majority . . . does not deviate much from what others have already done and from what can be found everywhere .. . most people seek as little originality and individual selfworth as possible.':" Citing egalitarianism, religion, and conformity as enemies of robust creativity, Taylor concludes that what gives human lives whatever meaning they have is "that some [human beings] should . . . be capable of creating worlds of their own and history - thereby creating time in its historical sense.,,1 7 In a third essay, Taylor gives his clearest account of a meaningful life. 18 Such a life must have (I) a noble , good purpose, (2) the purpose must be achieved, not merely endlessly pursued, (3) the achievement must be lasting, and (4) the purpose must flow from its bearer, not compelled from without.

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Taylor's clearest rendering evades the chilling aspects of Sisyphus's fate: its noncreativity, lack of purpose, absence of imagination, boredom, and failure to achieve a goal. Taylor filters such problems out of his account of a meaningfullife. But his obsession with Sisyphus lures Taylor into an extravagant, inflate' view of the meaning of life. First, a meaningful life need not have a single , overriding aim. Many human beings prefer a rich mosaic of purposes which do not necessarily reflect only one project. Second, a meaningful life need not accomplish its purpose to be meaningful. Consider scientists who, influenced by Taylor's account, have one overarching, noble goal : to discover the cure for cancer. Their lives are devoted only to that goal. Although they do not discover the cure for cancer prior to dying, they know they have made considerable progress in that direction. They have, through great effort. skill, and commitment, increased the likelihood that a cure will eventually be found. Although they will never know of or benefit from that cure, is ;1 unreasonable to view their lives as meaningful? Taylor's account obscures the role process values play in a meaningful life. By restricting meaningfulness to a particular fulfillment, achieving our overarching purpose, Taylor marginalizes the numerous fulfillments along the way . He also ignores activities that might be valuable and meaningful for their own sake. Moreover, the requirement that an achievement must be lasting is harsh. Taken literally, it rules out all human accomplishments. Taken more charitably, it accepts only the most enduring works of geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vinci , Marie Curie, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Emily Dickinson. Taylor ignores how a less creative life can have meaning, for example, because of its positive effects on others. Furthermore, a purpose need not initially flow from its bearers to become their own . We may be forced into a situation (for example, military conscription) but eventually make it our own and derive meaning from it. Finally, that a good and noble purpose is required for a meaningful life is unclear. Hitler would fail this test miserably, but his life was richly meaningful. Throughout most of his life, he was deeply engaged in projects having wideranging effects; he had interests , convictions, and purposes that sustained him; he was creative and imaginative; his pursuits yielded many culminations and successes; his activities brought him satisfactions; and he was not bored or disengaged for extended periods . If a critic argues that the final months of Hitler's life were so debilitating that they erased all earlier accomplishments and satisfactions , that does not destroy the point. We can imagine Hitler conquering the world, savoring the fruits of his deeds, and hatching new, evil plans. If persuasive, this would show that a meaningful life need not be a morally good or noble one . In his latest essay on this matter, Taylor argues that Sisyphus could have a meaningful life under certain conditions:

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Sisyphus not only moves all these stones, but it is he who places them, according to the plan which he alone has created by thought and reason , and that the result is an awesome structure of lasting beauty. Now, at last, we have a picture of a meaningful life." The redemption feature here, according to Taylor , is not that Sisyphus is satisfied with the product of his efforts. The satisfaction of the agent is insufficient to render his life meaningful. First, that satisfaction could be externally and fraudulently induced as in the case of the gods' injection of Sisyphus. Second, if the product is of no real worth the satisfaction flowing from the agent is misguided and inappropriate. We are supposing, however that the great temple built by Sisyphus is truly beautiful, and would be thus seen if its origin were unknown, notwithstanding any failure of vulgarians to appreciate that worth." Thus, the meaningful life centers on creativity of a sort: "the painters, composers, poets, philosophers, writers - all, who, by their creative power alone, bring about things of great value, things which, but for them, would never have existed at all.,,2l So artists , literary figures, musical composers, and philosophers lead lives pregnant with meaning, but not those who glean honor and success in less exalted fields: " What redeems humanity is not its kings, military generals and builders of personal wealth, however much these may be celebrated and envied.,,22 We can summarily dismiss as "vulgarians" those who cannot discern the beauty and value produced by the best exemplars of the exalted fields. The vulgarian response to Taylor is clear. Vulgarians everywhere will charge Taylor with elitism, for only the artistically creative, perhaps only the best of them, lead truly meaningful lives; with failing to appreciate how creativity is expressed in countless nonartistic fields; with failing to understand how the artistically blessed are often dependent on the accomplishments and creations of the nonartist for the chance to create their redeeming masterpieces; with projecting Taylor's value preferences as definitive of value as such; and with wrongly seeing his autobiographical account as an objective analysis.

8. Sisyphus as Grand Transcender The romantic-heroic tradition of the nineteenth-century furnishes the image of the grand transcender. The themes of overcoming obstacles, epic struggles, continuous striving for new goals, recurrent novelty, and going beyond existing patterns inform the grand transcender. Along with Friedrich Nietzsche, contemporary philosophers Roberto Unger and Robert Nozick have been greatly influenced by this image.

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Unger claims that the "problem of contextuality" is part of the human condition .r' We experience ambivalent feelings of being necessarily embedded in a thick cultural and social context which seemingly defines the limits of the possi ble and impossible, and able to transcend cultural contexts and limits as we experience modes of thought and being that cannot be translated adequately by the logic and language of current norms. The paramount animating drive of human pass ion is to transcend the cultural contexts that are provided by the established forms of personal relations, intellectual inquiry, and social arrangements. Unger is concerned with our existential dilemma, which manifests itself as simultaneous yearning and fear when in the presence of others. The passions are centered around the duality of our undeniable need for others and our felt danger at their approach. Unger suggests that in order to advance self-understanding and mediate our existential dilemma, we must open ourselves to a full life of personal encounter, thereby giving full expression to our need while accepting the accompanying danger. Unger accepts a thin theory of hum an nature: there is only one noncontingent fact of human nature, contingency itself. That is, the capacity of human personal ity to transcend the limits of the culturally determined possible and impossible is the only noncontingent fact of human nature. For Unger we are most truly ourselves when engaging in activity in which we deny the false necessities generated by the structures of social life . For it is during such activity that we celebrate the possibilities of our infinite personalities. Impl icitly acknowledging the contentlessness of the contingency claim, Unger seeks a normative conception of human personality which fuses description and prescription, but does not fall prey to skepticism or abject relativism. According to Unger, the four main images of personality, as reflected in literature and philosophy, are : the heroic ethic , fusion with an impersonal absolute, Confucianism, and the Christian-Romantic ideal. 1. The heroic ethic attracts those who combine devotion to collective tasks with skepticism about the possibility of moral insight. Assuming a task at the margins of society and often in violation of some of its norms, the hero engages in limit-breaking activity. Heroes assign unconditional value to a conditional task , they exalt pride at the expense of faith, and disengage themselves himself from ordinary concerns. Heroes are willing to sacrifice themselves if required by the goals they serve. They embody overabundant energy and aggressive enthusiasm as they defy obstacles. 2. Fusion with an impersonal absolute accepts a contrast between our illusory phenomenal world, where the principle of individuation holds sway, and the plane of absolute reality, wher e distinctions between individuals and things vanish. Seen most clearly in Hinduism and Buddhism, adherents take either the path of the recluse or accept their social role while remaining aloof from it. In either case , this world is seen as pervaded by suffering and inferior to absolute reality.

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3. Confucianism accepts a particular list of social relations and ordering of the emot ions. Viewing people as completely defined by fixed social roles and a particular political order, this vision mistakes a specific system of social order as the solution to conflicting conduct and assertion. Clinging desperately to tradition, this image exudes a strong conservative (status quo preserving) bias . 4. The Christian-Romantic notion puts personal attachments up for grabs . This vision acknowledges that the qualities realized in faith, hope, and love override the claims of given social categories and that advances in selfunderstanding occur as we open ourselves to personal encounter. ChristianRomanticism is beset by a deep ambivalence between a moralistic obsession with fixed rules and a fantasy of the super-individual who defies all obstacles while asserting his will. Unger argues that if we take these four images and cleanse them of aspects which deny the infinite quality of personality, we will discover that the remaining theoretical ideas converge and give us similar answers to our most important normative questions. The resulting conception of human personality includes the primacy of personal encounter and love, and a commitment to social iconoclasm. Aggrandized mutual vulnerability is a prerequisite for advancing self-understanding, and, according to Unger, we are most empowered and most truly ourselves when we engage in context-transcending activity informed by faith, hope, and love. Unger insists that the concept of infinite personality allows us to avoid relativ ism, while the phenomenon of convergence offers us a reason to accept a normative conception of human personality that escapes contentlessness. Unger uses what he takes to be the only noncontingent fact of human personality, its ultimate plasticity, and contends that political and social arrangements, instead of being depicted classically as a set of concrete social institutions defining a fixed and closed structure, should incorporate destabilization mechanisms that undermine existing social arrangements and unsettle hierarchical relations before they firmly solidify into entrenched power. Thus, instead of advancing a particular, substantive political situation, such as socialism, liberalism, or republicanism, toward which all societies should aim, Unger concentrates more on the process and necessity of social change. Unger's goal is to acknowledge the contingency of our institutional and social arrangements and open them to transformation. His project can be viewed as placing a radical framework on the classical method of arriving at normative conclusions from a conception of human nature . The significance of Unger's work for the meaning of life lies in how he links human personality with the image of the grand transcender. For Unger, the process of recurrent deconstruction of existing social arrangements, reimagination of new social practices, and re-creation parallels Nietzsche's description of an individual's responsibilities for self-making. Whereas Nietzsche confines the image of the grand transcender to the highest human exemplars, Unger sees the image as central to human personality and to moral and political action .

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Robert Nozick imagines an experience machine that can give us any experience we desire." Our brains could be stimulated so we would think and feel that we were winning the Nobel Prize, having dinner with our favorite celebrity, breaking Mark McGwire's home-run record, engaging in a torrid love affair with the person of our dreams, or anything else we want to experience. All the while we would be floating in a tank with electrodes attached to our brains. We could, if we wished, plug into the machine for life and program our entire life's experiences. Or we could program some time out of the tank every two years or so to select the experiences for the next period of our lives . While in the tank we will not know we are there . We will think it is all actually happening. Assuming all other logistics could be resolved (for example, a team to monitor the tank, ways to fulfill our nutrition needs, required medical care, arranging the blissful death that must eventually come), would we choose to enter the tank for an extended period? In an age of developing virtual realities, Nozick's thought experiment is less bizarre than might first seem. He argues that we would reject the experience machine for at least three reasons . First, doing things is more important than having the sensations of doing them. More matters to us than merely how our lives feel from within. Second, we want to become a certain type of person, not simply float in a tank as a bland receptacle of sensations. Third, the experience machine limits us to an artificial reality which prevents actual contact with any deeper reality . The experience machine lives our lives for us instead of helping us live our own life. However sophisticated we imagine the machine, its major function is to remove us from reality and prevent us from making any difference in the world. Our rejection of an experience machine that encloses us within a framework of just our own experiences, suggests that connecting with things and values beyond our individual experiences is crucial. Nozick takes meaning in life to involve transcending our limits. The narrow and more restrictive the limits of a life, the less meaningful it is. The more intensely people are involved and the more they transcend their limits, the more meaningful their lives are. For inherently limited human beings finding meaning requires connecting with something that is itself meaningful or valuable. To avo id infinite regress, the chain that grounds meaning must end with something that is either intrinsically meaningful or valuable or Unlimited. Thus to inquire about the meaning of a life is to ask how it is connected to other things. For Nozick, then, meaning is relational, it concerns our connection with external value or other relational meaning, and it involves transcending our limits, going beyond our own value. Human beings have limited transcendence: as we go beyond our limits to connect with a wider context of value, that value is itself limited. Thus our lives yield limited , finite meaning. Only ifan Unlimited or Absolute exists to ground infinite meaning could our lives be otherwise. The relationship between value and meaning is primary for Nozick. When discussing value, he begins from an aesthetic-scientific model. A painting has

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aesthetic value when it successfully integrates a great diversity of material into a vivid, striking unity. In science, theories are evaluated by their ability to fashion unity out of diversity. He concludes that something has intrinsic value to the degree it is organically unified: the greater the diversity that gets unified, the greater the organic, intrinsic value. Thus the intrinsic value of something centers on how integrated it is within its own boundaries. Both value and meaning, then, are important. Value provides the internal dimension of unity , meaning provides the external dimension of transcending limits and making new connections. Nozick is clearly influenced by the image of the grand transcender: overcoming obstacles, breaking bonds, epic struggle, continuous striving for new goals, and recurrent novelty all belong to the realm of meaning. But he moderates these themes by the equally important image of the unifying creator: diverse materials are ordered, structured, styled , and integrated . Most important, Nozick prizes the ongoing process of alternating creation and transcendence. Unlike Schopenhauer, Nozick understands keenly that processes can have value and can provide contexts in which meaning flows . The rhythms of the process, ordering diverse mater ial, introducing new material and disaggregating the old, ordering anew , and disrupting the new order by new material, form a continuing cycle combining meaning and value . Nozick's similarities to Nietzsche and Unger are striking . Nozick takes meaning to involve transcending our limits and connecting to external meaning and value . Nietzsche talks about going beyond ourselves, self-overcoming, and negotiating the processes of a world of flux with panache and vigor, rather than seeking a final goal. Unger cherishes the capability of human personality to transcend the limits of the culturally determined possible and impossible as the only noncontingent fact of human nature . Yet all three understand the value of unity . Nozick takes organic unity as the definition of intrinsic value . Nietzsche insists on giving style to our character and creating order out of multiple , conflicting impulses . Unger understands the necessity of creating larger, temporary social contexts. All three glor ify, in different ways and through different words, the process of human life: there is no ultimate, reachable goal, only robust development through recurrent personal and institutional deconstruction, reimagination, and re-creation. Unger calls for social structures that allow the fullest amount of social conflict consistent with his commitment to honor and facilitate the infinite human personal ity. But his notion of progress seems puzzling. He tells us that, despite our inability to transcend all conditionality, progress is possible as we loosen the limits of conditionality. But if progress means that some conditional forms are less conditional than others , or that some conditional forms are better than others, Unger may be presupposing a standard by which to evaluate conditional forms which itself is not conditional. Alternatively, if progress acknowledges that all forms are equally conditional, a democracy of conditionality, then it is not clear to what progress amounts. Is progress the explicit recognition that our

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modes of discourse are conditional, and the appreciation of the freedom we exercise when we continually recombine and reimagine contexts? Or is progress the process of recombination and reimagination itself? Finally , that the prescription to accelerate revision follows from the assumption that all forms of social life and all modes of discourse are conditional is unclear. We might well decide that given the fact of conditional forms and modes we should not accept any given structure as ultimate truth; we might well allow a reasoned process of change in our structures and modes; but why choose to accelerate revision? In the absence of evidence indicating that such a change would be an improvement, a higher form of conditionality, a closer approximation to a nonconditional standard, or a realization of freedom, why advocate change for change's sake. Unger would probably reply that his model is based on a modem view of science. Science progressed from the Euclidean paradigm to another paradigm. The best science is viewed as capable of accelerating self-revision; recognizing and absorbing anomalies and incongruous perceptions; but without destroying itself or repressing the facts it has found. Science might be viewed by Unger as transforming the fact of condit ionality into an intellectual advantage and theoretical method. More fundamentally, progress can be defined in terms of Unger 's one unconditional fact of human nature : its ultimate plasticity. Unger acknowledges that the act of context-smashing creates a new context; we are never unencumbered and unsituated. However, we progress as we ascend to looser contextual structures which encourage their own destabilization, thereby giving currency to human personality. We are not engaged in self-defeating rebellion for its own sake, but transform contexts for a purpose : to liberate human personality so that its one objective aspect can flourish. We never discover the Archimedean point which might arrest all future context-smashing; we never create a nontranscendable context which is indisputably superior to its competition; but neither are we trapped by a democracy of conditionality. There is a nonconditional standard by which to evaluate various conditional contexts: the one objective feature of human personality. Some conditional contexts are superior to others based on their flexibility and acceptance of destabilization. The contrast here is between rigid structures that resist attempts at destabilization and flexible structures that facilitate their own transformation. Moreover, Unger tries to document how plasticity has been paramount in military, economic, and social triumphs throughout history . Accordingly, we should accelerate revision in order to precipitate an understanding of ourselves and as a requirement of worldly success. Unger might reiterate that the fear of context-smashing is simply another manifestation of the paralyzing effects of the illusion of necessity communicated by mainstream ideology . Instead of accepting the alleged longing of the masses for security as a basic independent fact of human nature, Unger would perceive it as damning evidence that mainstream ideology has been successful in retarding the flourishing of our infinite personalities. Accordingly, we could take the critics' charge as further proof of the need to liberate the masses from the politi-

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cal status quo, and not as a demonstration of any presumed inadequacy in Unger's account. Unger does not advocate relentless deconstruction for its own sake. That would be too much like Sisyphus's eternal task and would lack real purpose. Given that he believes in one objective nonconditional fact of human personality, Unger cannot go all the way and claim that everything is always up for grabs. To do so would court a passive nihilism which he denies . Instead, he provides a structure which is designed to allow the fullest amount of social conflict consistent with his commitment to honor and facilitate the infinite human personality. Once he denies that everything is contingent, Unger must build from what is objective. Unger is not seduced into extolling a condition of permanent indefinition, a ceaseless flux of conflict and transformation. Instead, he acknowledges the need for relatively tranquil periods of stability, time for rest and reflection. He places no faith in communitarian arguments that presuppose citizens who share fundamental ends . Acceptance of these arguments too often paralyzes innovation and nurtures crippling austerity. Still, Unger does not tell us how we are to act but only what it is to act and that we should act. I question whether Unger ultimately overrates the human need for context-smashing activity and underrates the human need for contextpreserving activity . These two types of activity correspond to the human needs for adventure and security, and it should be clear that the relative attraction of these needs differs radically among people of varying education, age, gender, socioeconomic class, and aggressiveness. Offering no guarantees and exhilarated by the promise of empowerment, Unger heightens social risks : heroism and tragedy may be inextricably joined. Will "everyday people" be attracted to such a vision? Will the many people who are less politically inclined than Unger truly be empowered by the activity he and other intellectuals cherish? Does Unger demand too much of us when he insists that we risk mutual vulnerability and gamble with our deepest fears? Can human beings achieve much the same benefits with less risk by smashing contexts that are local and personal, and thus less intractable than Unger's grand institutions? The romantic notion of deconstruction, reimagination, and re-creation stirs our fantasies and ennobles our spirits. But the advice to fashion a sequence of serial selves can foster lack of definition and a hunger for authenticity. The context-smashing self risks a robust sense of identity at the altar of expanded consciousness. Perhaps forging a unity out of multiplicity and self-mastery soften the possible excesses of the notion, but the dangers remain . Ifwe are nothing more than a series of selves, we may not be anything. Nozick's rendering of organic unity as the standard of value is troublesome . Intuitively, some organic unities need not be valuable at all. What diversities are unified, how they are unified, and for what purposes are independent factors that help determine whether and to what extent an organic unity is valuable. We can imagine, for example, a highly diversified group of people unified tightly under a program of dispensing evil. Thus human attitudes and the activity

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of evaluation itself affect judgments of value . The structure of something is not the sole, or even most important, criterion of its value. Seeking a trait common to all valuable things, Nozick seizes on an aesthetic model. But why should we value art for the same features that we value a morally praiseworthy act or a cognitive value? Are morally praiseworthy acts more organically unified than evil acts? Can we judge the respective value of two acts on the basis of their comparative organic unity? Different things are valuable for different reasons and in different contexts. Any unified account of value will be suspect. Even as an aesthetic notion, organic unity does not reign supreme. The min imalist movement in art, for example, explicitly distances itself from forging unities out of multiplicities. Nozick' s understanding of meaning is also contestable. Whether our linking with an Unlimited or Absolute connects us with meaning is unclear. If the question of meaning arises only with limited beings, an Unlimited would be beyond the question. But to rise above the categories of meaning-meaninglessness is not necessarily to be meaningful. To ground human meaning the Unlimited must itselfbe meaningful. An Unlimited that transcends the categories of meaning and an Unlimited that must be meaningful are not identical. Brush ing this aside, if all human beings are connected to the Unlimited this might suggest that each human life is equally meaningful. This seems extravagantly counterintuitive. Or perhaps human beings must have the proper sort of connection to the Unlimited to acquire meaning. If so, what human action can produce the appropriate connection? Nozick's sense of limitation is itself limited . He contrasts "limitation" with the "Unlimited" and sometimes ascends to the cosmic perspective. If he had cont rasted "limitation" to the "finitely possible" he would have remained firmly in the human perspective. The advantage of the latter strategy lies in pictorial symmetry. Nozick undoubtedly has some available responses. The link with the Unlimited is only one possibility he entertains. This possibility, unsurprisingly, raises issues surrounding theism . But Nozick never commits himself to the existence of the Unlimited. Finite human meaning is available as we link to other, finitely meaningful things and to value. His account of meaning does not depend on a theist ic commitment. Against Unger, I doubt whether human nature embodies only one noncontingent fact, contingency itself; whether we are most human only when we are transcending current social arrangements, and whether political structures govern best that destabilize themselves most. Against Nozick, I doubt that organic unity is the independent standard of all value ; that meaning is best defined as overcoming obstacles, breaking bonds, and continuous striving, while value is defined as order, structure, and integration; and that the character of value is independent of human attitudes and evaluations. Nozick argues that meaning is achieved by transcendence to a wider framework. But his principle has no logical stopping point until we aspire to an

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overarching Absolute that includes all actualities and all possibilities, a framework which cannot be dwarfed by imagining anything more . His strategy is analogous to those who demand permanence as a condition of meaning. Both strategies struggle with the power of the cosmic perspective to dwarf human accomplishments. The permanence principle insists that our accomplishments produce meaning only if they endure . But no human creat ion endures so life must be meaningless. Nozick insists that ultimate meaning can only be secured by linking to an overarching framework. But if no such framework exists, then the cosmic perspective, to which we cannot link, can always dwarf our deeds . A better strategy is to accept the cosmic perspective and use it for practical advantage. We should not permit technical difficulties in Unger's and Nozick's accounts to obscure their contributions. Adding twists , turns, and vivid images to some of Nietzsche's account, they provide ways of achieving finite meaning and value in life. They may not give us the only way human beings can find meaningful lives, but this is a glad tiding. Given human diversity in temperament, personality, and embodied value , it would be sad if only one path was available for all. A question lingers : Is the image of the grand transcender, so prized by Nietzsche, Unger, and Nozick, different from Schopenhauer's gloomy eternal striver? Schopenhauer analyzed human experience in dualistic categories. We strive to attain what we lack or have insufficiently. Either we fail to attain our goal or we succeed. If we fail we suffer. If we succeed , momentary pleasure is soon followed by letdown and boredom. So we strive again to attain another goal, and the dreary pendulum continues. Compare this to the image of the grand transcender: a recurrent process of deconstructing, reimagining, and re-creating the self, personal relations, and social arrangements. Granted, Schopenhauer exaggerates the boredom, underplays periods of zestful triumph, and artificially limits the process to discrete desires and goals . But we can still question the point of the process of the grand transcender. Is relentless striving merely a sign of discontentment? Is the grand transcender a chameleon who changes color because of an inadequate sense of self? Is the forced activity merely a way to forget the pain of human life? Is there any difference between the grand transcender and the greedy materialist who is never satisfied and who accumulates more and more wealth as an end in itself? I am convinced numerous differences between Schopenhauer's image and that of the grand transcender arise. First, the process of the grand transcender is committed to progress. The process is not viewed as a pendulum which swings back and forth, occupying the same space repeatedly. The grand transcender, if successful, develops and creates . Whether viewed as Nietzsche's self-overcoming to a higher human form, Unger's creation of more flexible social institutions, or Nozick 's connection with more meaning and value, the grand transcender does not occupy the same space repeatedly. Second, the process of

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grand transcender, unlike Schopenhauer, does not seek a final termination of the original goal and does not implicitly embrace permanence as a high value. Third , the grand transcender finds deep meaning and value in the process itself as activity, creation , and continuing deve lopment flow. Finally, the attitude of the grand transcender toward life is enthusiastically positive, while the disciple of Schopenhauer withdraws and tries to simulate union with the Absolute. While I doubt that the image of the grand transcender captures the entire deep truth about human personality and that it shows the only way to a meaningful life, it highlights important insights . Human beings are not static creatures. We flourish most vividly through ongoing creative development. Regardless of the view from afar, the process of this creative development furnishes the meaning of our lives. Cosmic meaninglessness does not compel pessimism. The image of Grand Transcender, heroic and romantic, is appealing. Yet, taken to an extreme , it invites charges that it is adolescent and fatuous . For those of us close enough to the immigrant experience, those of us whose parents and grandparents endured hardships while living unremarkable lives in remarkable ways, the image of Grand Transcender is too grand. My immed iate ancestors, for example, led meaningful lives. They loved, worked, created, and instilled values. They were blue-collar workers, hardly part of Taylor's gifted artist class, but 1 refuse to believe they added more zeros to zeros, or that their proper function was to serve Nietzsche's artistic creators. Why can't someone be a type of Grand Transcender without being artistically or intellectually gifted? The image of the Grand Transcender attracts us because it speaks to our sense of adventure, our individualism, our need to experience intensely. But we are much more than Grand Transcenders. Unger and Nozick, even Nietzsche, recognize this. Our sense of community, our need for peace and respite, and our yearning for narrative structure are also part of human personality. We need to be distinct individuals, but if this impulse is exaggerated we become isolated and alienated. We need to be intimately connected to others, but if this yearning is unchallenged we become suffocated and overly dependent. The trick is to achieve the best measure of each impulse . Neither Romanticism nor Stoicism is sufficient. Each image speaks to only part of the human condition. We need to transcend grandly but we also need internal unity and integrated identities . If all theisms are false, then cosmic meaninglessness permeates the human condition. Nevertheless, even if there is no meaning of life as such, human lives can be meaningful in various degrees . We must now examine appropriate criteria for judging whether human lives are meaningful. We must analyze why a meaningful human life is like a Slinky toy and a telescope.

Four THE MEANING OF LIFE Many contemporary Anglo-American philosophers, rejecting both theism and nihilism, flee from the threat of cosmic meaninglessness by defining a meaningful life in modest terms . 1. Deflationary Accounts of the Meaning of Life

Kurt Baier argues that a human life is meaningful only if it is worthwhile or if it is sign ificant. I We should j udge worthwhileness over the range of ordinary lives : their respective balances of happiness over unhappiness, pleasure over pain , bliss over suffering. The end points are the most worthwhile and the least worthwhile lives. A worthwhile life is "well above average." We should judge significance on the basis of realizing plans transcending the narrow concerns of self. A life that is not itself worthwhile may have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the worthwhileness of other lives, and thus may be significant and thereby meaningful. Baier moderates the lofty standards of religion which invidiously compare earthly life to eternal bliss . But his remedy opens new wounds. He accepts a hedonistic standard for worthwhileness, leaving us to wonder why a nonhedonistically fulfilling life could not be worthwhile. Next , his notion of worthwhileness excludes from the outset most human lives . Only those lives which are "well above average" qualify. This invites us to wonder if a road to worthwhileness would be to kill everyone in the world except one other person, ensure that this person was periodically tortured but kept alive, thereby making our life "well above average" and thus worthwh ile. Baier mistakenly judges the worthwhileness of a life in relation to whether it is above or below average in a particular society . But this method ignores the worth of the society. In a destitute soc iety, an above average life can be less worthwhile than a below average life in an advantaged society . Also, an average life in either society is, by definition, not worthwhile: it is neither above or below average. By portraying worthwhileness as more competitive than a zero sum game , Baier denies that all human lives could be worthwhile even in principle. Worse, he tacitly encourages us to add to the misery of the world to help our own chances ofliving worthwhilely. Baier claim s that unworthwhile lives can be meaningful only if they are significant. Would this mean that the one poor tormented soul in my hypothetical story would have a meaningful life because his or her existence indirectly contributed to making the tormentor's life worthwhile? Surely Baier does not intend this. He adds that our lives are significant based on what we do for others, or by plans , discoveries, inventions, and work we perform. Although inartfully crafted, Baier's notion of significance can soften the implausibility of his criterion of worthwhileness. Interpreted charitably, a life could be meaningful, even

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though hedonistically unworthwhile, because its projects , intentions, and pursuits produced hedonistically desirable consequences for others . This interpretation would preclude from significance a life that indirectly and unconsciously contributed to the lives of others . A severely deformed infant, for example, who survives with only vegetative capabilities, but who brings great joy to parents who deeply love the baby, care for it, and derive satisfaction from their efforts , does not qualify . The infant did not consciously, intentionally, and directly contribute to his parents' lives. Paul Edwards offers a classic deflationary account.' People have meaningful lives if and only if they have goals which do not seem trivial to them and these goals have a genuine possibility of being realized . Edwards adds, " if [a person's] life had meaning to him, then it had meaning - that's all there is to it.") People have objectively worthwhile lives if and only if they are attached to goals that are in fact attainable and that have positive value. People have subjectively worthwhile lives if and only if they are attached to goals that are attainable and they sincerely believe the goals have positive value. On this account, all human beings could in principle have meaningful and worthwhile lives. Hitler, for example, would have a meaningful and, possibly, subjectively worthwhil e life, but not an objectively worthwhile life. The threshold for meaningfulness is set by considering what a life not worth living might be: a life with no or unachievable goals . But tensions pervade Edwards's work. First, he requires a genuine possibility of attaining goals . But a good-faith false belief that our goals are attainable can be enough to fuel our sense that life is worth continuing. If Edwards insists on objective, genuine possibility, then it is false that "if a person's life has meaning to him, then it has meaning." For that sense of meaning could be based on only a false, subjective sense of possibility. Second, even if we correctly believed that our goals could not be achieved, we might think that pursuing them was still worthwhile. Futile acts, at least those with an unattainable point , can still be pleasurable, bear process values, or embody intrinsic merit. Third , the notion of "positive value" is ambiguous. Does it mean morally valuable, cognit ively valuable , aesthetically valuable, militarily valuable, or religiously valuable? Will any of this do? Or do moral values trump all others ? Or must the act, on balance of all value dimensions, be valuable? Taylor's accounts of the meaning of life responded to the deficiencies of Sisyphus's life. Baier's account responds to the celestial standards of orthodox Western religions. Edwards's account responds to the desolation of those who feel their lives are worthless. Because most people who are suicidal lack defined goals or feel their goals are unattainable, Edwards concludes that a meaningful life consists of nontrivial goals that are attainable. These accounts are limited because they focus too narrowly on their authors' respective adversaries. Taylor's account is wrongly inflated, Baier fashions worthwhileness tighter than a zero sum game, and Edwards 's rendering is radically ambiguous with respect to value and possibility.

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In different ways , these accounts obscure the role of ideals as a motivating principle beyond simple satisfaction of desires . We want more than desires, goals, and satisfactions. We want to create and pursue ideals that elevate our spirits even if we fail, as we must, to attain them . Moreover, creative work is not merely original production, but is also self-exploration. The process of creativity transforms the creator. People who are suicidal , in addition to the factors Edwards highlights, see little value in process. Their creative and idealization powers are dull. Their zest for re-creating the self has evaporated. The energy, engagement, love of life, marriage of activity and conv iction, and pure act of faith necessary to feel, not merely rationally calculate, meaningfulness are memories. A robustly meaningful life aspires to more than Edwards's approach of "I don't have a life not worth living ." The issue is not whether I have enough reasons to avoid suicide ; most people if surveyed would rather have been born than not to have existed. Nor do we insist, with Baier, that a meaningful life must be more hedonistically fulfilling than the lives of the great majority of our contemporaries or instrumentally valuable in hedonistic terms to others. When we discuss a meaningful life we also implicate the role of ideals , creativity, process values, and the transformation of the self. Meaningful lives are lives of active engagement. If an activity is satisfying and chosen it is still an open question whether it provides robust meaning to our lives. To put the point more sharply : freely and continually viewing episodes of Matlock and Murder. She Wrote may prove satisfying, but if such "activity" symbolizes a life we have conjured Nietzsche's last man . Continually viewing television programs can become one of life's interests, but such a life typifies shut-ins, those who are unable to leave home unassisted. Such activity can provide a muted meaning in life which does not bring great worth . Relationships, creativity, moral and intellectual accomplishments, religious or cultural commitments, self-creation, and connecting to other projects beyond ourselves are better candidates for robust meaning than watching a marathon night of reruns of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Other philosophers, such as Marvin Kohl, argue that a meaningful life is one in which bearers believe that they have a genuine possibility of realizing their dominant life goals , that these goals are valuable, and the bearers are inclined to enjoy life.4 A person's temperament or psychological condition are crucial under this view . But couldn 't a person be mistaken about these matters? Although we may think we have a genuine possibility of realizing our goals , we might be wrong . Although we may think our goals are valuable, perhaps they are not. Although we may be inclined to enjoy our lives, perhaps that inclination has been externally induced or is based on delusions of grandeur ("Gee, it is great to be Napoleon Bonaparte. Those Russian winters are not as horrible as people think ."). Our bare belief that our lives are meaningful is not enough to make our lives meaningful. My criticism depends on a distinction between objective states of affairs such that goals are not reachable, they are not valuable, and the inclination to

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enjoy life is flawed, and subjective appraisals of those affairs. My criticism thus depends on a view of value, conditions in the world, and appropriate responses to those conditions. Perhaps I have begged the quest ion against advocates of the view . Perhaps I have assumed as true a version of the issues that are in question . Advocates of the view might argue that if our believing that our life is meaningful is enough to make it meaningful, then the view is persuasive. Even if the meaningfulness is built on mistaken beliefs , bearers experience their lives as meaningful. Who am I to say their lives are not meaningful? I insist that bearers could have been deluded into thinking that their meaningless lives are meaningful. If there is a distinction between a meaningless and meaningful life, the life of a person plagued with delusions of being Napoleon has a meaningless life. This person's responses to events in the world are inappropriate because the person is so deeply deluded. The fake Napoleon is not an actor in this world, but only in a world of the person's own making . Perhaps the distinction between objectively meaningful and subjectively meaningful can solve the problem . Even on its own terms, though, the proposed view faces difficulties . Must we believe we have a genuine possibility to achieve our goals to have a mean ingful life? Some thinkers, such as Nietzsche, argue that no final goals or fixed states can be reached, yet are firmly conv inced that meaningful lives are possible. If we refashion "goals" to mean "make progress in valuable directions" maybe the problem is resolved . Davy Crockett at the Alamo was under no delusion that his band of insurgents would succeed, but their resistance was meaningful, and taken by them at the time to be meaningful , as the defense of their values . They could succeed in defending these values , although they could not succeed in defeating Santa Anna . Which is "the goal" of their action? If Davy's goal was to die a martyr for a valuable cause then perhaps the proposed view is salvaged in an ironic way: the lives of the insurgents are meaningful through termination. But Davy's goal was to defeat the Mexicans and thereby advance the interests of the Texans. Putting Davy Crockett aside, the larger issue is this: in talking of the possi bility of realizing dominant life goals, advocates succumb to Schopenhauer's problem of the pendulum. Means and goals are not so easily separated. Instead of continual linear, or pendulum, progression from means to goals, ad infinitum, human lives arc better conceived as an ongoing process of activity in which means and goals spring forth and derive their labels from other means and goals . A goal becomes part of the means of a new goal which becomes part of the means to another goal, until we die or lose the faculties for creative endeavors. Deflationary accounts, at best, describe criteria for a minimally meaningful life, a life that is (barely?) preferable to nonexistence. Once their internal problems of interpretation are resolved , such accounts can provide a starting point for the search for meaning . But they do not define the yearning for robust meanmg.

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2. Aesthetic Creativity Irving Singer provides a fuller notion of a meaningful life: a continuous process that includes purposive goals and related consummations; ends that matter to their bearer; actions in pursuit of those ends that produce satisfactions, either in themselves or in their culminating consummations, typically yielding a measure of happiness; and viewing the world as an intelligible pattern to which the actions contribute.' Singer distances himself from views that demand a comprehensive life plan or an overall goal that structures our lives. Committed to pluralism, he views a meaningful life as a continuous process of satisfying, purpo sive actions that are followed by new purposes. He is strongly influenced by a model of aesthetic creativity: an endless quest toward new and ever-changing values . .. rarely will [the ideal be] a particular culmination that [is] the absolute fulfillment of his labors . .. . Whatever he does accomplish becomes a springboard for further acts of creativity ... there is nothing that could be called a determinate perfection that guides his striving. Idealization functions . . . like a jet that propels the engine forward without any clear and distinct idea of where its trajectory must end. We are by nature internal guidance systems that maneuver ourselves through life but without any fixed or final targets. 6 Although Singer expects that a meaningful life will typically find a measure of happiness, especially as a spur to continuing activity, he carefully distinguishes happy from meaningful lives. Happiness "requires a harmonious adjustment between oneself and one's surroundings."? While a meaningful life can be based on resisting our surroundings, "A life without much happiness can be a meaningful one, even if . .. a meaningful life provides its own measure of hap-

piness.:"

Singer recognizes a distinction between objective and subjective meaningfulness : "Regardless of how [a person] or anyone else feels about his life, and whether or not it includes much happiness, its meaning depends on the purposes and values that make it what it is." 9 A meaningful life could in principle be self-contained: a series of creative activities involving only the actor which do not affect the lives of others . The goals of a significant life are chosen because they go beyond the goal of personal well-being: "a truly significant life would be an innovative one that is devoted to the preservation and perfecting of life itself.,,10 The relevant ideals , ends, and actions may originate in self-interest but eventually benefit others. A significant life, then, is more than merely happy or meaningful. the significance of any life will always be a function of its ability to affect other lives . . . significance does not depend on fame, power, wealth, or so-

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cial standing. It depends on the value one provides - directly or indirectly - to those who can thereby make their lives happier or more meaningful or even more significant. I I Under this view, animals could have meaningful, even happy, but not significant lives. They do not pursue impersonal goals in service of consciously created ideals . Singer understands that his criteria of meaningfulness and significance are not directly connected to morality . Hitler could have had a meaningful and significant life. In his twisted way, he claimed to be "preserving, extending, and improving" human life "by eliminating soft and sentimental attitudes that run counter to the deepest stirrings of nature ." 12 Because Singer measures significance in terms of the value we provide others, our ability to make the lives of others happier, more meaningful and more significant, he severs significance from morality . A person could make the lives of others , on balance, happier, more meaningful and more significant in morally inappropriate ways . Thus, to judge a life significant does not imply that the life is healthy or morally desirable. 3. Telescopes and Slinky Toys The romantics valued integrity, sincerity , and readiness to sacrifice our lives for an ultimate ideal. 13 An unsatisfiable yearning to approach infinity , creation as an ineffable personal act through which we lay our stamp on nature, the will to soar and to struggle, replace the ancient Greek desire for peace, harmony, tranquility. The excitement and possibilities of the world cannot be fully exhausted and no final, fixed answers to specific questions of how to live are available. People of continuous action, generating and creating, constantly transforming themselves afresh, propelling forward like a vast cosmic design renewing itself again and again . By allowing our infinite natures to rise to greater and greater heights we soar toward divinity . The flow and endless self-creativity of the cosmos, the indomitable wills of the greatest of us, the ceaseless process of deconstruction, reimagination, and re-creation, stir the passions and provide meaning in lives. For the romantics, reality is not a state of affairs, but a dynam ic process of change, and human beings emerged wholly within that process and as an inherent part of it. The goal is the achievement by Nature of self-awareness, and it attains this in the highest activities of people, especially through creative art. Human beings are seen as at one with Nature, sharing with it the spirituality of their innermost being . Creative artists are viewed as heroic, and art made the object of religious attitudes . Life as a bold narrative, a relentless project of self-creation, aesthetic creativity, or grand transcending likens life to literature and art. But do we then live to curry a favorable audience? To win fans, admirers, and critics appreciative of our performance or artistic creation ? Not necessarily. While a life well-lived merits applause from the public, this recognition is not the core of a meaningful

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life. The process and ever-changing product of the creator provide meaning. Praiseworthy reviews from onlookers, although deserved, are not required. We cannot make sense of the universe if that means discovering one truth about the cosmos which explains everything else and also explains itself. The invocation of a Supreme Being, which might explain everything else , cannot explain itself. We are left with "the Supreme Being always was , is, and will be." Even theism has to resort to an unexplainable brute fact. The question "Does life have meaning?" is most acute in times of psychological crisis. The question of life's meaning cannot be settled by observation or logic . Although we can adopt a cosmic perspective, while living we are not impartial observers viewing life from afar. We derive true propositions from philosophy, but also images and ways of looking at and making sense of our world. An approach that is content to analyze the logic of arguments or the use of concepts bleeds the passion out of an existential question. Liv ing robustly requires faith. Faith is not the opposite of reason, nor is it devoid of reason, nor is it distinctively religious. By "faith," I mean conviction and action not fully supportable by reason . Faith is necessary because human reason is limited. On fundamental questions of human existence reason is incapable of supplying a clear answer. Yet we must arrive at and act on positions on these questions. But faith is unsafe and uncertain. Faith is not won once and forever, but must be renewed. We can lose our faith. Losing our faith in life involves seriously questioning life's meaning. When we question life 's meaning seriously we are not entertaining an abstract, philosophical exercise. Instead, we are psychologically and viscerally out of tune with life's rhythms. We feel that life lacks meaning. The causes of this feeling are varied. To name a few : loss of a loved one , failure of our major projects, onset of serious illness, clinical depression, disappointment that our successes leave us hollow, and philosophical paralysis. The advice to "be yourself' is unhelpful. I cannot refer to one essential self. I am numerous possible selves, none of which is morally or aesthetically equivalent. We require a principle of choice, a structure of value, to reimagine and re-create the self. The common, well -intentioned advice to "be yourself' is, at best, no more than approval for the person you generally show yourself to be. But it also limits the imagination and restricts your possibilities for meaning. Philosophical paralysis can result from preoccupation with the cosmic perspective. The process typically includes three stages. First, we reject religious and philosophical theisms and conclude that there is no meaning built into the cosmos ("cosmic meaninglessness"). Second, we undermine the importance of human life by viewing it from a wider context which contains and dwarfs human achievements. Typically, this involves ascending to the cosmic perspective and focusing on the impermanence, limitat ions , and ultimate insignificance of an individual life and human life taken as a whole. Thi rd, we conclude that either human life is absurd or irredeemably futil e. Once lost, there is no sure fire way to regain faith. Psychologists struggle to reenergize clients suffering from the

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loss of a loved one, failure of major projects, onset of serious illness, clinical depression, and other disappointments. But philosophers must struggle with loss offaith caused by philosophical paralysis. Psychological crisis occurs when we lose our ability to shift among perspectives, when the two major opposing vantage points press upon us with equal force, or when we are mired in the cosmic perspective. We are either paralyzed by an equilibrium of conflicting forces or we are radically disengaged from life. Our loss of will is fueled by a loss of faith. A sense of meaning is restored only if we again identify what we are doing with our own desires. That is why Sisyphus manipulated by the gods into desiring his fate suffers a double tragedy. His desires are not self-directed. He has been tricked into thinking his life is meaningful, into being satisfied with a meaningless life. False satisfactions may sustain a false sense of, but do not constitute, meaning. Meaning, then, cannot be purely a subjective matter: believing that my life has meaning cannot guarantee that it does . This is the case even if one rejects, as I do, the exaggerated claims and assumptions of metaphysical realism, strong moral realism, and epistemological foundational ism. Epistemological foundational ism is the view that our knowledge claims can ultimately be tested by certain foundational truths which are immune from revision. Such foundational truths may be indubitable, incapable of consistently being doubted; self-evident, not in need of rational demonstration; incorrigible, impossible to eliminate or change; or presuppositions of rationality. Metaphysical realism is the view that reality is mind-independent, admits of one true description, and human beings arrive at truth when their propositions about the world correspond to reality . Metaphysical realism appeals to a notion of inherent essences, things-in-themselves, and sometimes appeals to a special human cognitive faculty , such as intuition, by which we grasp these essences. Meaning is not purely an objective matter. We are never in a neutral position to evaluate our perceptions and beliefs against the world as such . Our interpretations are within the realm of our experiences of the world and we cannot transcend to a point outside the world . We cannot appeal to an entirely atheoretical perception of pure, uninterpreted states of affairs . The realm of truth is within the realms of experience, reason, and emotion. Human beings do not have access to truth or knowledge outside those realms . Although no single, fixed position that could freeze truth claims and sanctify interpretations once and forever is accessible to us, that does not imply that all interpretations or all perspectives are equally sound . I may be connected to value, contribute to a wide network of relationships, and be deeply appreciated by my society, but if I lack the feelings, attitudes, intentions, and beliefs appropriate to my situation, my sense of meaninglessness will be acute . Tolstoy and John Stuart Mill are classic examples. People may also accept that their lives are meaningful by the usual standards, yet feel that their lives are pointless. Such people have the correct set of beliefs about their situation but still lack the internal animation, the zest, necessary to experience

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their lives as meaningful. If a philosopher comes along and informs me that my life is objectively meaningful even though I sense it as subjectively meaningless, I am unlikely to jump for joy. I have lost my faith but kept my life. Three strategies can soften the effects of philosophical paralysis: (I) reinstating a version of theism, (2) pictorial symmetry, and (3) using the cosmic perspective for practical advantage. I. Reinstating theism . If human beings could connect with an unlimited reality that is itself intrinsically meaningful then our lives would be neither meaningless nor ungrounded. A sense of purpose would emerge from our freely chosen role in a grand epic or our eventual triumphant entrance into a grander, eternal world . Tolstoy regained his faith in life through this strategy. 2. Pictorial symmetry. Images emerging from the cosmic perspective necessarily shrink human achievements and life. As a view from afar, the cosmic vantage point renders its objects puny and insignificant. But pictorial accuracy requires symmetry, an adjustment for scale. A meaningful human life does not require what seems significant from the cosmic perspective, but requires only what is significant from a human perspective. Put differently: if human life seems puny from a cosmic perspective then only puny meaning is required to close the gap of disproportionality between serious human effort and result. Philosophical paralysis from preoccupation with the cosmic perspective results only from distortion: demanding massive, cosmically significant meaning to redeem human life. 3. Using the cosmic perspective for practical advantage. Instead of taking the cosmic perspective as another limitation on human experience, perhaps we can use it for practical advantage. By ascending in imagination to a larger context, we can usefully "put things in perspective." To lighten our suffering when we suffer grave loss, take ourselves and our projects too seriously, or feel overwhelmed, we can view our life from the cosmic perspective and shrink our problems. By moving artfully between the cosmic and human perspective and intermediary contexts, perhaps we can maximize our triumphs and minimize our failures. Stepping back from what is happening and viewing as if from the outside, to be an observer of our own lives, to detach ourselves temporarily from events creatively uses the cosmic perspective. For example, we sometimes try too hard because we overvalue success or undervalue unsuccessful efforts. Our perspective is distorted. Trying too hard is often counterproductive. To relax, be calm, and allow muscle memory to take over is more likely to culminate in athletic success than overenergetic, intense, willful desire. Widening our perspective from the passionately personal to the more cosmic nurtures practical advantage here . But the cosmic perspective, if used uncreatively, shrinks our lives, underscores the triviality of our projects, mocks our pretensions, and broadcasts our insignificance. Macbeth's soliloquy is the best literary summary of the horrors of immersion in the cosmic perspective. The personal perspective inflates our

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lives, amplifies the process and results of our projects, encourages our pretensions, and demands that we see ourselves as highly significant. Some people argue that our mortality bears glad tidings : we can strive to make each moment of our lives special, we can appreciate our projects even more because our time on earth is short, we can understand that immortality would bring boredom and destroy vitality. Others argue that our mortality bears ill tidings: the impermanence of our projects, the deprivation of the good that constitutes our lives, the triviality of our dearest values . Is it possible that both sides find validity but from different perspectives? Do the mortality-lovers speak from the personal perspective, while the mortality-despisers speak from the cosmic perspective? From the personal perspective, we can still, in principle, luxuriate in the immediacy and the whole of our lives. From the cosmic perspective, Macbeth's soliloquy rings loud and clear. If true, we face another case where the conflicting perspectives render radically different conclusions. Questions about the significance of death, the meaning or meaninglessness of life, and the importance or unimportance of our lives must be filtered through perspectives. But which is the better, even the supreme perspective? To answer this question is to answer the other, more pressing, questions of life and death. My answer will disappoint those with a low tolerance for ambiguity, those overwhelmed by the imperatives of binary logic, and those appalled by conflict. My answer is that both the cosmic and personal perspectives, and those in between, are genuine. Neither can claim independent superiority over the other. Our choice of perspective, then, becomes crucial for our understanding and enjoyment of life. Life is like a telescope in that we can increase or decrease the magnification, adjust the focus, and view our lives from numerous vantage points . The most artistic and graceful among us travel lightly among the available perspectives, never seeing one as providing the only authentic answers to life's questions. Those of us who live the most meaningful, significant, and happy lives choose the perspective most appropriate for such lives more consistently than those who lead lives that seem less meaningful, significant, and happy . The presence of multiple perspectives at first blush increases the conflict, turmoil, and struggle within us. But it also offers opportunities for enriching our lives. Creatively using the cosmic, personal, and intermediary perspectives follows ancient wisdom : nurture the most beneficial attitude given a situation. Although harmony among perspectives is unavailable, thus rendering our lives both more tragic and comedic, the only alternatives are stunningly unappealing : full immersion in the personal perspective at the cost of reflection, or full immersion in the cosmic perspective at the cost of vibrancy. The lack of reflection transforms human life toward the bestial , while the lack of vibrancy paralyzes action and breeds clinical depression. Sartre offers better advice: we are condemned to our freedom . The meaning of life is embedded in life itself, in our instincts and drives . Through our emotional life we experience the meaning in life. Through our rea-

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son we connect our lives to wider values that produce meaning. Creativity is not merely producing something somewhat original. Creativity is a self-examination and self-exploration that affects the creator. Creative activ ity involves selftransformation. But shifting perspectives is not an easy cure for our insecurities. We will still feel the hot breath of nothingness on our necks , experience bafflement before darkness, anxiety when confronting the limits of rationality, surprise before the serendipity of the universe . Awe and wonder will never evaporate. But neither will dread and trembling. Schopenhauer advises us to either accept the unavailability of happiness or soften the violence of the pendulum swinging between frustration and boredom. By following satisfied desires quickly with new desires , however, boredom's visit is brief. Schopenhauer's insight, if taken to its logical conclusion, might have elevated him from pessimism. But then Schopenhauer would not have been Schopenhauer. Our lives are also like Slinky toys . We bound from goal to goal as each satisfaction impels us to new imaginings and pursuits. Although we take time to savor our accomplishments, we are excited by the process and continue the quest. Nietzsche's deconstruction-reimagination-recreation is the vivid exemplar of this propulsion. Although it can be reasonably criticized as not including sufficient respite and enough time to savor, Nietzsche's process nevertheless highlights the deficiencies of viewing life as a simply journey to a particular, fixed goal. Nietzsche would scorn my suggestion that part of the art of living is to move deftly among perspectives to maximize joys and minimize sufferings. He would see this as cowardly, as reneging on full love of life. To run from life and toward a cosmic perspective in times of trial is to fail miserably the psychological test of greatness. Such a strategy betrays a craven need to edit out or soften part of what makes life what it is. Instead of intensifying life in all its dimensions, my suggestion advises us to flee the arena when the going gets tough . Nietzsche would utter no surprise that I am writing on the meaning of life. He would insist that an inadequate love of life animates my inquiry. This line of criticism, however, misses the mark . Creatively using perspectives is not a flight from life, but a method of squeezing the most out of it. The cosmic perspective is not a safe oasis outside of life, but a vantage point reflective humans invariably greet. We are not editing out the hard parts of life, but interpreting them such that we retain our faith and rekindle our spirits. I am writing on the meaning oflife for some of the same reasons Nietzsche wrote : the process itself brings meaning to my life. Nietzsche's account has its own problems: his insistence on the tight , interrelatedness of all events in constituting a self; the untidiness of his notion of Ubermensch; his call to strive toward and transcend an indeterminate future coalesces uneasily with his simultaneous glorification of the self as it is. Nietzsche 's insistence on loving life, however, is important. To feel our life is

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meaningful requires emotion, such as love, which is based on attitude, faith, and judgment, and which transforms our view of the world.

4. Struggle and Suffering Our growth and suffering are often connected. The Italian proverb, which generously predates Nietzsche, is "Cia che non mi distrugge mi rende piu forte" ("What does not destroy me will make me stronger"). The loss of adolescent innocence as we gain worldly experience, of infinite possibilities as we make choices that narrow our imaginings, of boundless hope as we bury our loved ones, of transcendent power as we suffer debilitating diseases, of inflated selfesteem as love turns sour, can trigger growth and meaning . Or self-destruction. We must integrate the tragic, painful aspects of human experience into our reality. Evil, suffering, death, and the loss of what is closest to us are also part of life. Adversity is never merely adversity unless we permit it to be. Adversity can be refashioned to practical advantage where the will to do so is resolute. But there are no guarantees. Getting what we want too easily , without struggle, induces boredom more predictably than simply accomplishing a goal. The classic, sometimes irritating, adages bear currency: "Only things that take great effort are worth having" and "Nothing worthwhile comes easily ." For example , wars, as horrible as we say they are, often provide stunning opportunities for meaning. Apathy and indifference, total immersion in the mundane, are unavailable. War multiplys tensions, exhilarations, fears, and hopes. Military conquest, especially when plausibly evaluated as the victory of the moraIly righteous over an irredeemably evil aggressor, vivifies a nation . It presents opportunities for expression of the deepest human emotions and demands their revelation: unspeakable sadness and grief as loved ones perish ; justified rage at the acts of the aggressor and vows of vengeance; undeniable experiences of history-making, of leaving footprints as one participates courageously in a grand epic; intense spasms of self-esteem as precarious occasions to prove oneself to self and intimates have been encountered and surpassed; and soul-searing intimacy as collective efforts at rebuilding national infrastructure transform the world , as in our youth, to a forum of seemingly infinite possibilities. Military defeat produces our deepest feelings of shame : a lingering sense of historical impoverishment; convictions of inferiority, betrayal. and divine abandonment; a profound understanding of failure. The world becomes, as in our terminal moment, a place without hope, pity, or compass ion. No wonder that so many people who have encountered large scale war describe that time as their defining moment, as the extended period when they felt most alive . Much was at risk. Apathy and collective narcolepsy were imposs ible. Prostrate, complacent faithlessness was not an available option. We understand visceraIly, and not merely rationally, the radical indeterminacy of life: the dread of cosmic exile, the longing for infinite redemption.

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However, I do not urge a mindless celebration of the wonders of war. My point is only to underscore that a postmodern cultural smog has descended upon us: we mimic Sisyphus in our routinized life of technical adjustments, our lived experiences are replaced by ersatz images and representations, the pleasures of manual labor and of the body are increasingly enjoyed vicariously, and the commodification of the world spreads wildly . Our sense of wonder and of possibility, our opportunities for intense human emotion, our very humanness are in jeopardy. Under such circumstances, the pathology of war, as the struggle for feeling writ large, is a pathetic reminder of our historical condition: the need for remedies for postmodern somnambulance and the remorseless savagery of a world eclipsed.

5. Meaning and Significance Would the cosmos be meaningful if it included no life? Imagine the stuff of the universe - planets, stars, sun, moon , and the like - continuing its regularity and pattern of motion . No consciousness, no projects, no interests, no nonmechanical relationships. Even if a Supreme Being created this lifeless universe for the Being's own amusement or as a show of creative power, it would not follow that the cosmos contained meaning, although it might provide meaning for its creato r. A lifeless cosmos matters only if it matters to somebody. Now imagine that the cosmos includes animal, but not human life. Animals of severely limited consciousness might still be imagined as no more than living robots , programmed to act in ways by nature or their creator. Only animals of more robust consciousness, those to whom a degree of freedom and creativity might be imputed , can plausibly bring meaning to the cosmos . Higher life forms matter if they matter to themselves or to each other. If correct, this shows that meaning is tied to consciousness, freedom, and creativity. Even the higher animals may have only a portion of meaning: They act but do they understand? Are they guided by their own convictions? The meaning of life, then, is not out there to be discovered. We must contribute to the cause . Our faith, our attitude , our ability to picture the world in a way compatible with the discovery and invention of meaning are paramount. The world insinuates itself upon us but cannot determine the purpose or meaning of our lives. Human choice and commitment illuminate, but do not create ex nihilo, the value of objects . Will just any set of concerns and beliefs be enough for a meaningful life? It depends how we understand "meaningful." If a life that has enough projects, interests, connections to energize its bearer's will to live and love of life is meaningful, then almost any set of concerns will do. These concerns must be the bearer's. They cannot be imposed externally or result from delusions or hallucination s. They must bc real, not simulated. Such a person's life would be meaningful enough to block suicide, enjoyable enough that the bearer wants to go on.

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But such a life would not be anything more than minimally meaningful. It would not be highly significant, richly worthwhile, or an ideal toward which to strive . But I refuse to call such a life meaningless or not worth living . When we find that the positive parts of life more than compensate for the negative parts , our lives seem worth living . Stories of the afterlife confirm this by imagining eternal bliss that is in part the elimination of the negatives, enhancement of the positives, with the added element of the eternal presence of a Supreme Being or Absolute. Do we desire projects because they are worthwhile? Or are they worthwhile because we desire them? Are our lives meaningful if they are meaningful to us, because we believe and feel they are meaningful? Believing my life is meaningful is not enough. The activities that allegedly bring meaning must be appropriate to the experience, they must be real (not simulated through an expe rience machine), not induced through extemal agency (Sisyphus drugged by the gods into enjoying stone-pushing), or hallucinations (a person plagued by delusions that he or she is Napoleon). But the bar of a meaningful life is quite low. Once we factor out the impediments above , a life consisting largely of television-viewing or collecting push-pins may well be meaningful enough and fulfilling enough to be worth living . Better to continue watching X-Files and satisfy entertainment desires than to be dead . But such lives are only that: minimally meaningful in that they embody enough satisfaction of desires and interests to block su icide or euthanasia. No one's life is only television-viewing or collecting push-pins. Even min imally meaningful lives include relationships and connections to other projects. The minimally meaningful life, then, is barely worth living . But robustly meaningful lives, the ones to which we aspire , embody interests, projects, purposes, and commitments that produce significance. We, typically, hope not merely to maintain our lives, but to strive for our vision of a good life. How important, then, must an interest or activity be to produce meaning? Not very . If a minimally meaningful life requires only freely chosen interests, projects, and commitments that engage their bearer and animate his or her faith in life, then almost anything will do. But a minimally meaningful life suggests only that our life is worth living, we would not be better off dead or never having been born . That is not much. Often, when we talk of a meaningful life we refer to a life that is import ant, significant, even exemplary. I have been calling such lives robustly meaningful. Why worry about this? Because if a person is firmly convinced, as I am, that most lives are worth living then to exclude minimally meaningful lives, in an act of Nietzschean imperialism, is to support a radical elitism. When we now talk of lives not worth living, those that are candidates for, say, justified euthanasia, we offer the permanently comatose, the terminally ill who are undergoing severe indignities, and those who are merely biologically alive but incapable of agency. The assumption is that these groups may no longer be able to form the interests, forge the commitments, and undertake the projects that brighten life.

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Others reject this assumption and insist that all human beings who are biologically alive embody sacred value . No assessment, though, is made about the important, significant, or overall value of such person's interests or acts. Human lives must meet no objective criteria to deserve to continue living other than, at most, that they are able to live more than a biological existence. We, therefore, recognize that lives are worth continuing and minimally meaningful where great achievement is lacking. The distinction between minimally meaningful and robustly meaningful lives allows us to include, as we should, both a disabled, slightly retarded person and Da Vinci into the pantheon of lives worth living. Meaningful lives need not be significant, important, or valuable lives. To be significant a life must influence the lives of numerous other people in uncommon ways . A significant life leaves historical footprints. To be important, a life must be significant enough to make a relatively enduring difference in the world. These historical footprints express, thereby making more public, the importance of the life. They may also be important for their own sake . Historical footprints, however, defeat impermanence. They do not banish the nagging mood that the eventual evaporation of all our footprints may also destroy the meaningfulness of our lives. To be valuable, a life, considered as a whole, must be connected to and produce moral, cognitive, aesthetic, scientific, or religious value . Unlike Nietzsche, I take moral value to be most important. To be exemplary, a life must be robustly meaningful, significant, important, and valuable enough to serve as a model or ideal. Most of us do not have stunningly significant and important lives, although almost all of us do affect the lives of others. The degree and manner of influence is crucial. To be valuable, lives must be linked to and support value. Hitler had a meaningful, significant, and important life. But he did not have a valuable life. He had great influence on hundreds of thousands of other lives, but the moral disvalue of his life is equaled in the twentieth century only by Josef Stalin. Even if Hitler was intimately connected to cognitive and aesthetic value, and supposing this is not a small feat of imagination, the moral disvalue of his life overwhelms any other value he added to the world. A valuable life is always meaningful, but a meaningful life may not be valuable. Hitler's life was meaningful but we are reasonable to view it as valueless in the sense that his collective deeds produced an overall net decrease in value . The world would have more value had Hitler never existed. The free world 's response to Hitler produced great value. We might argue that this value in the long run outweighed Hitler's disvalue. But if so, the increase in value cannot count in favor of Hitler's life. Hitler's life cannot be considered overall valuable because it embodied so much evil that it unintentionally energized an even greater positive response with longer-lasting effects . Pablo Picasso was a creative genius whose artistic significance and importance is incontestable. He was also a sexua l predator, a pathetic father, and often unscrupulous. Still, his moral failings are far from those of a Hitler. We may

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argue that these shortcomings were offset by Picasso 's promotion of aesthetic value and positive creative effect on thousands of people. His life may be viewed as valuable, as well as significant and important. I am not assuming that all values are commensurable, that if you create a great art piece you are allowed greater freedom to morally transgress. Our ranking of respective values is crucial. Nietzsche placed aesthetic and cognitive values above moral values . He was gravely suspicious of the origins and effects of the dominant morality of his time. Most people would probably place moral values well above other forms of values . We cannot add the effects of a life on each kind of value, arrive at an overall assessment, then conclude that life was or was not valuable as such. With Hitler and Picasso we can make rough assessments because Hitler is the paradigm of moral disvalue, while Picasso's moral shortcomings are not extraordinary. Perhaps a life can be meaningless in itself, but still import ant and significant. Suppose a baby is afflicted with such grave disabilities that the baby has no more than a biological life. Someone who shortly after birth enters a permanently comatose state might be an example . If, because of exceptional circumstances, this infant has a great influence on numerous people, spurring them to noble, valuable acts, we could argue that the life was important, significant, and valuable even though meaningless. We might better say that the infant's life was not important, significant, and valuable, because the infant had no life beyond biological existence. The infant' s agenc y, exercised in acts, choices , personality, and freedom , did not produce the positive response of others . To view such a life as important is inappropriate, even though the infant's existence generated a strong, positive response from other people . Yet, we could conjure less drastic cases in which a child did have limited agency which inspired others, where we would say that the life was important, significant, and valuable, although minimally meaningful at best. 6. The Yearning for Legacies Leaving a rich legacy is not a way of achieving immortality, even though the advice "plant a tree, beget children, build a house, write a book" is somet imes taken in that vein. We are finished at death if no afterlife awaits us. Sayonara, Belly Up, There is No Tomorrow. But generating a legacy is a way of enriching the meaning of our lives now. Some of our projects should reach beyond our lifetimes. Guiding the next generation, creating something that has a life and identity outside of ourselves, transmitting a culture and heritage, attending to enduring yet finite projects, and influencing the future are not ways of halting the Grim Reaper, but they are paths to meaning. Although our biological lives expire, our biographical lives continue through such legacies . Again, this is not immortality, but it does mark a life well lived. Generating rich legacies ener-

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gizes faith in life, binds us to something beyond ourselves, and nurtures meaning above narrow self-fulfillment. Those who argue that the meaning of life resides in dedicated service, rearing children, or worthwhile community projects confront the question of what makes our children's lives or the community's flourishing meaningful. We cannot answer their children or the perpetuation of a community. For then we provide no answer other than "breath, eat, reproduce" as the meaning of life. If my life is meaningful only if it furthers the lives of others whose lives embody meaning only if they further the lives of others and so on, then furthering life becomes the meaning of life. Yet, if lives are meaningless how can furthering such lives forever produce meaning? The slogan "breath, eat, reproduce" describes the lives of lower animals that we would describe as meaningless or, at best, minimally meaningful. Children are not the meaning of life, but dedication to children or worthwhile community projects can provide and confer meaning in a life. Children do not confer infinity or immortality, but they do ensure continuation. Perhaps we can aspire to nothing greater than to lead such meaningful, significant, and valuable lives that our historical footprints will be remembered fondly as long as human beings inhabit the planet. The proper rearing of children demands much creativity, commitment to values, and intense labor. Child-rearing provides unparalleled satisfactions and indescribable tragedies. Parents and community facilitators do not sacrifice their selfhood in service of others, they do not nurture another person's traits and talents at the expense of their own. Instead, they shape and style their selves through family and community projects. Parents committed to children or community need not be living their lives through others, but finding their meaning in relationships. Such relationships are not the only way to discover and create meaningful lives, but they often allow us to make sense of our lives. In the film, City Slickers, Jack Palance plays a character, Curly, whom others think knows the secret of life. Upon being questioned, Curly holds up his index finger and says, "Find that one thing." Nietzsche may have known what that one thing was when he bellowed amor fati. Faith in life may be energized by belief in God, in an Absolute, in Nature, in Enduring Value, in almost anything that came before us and survives our death. Such faith need not assume immortality, an afterlife, permanence, or any mysterious metaphysical commitments. But faith must impel us toward nurturing rich legacies, it must sustain us against a threatening world, it must elevate our spirits and heighten our resolve. Finding that one thing is the ballast that holds our will and consciousness of life together in the face of the cosmic perspective, and offers us the practical advantages of seeing our lives as Slinky toys and life itself as a telescope. Finding several things might be even better. Here is one ideal I have found. I perceive myself as part of a wider subjectivity, as a link in a generational chain that stretches from Sicily to America. The chain began before me and will survive my death . My task is to hold up my link:

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to accept what I have inherited, cherish and go beyond it, and enrich the lives of those who come after. I must keep the faith and teach that if values are worth living for, then values must be worth dying for. The best way to understand meaning in life is relationally. We gain meaning by connecting to and standing in a relationship with value, significance, and importance. As long as we are limited beings, we can always imagine beings or things of lesser limitations, and bemoan our relative insignificance. We cannot guarantee wise and creative use of the cosmic perspective. The cosmic perspective is always available to bring us down, if we so choose. But why should we so choose? Much of the meaning of life is in the process : imagining and dreaming, planning and organizing, integrating and striving. Time spent on matters of more enduring importance such as great music, classical drama, philosophical reflection, intense personal relationships is often of greater importance than time spent on more mundane matters such as watching television programs with limited shelf time or engaging in meaningless small talk to pass time . This judgment stems from the transcendent nature of the more important matters, how they point to values and meaning beyond themselves. Loving and being loved, pursuit of truth, integrity, courage , the overcoming of obstacles, conscious selfcreation , integration with a social network, all define the life of excellence more closely than material accumulation, social approval , and the quest for fame as self-validation. I am embarrassed to write this, though I do not embarrass easily. Cynics will judge this paragraph platitudinous and wince at my firm grasp of the obvious. Meaningful lives require faith and love. We must adopt some form of Nietzsche's amor fati. We must love life and the world . We must give the world our fullest response . We must expand our subjectivity through connections and relationships. We will experience our lives as meaningful only if we present the requisite attitude to the world. To do all, or any, of this we must have faith. Reason cannot support our convictions and actions all the way down. What comes first, faith in life or a sense of meaningfulness? Do we have faith in life because we already have a sense that our life is meaningful? Or is it the opposite? What happens if people meet all the criteria of a minimally meaningful life, except they feel their lives are meaningless? Are their lives meaningless and not worthwhile? Would they be better off dead? Can the cosmic and personal perspectives be manipulated as easily as I suggest? I don't think faith in life and a sense of meaningfulness are related as cause and effect. Nor are they linked in an invariable temporal sequence. They are usually intertwined such that they are conceptually distinguishable but experientially joined. If people meet the criteria for a minimally meaningful life, yet they feel their lives are meaningless, we do not shoot them. We could have them view a season 's worth of episodes of Sabrina. The Teenage Witch. By comparison, their lives might look much better. Sarcasm aside, we have psychological counseling, philosophical therapy , and medical treatment available to reenergize

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our sense of meaning. Temporary bouts of an acute sense of meaninglessness are common . They often plague especially sensiti ve, reflecti ve people . Using the cosmi c and personal perspectives creatively can become a healthy habit that does not require self-conscious choice each time. Perhap s successful self-help books are exercises in adopting the appropriate attitude for different situat ions. Aristotle's advice to develop good habits is useful here. Asking the quest ion "What might I regret on my death bed?" helps us to establish priorit ies. 14 I am unlikely to regret not having served an additional term on the Planning and Budget Comm ittee. I cannot imagine my final gasp being, "If only I had bought a Mercedes ," or " My life would have been complete if I had met Donald Trump ." I can imagine regretting not having written this book. By projecting to our grand finale we help learn what should be important to us now. The search for meaning , emboldened by values that point to but never reach the eternal, is too often obscured by our lives of habit and diversion. We must learn to appreciate life as an endlessly dynamic process of change, not a fixed state. We must understand that a robustly meaningful life, married to a joyous or peaceful psychologi cal condition that is earned , defines high aspira tions. And then we must live.

Five

VALUE A life is minimally meaningful if it embodies enough freely chosen interests, projects, purposes, and commitments to engage the bearer and animate his or her faith in life. These interests, projects, purposes and commitments connect a life to value or to other mean ing. Minimally meaningful lives typically are connected to lesser or to fewer values and meanings, or more tenuously to value and meaning generally than are robustly meaningful lives. I have argued earlier that a person could have a meaningful, significant, and important life, but nevertheless not have a valuable life. Usually this happens becau se we are tightly connected to certain values that make our life meaningful, but radically disconnected from moral value . Again , Hitler and Stalin are examples of such lives. As the paragons of twentieth-century evil, their lives were not, on balance, valuable. Because meaning and value are intertwined, it is important to set forth some of the issues surrounding the sourc e, nature, and power of value. Many philosophers cling to the notion of intrinsic value ·1 If something is intrinsically valuable it is good in and of itself. The good is constitutive of the valuable thing, independent of other things, preferences, or interests. An intrinsic good has value , then , not because it satisfies human desires, cut because of its own com position. Even if the intrinsic good exists alone, produces no positive effects, and is never discovered by a sentient being , it would still be valuable. Thus, an intrinsic good has value becau se of its nonrelational properties, not because of its value for or to something else . Such goods are not valuable because they serve human beings; their value is based solely on the ir own constitution. Why are philosophers drawn to the notion of intrinsic value? Two main reasons. First, they believe such a notion is needed to defeat radical subjectivism, the view that only individual preferences and choices determine what is valuable. Subjectivism appears to deny the possibility that someone may be mistaken about which things are valuable. If Jones were to judge that torturing innocent babies is valuable and good, while Russo judges that the action is bad, radical subjectivism has no way of resolving the dispute. Perhaps we could resort to popular opinion, but that, too, is merely conventional , a report only of current, widespread attitudes and beliefs . The notion of intrinsic value allegedly solves the problem because the good is independent of human preferences; it exists in a thoroughly objective fashion . That torturing babies is intrinsically bad is the objective standard by which the judgments of Jones and Russo can be evaluated. Jone s is wrong, and that is not a function of current human conventions. Second, intrinsic value plays a crucial role in frustrating a type of infinite regress, an endless series of subordinate explanations that never culm inates in an ultim ate explanation. If all our values are merely instrumental, good only as a means to another good , then we never find an original source of value. One in-

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strumental good follows another instrumental good which follows another, on and on. Nothing would truly be valuable because the value of everything would depend on achieving something else which would have value only by achieving something else. Something must, then be valuable in and of itself in order to ground all value by avoiding an infinite regress of explanation. Beyond our need to defeat radical subjectivism and to frustrate an infinite regress, how might we discover intrinsic value? That intrinsic value is a useful notion which prevents certain philosophical horrors is one thing, it is quite another to identify what is intrinsically value and to reveal our method of discovery. Here advocates of intrinsic value have few tools. One method involves isolation : Consider a thing existing alone, apart from everything else, is its existence a good? Presumably, reflective persons under normal conditions would judge a cosmos containing only one baby floating in space a better state of affairs than a void . Thus, a baby is a strong candidate for an intrinsic good . This method is strikingly unreliable. We might make the same judgment regarding a stone, a dollar bill, or a knife floating in space. Compared to nothingness, any benign state of affairs that includes something will be judged superior. But stones, dollar bills, and knives are hardly worthy exemplars of intrinsic goods . Worse, the method seem ingly relies on popular opinion or widespread intuitions, precisely the conventionalism that the appeal to a notion of intrinsic good was designed to evade . Moreover, some experiences or states of affairs that advocates of the isolationist method would want to label intrinsic goods might not be able to exist without an external source; they might not be able to exist in isolation . Although pleasure, for example, is often thought to be an intrinsic good, imagining free-floating pleasure, existing alone, is impossible. The isolationist method is both overinclusive, as it encourages us to label too many candidates as intrinsic goods, and it is underinclusive, because it strips some of the typical examples of intrinsic goods from their titles. Other methods of establishing intrinsic goods end in claims of selfevidence, the brute fact that we have a bedrock judgment which will not be overturned by reasons, direct introspection, judgment made under ideal circumstances, rationally favorable attitude, direct perception, unique experience triggered by the value, and the like. No general criteria to discover intrinsic value are typically advanced beyond those sketched. The link between evidence for our belief in intrinsic value and things that are intrinsically valuable is thin. No robust account of how we find intrinsic value is provided. Advocates of intrinsic value, though, believe firmly that they hold two aces : widespread agreement that things are intrinsically valuable, and the consequences of rejecting intrinsic value - the horror of radical subjectivism and the disappointment of infinite regress. But widespread agreement does not elevate us out of the subjectivist swamp . It only attests to the presence of conventional consensus with the egosaving tag line "this is the way things really are; we have discovered not created the good ." We cannot justify our deepest convictions all the way down, ulti-

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mately we are left only with faith, conv ictions, choices, and actions not fully supported by reasons . Advocates of intrinsic value, although in the same position, refuse the truth and pretend their convictions are demanded by reason itself, experience forced on us by value, or direct perception. I am not shocked that the advocates of intrinsic value end up in the same place as the rest of us, commitment based on faith, but I am not attracted to the disingenuity of a conviction dressed up with a tag-line that pretends the conviction is more than it is. Advocates of intrinsic value, however, have a stronger claim based on the alternative. If disbelief in intrinsic value leads to radical subjectivism and infinite regress, we have strong conceptual and pragmatic reasons to accept intrinsic value . But new ques tions arise : Does accepting intrinsic value truly thwart the twin horrors of radical subject ivism and infinite regress? Can radical subjectivism and infinite regres s be frustrated in other, more convincing ways? Are radical subjectivism and infinite regress truly the horrors they are portrayed to be? 1. Twin Terrors: Infinite Regress and Radical Subjectivism

Appealing to intrinsic value may not solve the problem of an infinite regress of value. There is a parallel with arguments for the existence of God. The arguments from causation and contingency, for example, conclude that God must exist to defeat an infinite regress of causation or contingency. If we begin to trace back causes of existence or motion we seemingly go on forever : one thing was caused by another, which was caused by another, which was caused by still another, ad infinitum. Similar regresses can be generated by considering the causes of motion. Philosophers have often concluded that a necessary, unmoved mover, uncaused cause, must exist to avoid such infinite regresses. But in philosophy and theology such a conclusion fails to solve the problem. How can we account for the unmoved mover? How can the uncaused cause be explained? Instead of solving the infinite regresses of motion and causation, we have merely assumed the existence of a living, usually anthropomorphic, infinite regress . For the unmoved mover goes on and on and on, always has been, is, and will be. We are still left with an infinite regress, only now we insist that because it is a Being rather than a string of concepts we must take it as a brute fact. Because of such considerations, the arguments from contingency and causation cannot establish that God exists . In like fashion, resorting to intrinsic value does not stop an infinite regress of value . We are still left with the nagging questions of how and upon what basis intrinsic value got its value . Instead of answering the orig inal questions of the source and basis of value, appealing to intrinsic value merely relocates the questions. Just as appeal to an unmoved mover relocates the question of motion, existence. and causation from observable events and objects to an eternal being, resorting to intrinsic value moves the parallel questions about value to intrinsic value . In neither case is the problem of an infinite regre ss solved. In the first

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case we insist, "The unmoved mover exists, otherwise our efforts to understand are crushed by infinite regress, and that is all there is to it." In the second case we insist, "Intrinsic value exists, otherwise our efforts to understand the source and basis of value are crushed by infinite regress, and that is all there is to it." Thus, an infinite regress is not frustrated by appeals to Supreme Beings or intrinsically valuable thing s. We never reach a place where no question can be asked. We can interrogate the beginnings, grounding, and natures of supposed metaphysical trumps. Why is God? What provides God 's powers? What is God's source? The answer "God is, always was, always will be, and is selfgrounding" is, at worst, even more mysterious than an infinite regress, and , at best, provides merely an anthropomorphic infinite regress . As for a supreme intrinsic good, even if everyone desired it and everything else desired was desired for it, this would mean only that it alone was desired for its own sake and not for a further end . It would not mean that the alleged intrinsic good was good in and of itself. We probably have better reason to believe in an unmoved mover than in intrin sic value. At least cultures have produced rich, instructive, inspiring narra tives surrounding the existence of God. No comparable motivation for belief in intrinsic value has emerged. The horrors of infin ite regre ss may be overrated from the outset. Perhaps an infinite regress of instrumental values is not horrifying, but merely parallels the way ends and means interchange as we pursue creati ve projects throughout life. Perhaps instrumental value s are only one type of relational, non intrinsic value . Other relational value s might be neither instrumental nor intrinsic. Such value s might include necessary conditions for attain ing an end , or something that enhances someone's enjoyment of a good, or being part of a complex good , or being an object of sentimental value .i If so, instrumental values are not the only values, but it would not follow that intrinsic value s must exist. Philosophers fear radical subjectivism as much as they fear infinite regress. If subjectivism is so silly as to declare, "Everyone's claim to value is as good as everyone else's," then the doctrine does not need to be defeated because it suffocates itself. No one can hold such a view . Advocates of intrinsic value lodge a stronger claim against subjectivists of all stripes: intrinsic value is an objective standard and source of value that exists independently of attitudes or beliefs. But even if such value exists the question of our access to it is daunting. If the only ways to find such value are the isola tion method, self-evidence, the brute fact that we have a bedrock judgment which will not be overturned by reasons, direct introspection, judgment made under ideal circumstances, rationally favorable attitude, direct perception, widespread intuitions, unique experience triggered by the value, and the like, then subjectivism is not defeated. The issue becomes only one of our second-order beliefs about our beliefs about value . The subjectivist claims, " I believe X is valu able, although I do not believe that belief is grounded in or ultimately arises from an underlying, intrinsic value ." The advocate of intrin sic value claims, "I

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believe X is valuable, and I believe that belief is grounded in and ultimately arises from an underlying, intrinsic value." If advocates, however, can explain their access to intrinsic values only on the subjective bases outlined above , then it is unclear how they defeat subjectivism . Advocates value things in the same way as subjectivists, but include the tag line, "and my claims are objectively grounded in intrinsic value ." Widespread agreement among observers does not by itself take us beyond conventionalism. Collective human preferences cannot establish mind-independent intrinsic value . What makes something intrinsically valuable remains a mystery. Intrinsic value cannot be explained by referring to any relationships with or attitudes of human beings . Human beings should recognize intrinsic goods, but that acknowledgment does not constitute the value . Under this view, we do not confer value onto an object, we can discover only the value that already resides within it. Perhaps a more modest notion of intrinsic value would help. We might view intrinsic goods as those that are valuab le to a person for their own sake, not for any further end. Under this view, intrinsic goods are distinguished from instrumental goods , but intrinsic goods depend on the existence of human beings or other sentient beings . Intrinsic value , on this account, are values to human beings , not values that could exist in isolation. Such values are values because they make those who possess them better off. Their value depends on their good as ends, while under the stronger version of intrinsic value, the in-itself view , something could be a value even if all sentient beings judged otherwise, or even if nothing else existed except the intrinsically good object. A third option is available. We might insist that values were relational, although not all relation s are instrumental. Thus, value may signify relations, instrumental or other. That an object, person , or event stands in certain relationships to someone may be its value . Value-grounding relationships might bridge objectivism and subjectivism by paying homage to both . The relation itself is a fact, while subjective preferences playa role in its formation . A fourth option undermines the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic goods . Pragmatists, such as John Dewey, argue that deliberation, evaluation, and intelligence are necessary for value . Nothing is truly valuable unless intelligence judges it so under the conditions in which it is found. Being actually valued by an intelligent being, being "prized," is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being valuable. An act of "appraisal" is also necessary, one that finds the thing justifiable. Irving Singer describes how Dewey undermines the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value . Dewey suggests that value is always relevant to an organic continuum that escapes any essentialist dualism between means and ends. The usual distinction between "instrumental goods" and "intrinsic goods" he finds unten able because an instrumentality is itself an end-in-view one has chosen as a means to a desired end, while that particular end leads on to other eventu-

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alities for which it too is instrumental. Nothing has value apart from this continuum of means that are also ends-in-view and ends-in-view that are also means. As a result, there cannot be any intrinsic goods that are wholly distinct from the instrumental goods that make them possible.' Thus, for Dewey , "a final consummation that is authentically good serves as a means to further consummations while also being in itself and end-in-view that includes whatever means have contributed to its own occurrence.?" The power of Dewey's analysis lies in its compatibility with the metaphor oflife as a Slinky toy: we bound from goal to goal as each satisfaction impels us to new imaginings and pursuits . Although we take time to savor our accomplishments, we are excited by the process and continue the quest. Whereas Schopenhauer clumsily distinguished process from goals and saw life as a pendulum swinging between dissatisfaction and boredom, spiced with fleeting moments of satisfaction, Dewey understands that achieved goals are not merely endpoints but propel new beginnings. Instead of the back-and-forth, repetition of Schopenhauer's metaphor, Dewey echoes Nietzsche's metaphor of beyond and beyond. While Dewey, unlike Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, was often too cheerful, even naive, about the possibilities of a natural peace that would soften (eliminate?) the need for effort and struggle, he nevertheless serves well our understanding of the relationships of ends and means , and goals and creative endeavors.

2. Realism and Anti-Realism To illustrate this debate I will focus on moral value, which most people, against Nietzsche, take to be the most important kind of value. To sharply contrast the alternatives, I will discuss strong versions of realism and anti-realism. Strong realists and strong anti-realists accept the following dilemma: either morality is justified foundationally by a metaphysical linchpin such as a moral order immanent in nature or a Supreme Being who embodies and defines goodness, or morality is yet another human artifact based on the conventions of culture, history, and contingent agreements. Realists are convinced that self-evident moral principles or privileged intuitions, immediate apprehensions of the essence of human beings and the human good, are like scientific observations which indicate independent natural moral facts . Alternately, they may espouse a literal rendering of the moral truths revealed by a Supreme Being. Moral values, under this model, flow from absolute, transcendent principles, which human beings can discover but not create . Anti-realists reject the metaph ysical assumptions of moral foundationalism as unworthy of belief. Based on faith and wish more than demonstrable proof, such beliefs appear to anti-realists as the anachronistic psychological remnants of primitives desperate in the face of unexpla ined powers. Morality, for an antirealist , is explained instrumentally, as a compendium of customs and conven tions perceived as necessary to social cooperation. Lacking any transcendental

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lives of their own, moral codes vary radically across cultures and are human inventions without independent or foundational justification. A realist must claim that value judgments are true or false independently of anyone's beliefs about the matters in question . Some go even further and insist that value judgments would be true or false even if conscious beings did not exist. We should distinguish different kinds of truth and falsity . The judgment, "When you pass 'Go ' when playing Monopoly you collect $200 ," is true regardless of anyone's unusual belief otherwise. The judgment is objectively true, but conventional. Monopoly did not have to be invented, it did not have to include the rule about passing "Go," and the fact that the game does include this rule depends only on the desire of the inventor. No one denies the presence of objective truths of this sort. Such truths are uninteresting because they are merely conventional and could easily be changed. If participants in the game decided that it would be more exciting, risky, and take less time if players did not receive the customary $200 for passing "Go," they could change that rule by agreement. They would be playing Monopoly with slightly altered rules, but it is reasonable to say they would still be playing Monopoly. Some advocates of value objectivity argue that questions of value can be addressed by rational methods, and some moral views are acceptable while others are not, regardless of the desires of any person. But this sense of value objectivity is compatible with mere conventionalism and is not the strongest sense . It does not imply that moral facts are part of the fabric of the world , and that moral properties are real properties of things . This stronger sense of objectivity defines strong realism . The objective truths at issue in realism cannot be conventional. Instead, human beings are seeking to discover the objectively correct answers to questions of value, and the truth of these answers is not a matter of public referendum. The analogy is to scientific truths. Just as the force of gravity is independent of my desires on the matter, objectively true value judgments exist independently of my assessment. I may correctly conclude that the force of gravity is a certain quantity, but the actual force is not determined by my judgment. Likewise, I may correctly conclude that X is valuable, but whether X is valuable is not determined by my judgment. More important, I cannot change, alone or with others , the objective truth of the force of gravity, or the objective truth of certain kinds of value judgments. The power of strong realism is that it allegedly defeats arbitrariness. If value judgments are not subject to independent criteria, they seem to dissolve into mere opinion and taste. They appear flimsy, contingent, indistinguishable from matters of preference. Worse, no independent way to judge disputes about values would be available without strong realism. At bottom , my view that X is valuable would be no stronger than your view that X is valueless. The phenomenology of value decisions produces another allure of strong realism. When we judge that X is valuable we do not say, "X is of itself neither

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valuable or valueless, but I, by act of will, will impute value upon X by the force of my desires." We assume that prior value, whether moral or otherwise, molds our judgment, not that value is created out of nothing by human desire. To assume that value is created only out of human desire concedes the arbitrariness of value: "Nothing is valuable as such, but I will choose X to be valuable as an expression of my creative power." But why choose X rather than Y? We assume that we judge that X is valuable because of the properties X bears, either relational or nonrelational. Relational properties would include X's value in securing a further end we seek or in standing in a certain relation to me (for example, being my child). Nonrelational properties might include X's being valuable for its own sake, value grounded in X's make-up, and X's inherently valuable attributes. We come upon X and state, either explicitly or implicitly, "X is valuable because of its properties, and I want to partake ofX's value ." Strong realism is also equipped to understand disagreements about values. When we dispute moral values, for example, we are not arguing about our attitudes . Weare arguing about the truth of the matter, or we are arguing about what attitudes we ought to have given independent criteria. If values are created by human desires and attitudes, then our moral disagreements would be less rich. For in matters of preference or taste the phenomenology of disagreement is much different than it is in disputes about values. The weaknesses of strong realism, however, are legion. Discovering and reporting the existence of value is one thing, being motivated to act on value is another. The bare existence of value properties cannot by itself inspire commitment. The marriage of belief in moral facts and moral action still requ ires a subjective element. Moreover, disagreements about value are intractable in a way disagreements about factual matters are not. The presence of disagreement about value poses no threat to strong realism. Societies or individuals may disagree about whether, say, abortion is morally permissible, but that may still be a disagreement about facts . That some parties think X is valuable and other parties think X is valueless implies nothing about the value of X, or about the existence of an objective answer in the matter. A factual dispute may still underlie the disagreement. But the deeper problem for strong realists is their inability to demonstrate links between their idea of objective truth and ways of resolving disagreements about value. Unlike other areas of factual disagreement, such as phys ics or biology , disagreements about value lack a sophisticated, workable procedure which explains error, illusion, and perspective. Strong realists may point to self- deception, bias, prejudice, and the like, to explain value disagreements, but they still lack a refined way to assess the truth or falsity of a value judgment, a way to resolve disagreements independently. They are left only with the assumption that facts about value judgments exist independently of human desires or collective agreements, facts that purportedly evaluate human desires and collective agreements.

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Why is this assumption so important? To prevent the slide into arbitrariness that ends with the recognition that "any position on values is as good as any other." This is a common bind that plagues philosophy. We philosophers rush to find ways to stop apparent infinite regresses or radical arbitrariness. But we can do so only by conjuring mysterious first causes, unmoved movers, facts built into the universe , brute facts that resist explanation, and the like. When these mysteries prove troublesome we insist they must exist otherwise radical skepticism and contingency is our fate. Usually, we overrate the horrors of the alternative . Suppose that someone rejects strong realism and accepts the view that values are always contextual, relative to a time, a people, a place, and specific circumstances. Does this imply "every view is as valid or invalid as any other"? It does not. Whether someone is a realist or antirealist is a second-order belief about our value judgments. The realist says, " Voluntary euthanasia is wrong" and, if pressed, adds the tag line "and I believe that judgment is an objective, nonconventional fact." The antirealist says, "Voluntary euthanasia is wrong" and, if pressed, adds the tag line "and I believe that judgment is not built into the universe by a supernatural being or nature itself." The reasons the realist and antirealist would give for their judgment about euthanasia would be similar: they would center on the value of life, the wrongness of killing, the possibility of mistake or hasty decision, the bad social consequences that might result, and so on. A religious realist might add one claim a secular antirealist would not, "Because the supernatural being commands it." Are anti-realists thereby admitting that deep down they believe their view is no better than "Voluntary euthanasia is right" ? They are not. If realism is unpersuasive then the claim that "all views are equally valid" makes sense only in relation to metaphysical realism. For if no moral facts are built into the universe by supernatural beings or nature itself, then to say that "all views are equally valid" makes sense in relation to the nonexistent. I suppose "all value judgments are equally valid" in relation to unicorns , but so what? Once we leave the realm of the nonexistent, no one holds or could hold the position that "all views are equally valid ." To try to saddle someone with this position is caricature. All value judgments are not equally valid. This judgment does not commit us to realism . Our values are a function of our inclinations, emotions, desires, and impulses, all of which have a cognitive element. Our emot ions, desires, and impulses nest within a web of beliefs and strategies for coping in the world. The contrast between belief and attitude, reason and passion is less sharp than our language suggests. Realists now play their trump card: "But what if a society takes as a prime moral value the torture of babies or accepts rape? Must we not say that they are just as wrong as if they mistakenly believed the planet earth was flat? Isn't it necessary to accept realism to say that?" The antirealist can oppose baby torture and rape for the same reasons, other than invocation of God's will, that a realist can. We do not need the second-

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order belief that moral facts are built into the universe to oppose values radically different from our own. While antirealists have no better procedures for distinguishing better from worse values than do realists, they have the theoretical advantage that their second-order beliefs about value judgments do not require such procedures. If moral realism was true, it would not validate any person 's value judgments. Moral realism would only highlight the source of correct values without drawing us any nearer to who is right and who is wrong. Realism cannot add greater certainty to our value judgments. It can only contend, "If my value judgment is correct then it reflects what is built into the universe ." But the most important question we ask is, "What are the best value judgments?" Realism is in no better position than antirealism to answer. That is why the reasons realists and antirealists offer for their value judgments are so similar. Realists offer reasons based on beliefs about moral facts that are part of the fabric of the world, but lack a convincing account of how to identify the more accurate of two conflicting beliefs about those facts. Antirealists offer reasons based on beliefs about the best way to fulfill human interests, and also lack a way to independently judge conflicting belief claims. The moral of the story: even if moral facts are part of the fabric of the world, they are not of themselves constraints on arbitrariness. The moral facts cannot guarantee their own discovery, they cannot force an observer to be constrained, they cannot eliminate the need for human judgment and interpretation. With the possible exception of religious realists , antirealists and realists must still offer and examine reasons, arguments, and sensibilities. They have legitimate theoretical disagreements, but, practically speaking, are more similar than each group supposes. The great eighteenth-century skeptic David Hume, while taking a position on whether color was a primary or secondary quality, added that the distinction makes no difference to those who are decorating.' 3. Objectivism and Relativism The versions of realism and anti-realism described here are collaborators more than combatants. They assume that the choices constituting the dilemma sketched above are exhaustive, and define the range of possibilities. The acceptance of this fundamental assumption is what confers legitimacy and brio upon the debate. Yet the dilemma is merely an example of a general dichotomy: objectivism versus relativism. Objectivism champions the presence of an ultimate grounding, discoverable but not created by human beings, which provides authoritative, ahistorical evaluation for all truth claims. Relativism, renouncing the metaphysical realism which objectivists support, points out the incommensurability of and unremitting conflict among different paradigms, theories, and forms of life. Absent a belief in the objectivists' metaphysical illusions, it claims that we lack the tools to postulate an overarching Archimedean framework and must acknowledge that we are limited to historical contexts and contingencies.

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Objectivists herald the broad areas of cross-cultural agreement, and point out that the mere existence of other significant disagreements among paradigms, theories, and forms of life does not entail the absence of transcendental standards, for some of the conflicting postulates may simply be incorrect. Objectivists never claim that the existence of ahistorical standards guarantees that all cultures and historical periods will be able to grasp truths equally well. Objectivists repeatedly play their trump card and warn of the nihilistic dangers of relativism, the only perceived alternative to objectivism: its inability to provide fundamental justification for its own claims, its invitation to chaos, and its implied message that power and the ability to assert our wills is more important than attention to foundational truths. Relativists claim that the only broad areas of cross-cultural agreement concern highly general, abstract principles which lack the specification required for consensus over concrete issues. Truisms such as "do good, avoid evil," "honor the dead," and "respect families" admit of too many contestable interpretations when specific policies are at stake to support the thesis that a moral order is embedded in nature. Objectivists assume incorrectly that the burden of persuasion rests upon relativists to "prove a negative": the nonexistence of ethereal, admittedly transcendent standards that supposedly lie beyond our direct observations of the world we know. To relativists, this is like taking seriously a psychotic who believes in the existence of a six-foot pink canary named "Vito," who refuses to believe the insurmountable evidence, and thus demands that nonbelievers have the epistemological burden to prove the nonexistence of Vito. Relativists ask rhetorically, "Given the available evidence and the fact that we seemingly cannot prove the existence or nonexistence of such entities conclusively through rational demonstrations, which is more likely - that a supernatural being or other source confers a natural moral order upon our world, or that any perceived order is a human invention subject to reimagination and re-creation?" Finally, relativists discharge their heaviest artillery: they claim that objectivism is an artificial device to ensure that traditionally received opinions gain a stature and legitimacy which make them immune to social destabilization. The general debate between objectivism and relativism exudes gusto and vitality only if we share the antecedent commitment that these two poles define the range of possibilities. But it is precisely this commitment that much contemporary philosophy calls into question." Such efforts aspire to expose the objective/relative, fixed meaning/conventionalism, deductive/nonrational, and metaphysical realism/radical historicism polarities as inadequate and transformable. 4. Molding Alternatives

Four explanations of the nature and source of value dominant the literature: (I) strong realism, (2) weak realism, (3) realizationism, and (4) idealism. 1. Strong Realism. Given the earlier discussion of strong realism, only a few passing remarks are needed. Strong realism holds that values exist and their

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character is independent of our choices, attitudes, commitments, and structurings. We find some things worthwhile on their own account and we can choose to pursue them . Whether we succeed, life is meaningful as a pursuit. We cannot arbitrarily assign value, we discover it. We do not makes things valuable by our choices, instead we identify things as valuable. We can be mistaken in our identification s. Strong realism contends that the structure of reality, independent of and external to all individual perceivers, provides the basis for determining correct judgments. Correct moral judgments are those corresponding to the reality of the impersonal nature of the universe, or the nature of human beings, or the imperatives of a supernatural being. Strong realism provides the security of authoritative principles only if it provides a comprehensible metaphor in moral matters. Such principles, once discerned, would be beyond revision, as long as the corresponding reality remained unchanged. That strong realism provides a comprehensible metaphor in moral matters is questionable. First, human beings cannot ascend to an Archimedean point, compare reality to our value judgments, and assess the truth of those judgments. We cannot transcend our context within reality and view reality from the outside. Second, facts about the universe or human nature do not easily translate into moral principles. We need a bridge, such as a first principle, an axiom, or a self-evident starting point , to connect those facts to a moral order. But metaphysical objectivity is supposed to provide, not require, such a bridge. Third, that the requisite facts about the universe or an inherent human nature exist is doubtful. Both of these concepts are themselves centers of dispute. Fourth, even if an omnipotent, omnibenevolent supernatural being exists, that being cannot be used to free us from our fallible use of human judgment. Plato 's dilemma in the Euthyphro still stands: Are God's decrees morally correct because God perceives accurately an independent standard of the Good? Or are God 's decrees morally correct because they are God 's decrees? If God perceives an independent standard of Good , then God is unnecessary for metaphysical objectivity. If God is taken to be a necessary intermediary between the standard of Good and human understanding, how can we be sure that God is accurately echoing the standard of Good, when we have no independent point from which to compare God's reports and the standard? If God, instead, decrees what is morally good, then how do we know independently that God is Good? Perhaps God is powerful enough to command our allegiance, but that fails to establish his Goodness. Finally, how can we ever know when we have achieved metaphysical objectivity in moral decisionmaking? What strong realism cla ims to explain, the stability of basic value judgments , the phenomenology of normative debates, and our convictions that we are finding not creating answers, can be explained independently, without resorting to mysterious properties or a special faculty of intuition. The explanation rest s in the way we are , our natures and biological interests.

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2. Weak Realism. Some contemporary philosophers, such as John McDowell, use John Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities to understand value." Locke pointed out that physical objects bear primary qualities, such as shape and mass, that exist independently of observers. They also bear secondary qualities, such as color, that are powers to produce effects in the consciousness of observers. While primary qualities would remain even if no conscious beings existed, secondary qualities are dependent on the perceptions of observers. Color, for example, is the reflection of light waves as light strikes the object's surface. If the perceptual apparatus of observers were different then the object would appear to have a different color. The object's color is its power, under certain conditions, to cause a certain type of perceiver to have a certain type of experience. What is "yellow" to human beings might not be yellow for animals with different types of sense-organs. However, the object's yellowness is not merely imposed by our subjective desires. The object has the power to produce the sensation of yellowness in us. If people were to judge that the object were red because that was their favorite color, they would be mistaken. This analysis could be applied to the existence of value. It combines objectivity and subjectivity: value is in the world outside us, value has the power to produce types of feelings and evaluations within beings of the sort we are. Under this view, human beings do not create value anymore than we create color, yet without us either value would not exist or value would be different than it is. Moreover, human beings can create values just as we can create colors and tastes. We can create objects with secondary qualities of, say, orangeness and sweetness, even though we do not create the existence of all value because we do not create all physical objects. The conditions of perceiving become paramount under this view. Just because I taste sugar as sour after consuming a quart of motor oil, does not establish that sugar is sour. I am mistaken because of the unusual conditions under which I tasted the object. Likewise, our value judgments are not self-validating. We must establish proper conditions for our observations, perceptions, and judgments. Ignorance, wrongful prejudice, unusual cultural conditioning, lack of appropriate sensibility, self-deception, stubbornness, and distorted perceptions are a few of the ways we might be mistaken. Thus, it follows that not all judgements of value are equally sound. I cannot impose my value on the world by whim or will. While the details of the proper conditions of perceiving are contestable, the assumption that such conditions exist rescues the view from radical arbitrariness and subjectivity. Our perceptions of secondary qualities are influenced by the way we are constituted and by our relationship to objects. For example, even if two things are the same temperature one can feel cooler and the other hotter because the things are made of material with different heat conductivity. Just as we can imagine that sugar could taste bitter and red could seem blue if we were constituted differently, so too could moral judgments be different. Are the most basic moral judgments that malleable? Although the answer may seem a resounding

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"no," that is only because we cannot imagine the changes in our natures that would permit, say, the conclusions that torture is permissible and rape is morally desirable. But the failure of our imaginations may be only that. If we were radically different beings torture could cure disease and rape could foster selfesteem. Either torture and rape would be valuable or what we now call torture and now call rape would have to be categorized differently. Weak realism offers a better account of moral motivation than does strong realism. The secondary value properties are powers to evoke attitudes of approval or disapproval in human beings observing them under clear conditions. We learn things are right and wrong by observing, reflecting, and experiencing feelings of approval or disapproval. We must , however, factor in perceptual distortions: prejudice, bias, unusual cultural conditioning, self-serving adjustments, and so on. We agree on value judgments because we share a human perceptual apparatus, objects and events have powers to produce similar effects in us, and distortions are unusual not typical. We disagree on value judgments because of distortions and slight differences in perceptual apparatus. Just as sugar may taste sweeter to you than to me, a state of affairs may seem more valuable to you than to me. Weak realism, though, is assailable. Some value judgments, particularly moral and aesthetic judgments, are more contestable than judgments about perceptions of color and sweetness. If value properties are secondary qualities and human beings have similar perceptual apparatus, understanding the amount of "color blindness" and "taste disorders" that exists is difficult. Only a few people see yellow as orange or taste sugar as sour. But value judgments invite more disagreements. Moreover, the entire distinction between primary and secondary qualities is contestable. The reasons given by Locke to support the distinction met swift, stem criticisms from George Berkeley that have echoed through history." If the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is false, then weak realism collapses back into strong realism. 3. Realizationism. Robert Nozick argues that one of the fundamental human choices centers on value . We choose or determine whether values exist, but their character remains independent of us. Each must choose that values exist, if value is to enter that person's world. We can be morally creative in weighing and balancing different values, and in form ing a life embodying a new, original organic unity of diverse constituent values." Nozick takes value, once chosen, to be objective in the sense of independent of human preferences, choices, attitudes, or other psychological states. Organic unity establishes a ranking and unity over a broad range of elements. Responding appropriately to value is itself a value. Value has authority over our preferences . It determines the proper ranking and intensity of our preferences, desires, and other psychological states . Value as organic unity means we must sometimes act in ways that do not produce the best overall state of the world. We choose among doing actions, not necessarily producing the best overall consequences.

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As a realizationist, Nozick contends that things have organic unity as a matter of fact, but human beings create objective value by making a reflexive fundamental value choice: a choice made because making it confers value on things. We make the choice because it creates value. Organic unity as a matter of fact lacks normative significance, but once human beings freely choose to value things, embodying organic unity becomes objectively valuable. You are probably confused after reading the preceding paragraph. You might well be. Mystery surrounds the idea that human choice creates objective value which then gains authority over human preferences. How can human cho ice confer on the fact of organic un ity a normative power that then judges our remaining choices? Nozick suggests that our conferring of this power is a choice, that our decision could have gone otherwise. But how would the alternative appear? Complete indifference? A human race incapable of distinguishing positive from negative, good from bad, valuable from valueless? Upon what criteria would we act? What would be the source of our motivation? What is it to choose that there be values? How is this different from having preferences and desires, and trying to have them be as factually based as possible? If choosing value bestows an additional feature on objects with organic unity then from where is the idea of that feature der ived ? Nozick's view seems to lack an objectivist feature because it depends for the existence of value on human attitudes. Moreover, Nozick must admit that we can acknowledge X has value without desiring X. Although he holds that seeking what we recognize as valuable is appropriate and fitting, those notions themselves are value-laden and cannot demonstrate an independent connection between what has value and what is sought. Against Nozick, we do not choose to value. Instead, we are by nature valuing beings. Only the most pathological among us, such as the irremediably depressed and the hopelessly despondent, are thoroughly indifferent. Shortly after birth, we begin our odyssey as valuing beings. We do not choose this, we are this . Thus, we cannot confer on any fact, organic unity or other, objective prescriptive authority over our remaining preferences, choices, and acts . Perhaps such objective authority flows from an object's inherent value properties or power to produce similar responses in observers under normal conditions, but not because a human choice bestows objective prescriptive authority on a fact. Nozick confesses that he cannot view evil and goodness as equally real. He claims that value itself makes something more real, whereas an increase in darkness (for example, suffering, evil) does not. Evil qua evil does not make something more real, although evil may ride on the back of intensity or depth and increase an object's score along that dimension. He notes, wisely, that "greater reality" does not necessarily bring happiness. The most real figures, such as Socrates, Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon, and Abraham Lincoln, were not happier than other people. Our delight and rapture as we perform an activity can be taken to be a sign of its value, not what makes it valuable. We flourish through activities

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such as parenting, aesthetic creativity, and community improvement because these activities involve our appreciation of things that matter, valuable and important things . He argues that such activities are intrinsically valuable independently of any relation to what is good for individuals. Our appreciation of the activities is our recognition of their independent value. Nozick 's view is appealing but inconclusive. Delight and rapture can accompany any number of activities that most of us would judge harshly. Hitler's glee as his early military and diplomatic triumphs grew is scant evidence for the value of his actions. Our apprec iation of an activity cannot automatically under write its worth. Nor can the absence of appreciation establ ish its lack of worth. Perhaps our appreciation of activities recognizes their independent value, or perhaps it reflects our subjective desires, what we take as valuable given our individual or collective natures and personalities. We cannot establish the reality of intrinsic value by this appeal, other than by begging the question, but the claim may ennoble those who already believe such value exists. Is evil less unified or diverse than good? Is the sensation of pain less unified or diverse than the sensation of pleasure? How should we estimate the organic unity of a creature, a life, an object? Can't simple objects have value without having significant organ ic unity ? Nozick accepts intrinsic value and defines it as degree of organic unity . The unification of diversity best exhibits the formal properties of value and provides the content of value. Things with equal diversity are more valuable if they are more unified , and things equally unified are more valuable if they contain more diverse elements that are joined. For Nozick, meaning involves transcending limits, breaking bonds , and continuous striving ("The Grand Transcender"), whereas value provides order, structure, and unity ("The Noble Unifier"). The ongoing alteration of new organization and disruption by new material is a process of maximizing value and meaning. Progress is made through increased organic unity , greater structure among more diverse materials, and increased power to transcend limits. Hence , value and meaning are intensified. But why assume that one account explains all value? Do we really believe that the heroic acts of Mother Teresa among diseased people are valuable for the same reason as a painting by Da Vinci or a vintage baseball card picturing Joe DiMaggio? Cognitive, moral , aesthetic, religious, and scientific values are unlikely to be valuable for the same reason: their organic unity . Even where organic unity does define value, it makes different things valuable for different reasons. The theory of organic unity is most persuasive in the aesthetic realm, but in many areas organic unity is irrelevant to value. That one trait is common to all valuable things and that one formula could identify value as such is unlikely. Nozick is led to his view by realizationism, his view that things are valuable independently of our attitudes, desires, and judgments. We bring value into existence by our choice, but we do not define its nature . That the character but not the existence of value resides independently of human attitudes, desires, and

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judgments is difficult to accept. Realizationism becomes harder to accept when connected to the theory of organic unity. The persuasiveness of the theory of organic unity, most apparent in the aesthetic realm, flows from its dependence on basic human psychological traits. Yet realizationism severs the connection by insisting that the nature of value, its degree of organic unity, is not dependent on human attitudes, desires, and judgments. Moreover, the quest to provide a generic notion of value that makes all values measurable and comparable suggests that acting immorally, which makes a person less valuable, can be more than offset by an increase of nonmoral value, thus producing a net gain in a person's value. From the standpoint of maximizing my value, then, if acting immorally results in an overall increase in my value, by increasing by nonmoral value more than it decreases my moral value, a generic understanding of value advises me to so act. In Nozick's account, what type of unity is value-producing is obscure. Not just any organic unity is valuable. A well-organized conspiracy of criminals may fashion a tight unity out of radical diversity but it does not, thereby, become valuable or produce value . Slavery in the nineteenth-century may have united thousands of diverse people into a cotton-harvesting whole, but a civil war was waged partly to dispute the value of this enterprise. The degree of organic unity cannot define value because tightly organized wholes are sometimes valuable, sometimes not. After discovering or creating an organic unity we must still ask, "Is it valuable?" The answer requires a notion of value distinct from degree of unity . 4. Idealism. Idealism is the view that values exist, but their existence and character are both dependent upon our choices, attitudes, commitments, structurings. Human beings create values, otherwise human action would be dependent on external things or beings. Values, aims and goals are not imbued in the cosmos by God or Nature because if they were, human beings would be refined slaves. Instead, our liberty is in our commitment which makes something a value for us. Human choice, not the intrinsic quality of the object, person, or event, makes something a value. Values are thus internal in that they are what human beings choose to live for and defend. The value we find in things is not a property independent of us, but is an attribution of our attitudes, desires, concerns, and preferences. Values have no reality apart from an evaluator. Thus, values are not intrinsic to the universe, but are contributed by human beings as we respond to what we confront in the world. Crude versions of idealism meet powerful roadblocks. If robustly meaningful lives are lives engaged in the pursuit of valuable projects and interests, we must distinguish value at least partly independently of a person's bare preferences or pleasures. That X is an object of choice and affords satisfaction does not establish that X is necessarily a source of robust meaning, although X may afford minimal meaning. If meaning is tied to flourishing then meaning is not merely a matter of subjective response. I do not come upon objects in the world and say " Well, this object has no value, there is no antecedent reason for me to

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think it should be valued, but 1 will make it valuable by sheer act of will and choice." Such an attitude would render all value arbitrary. Why confer value on X rather than Y? No reason, other than my ungrounded choice . Value and robust meaning cannot be produced by any choice that affords satisfaction. Meaning and value can result from choices , labors, relationships, and commitments that do not, on balance, bring pleasure to us. Flourishing, then, must involve a respons e appropriate to a way of life, with particular values . Flourishing must go beyond identifying just any subjective responses to any project as meaningful. Idealism becomes caricature if it holds that we give meaning to our lives by making a commitment to and by valuing something that has no antecedent claim to our concern. If we merely link ourselves arbitrarily to a value-neutral object, the reasons for and the value of that attachment are obscure. Why choose X instead of Y? How does choosing X, arbitrarily, bestow value on X? If we had chosen Y, would Y embody more value than X? Realists have some powerful ammunition. Consider the claim that "torturing babies needlessly is morally wrong ." Realists argue that we are firmly convinced that the claim is true, that we know it to be true, and it would be true even if nobody thought it were true. We do not take the claim to be only an expression of our desires but also as a correct understanding of objective truth. Antirealists, such as idealists, are immediately on the defensive. They might argue that the claim about baby-torture and the widespread convictions surrounding it, do not imply that strong or weak realism is sound. Perhaps we can accept the convictions attached to the claim, yet deny realism . We need not believe that independent facts, properties, or realities caused the moral convictions that report them. Thus, we need not subscribe to the strong realist view that states of affairs or events have primary moral qualities, nor to the weak realist view that they have secondary qualities capable of causing our moral judgments to be what they are. The force of the claim "torturing babies is wrong whether anyone thinks so or not" may be read as emphasizing or reaffirming the speaker's conviction in the claim: "I am so certa in that torturing babies is wrong that I think it would be wrong even if nobody, including me, thought so." We need not assume thick metaphysics, such as the existence of primary or secondary moral qualities , an immanent moral order, or binding dictates of a Supreme Being, to make sense of the claim. Our widespread convictions, that our moral convictions are true, we know them to be true, and our desires and beliefs do not make them true, about claims such as the wrongness of torturing babies, can be understood in different ways . On a first reading, they can be understood as second-order beliefs about our value judgments. Understood in this way, they purport to explain, support, and justify our value judgments. On this reading, they may well presuppose a thick metaphysics designed to increase the authority of our value judgments by claiming that our value judgments are grounded in the fabric of the universe. Here our moral judgments are causally responsive to moral reality .

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Why would someone be motivated to accept the first reading? One answer is that the stability and long-term surv ival of societies may require strongly accepted rules against murder, torture, rape, robbery, and the like. Perhaps if we consciously believed that our value judgments were social constructs, instead of metaphysically grounded truths, we would be more likely to disregard them when personally convenient. As a matter of survival, the fitter societies might be those with the greatest compliance and, thus, those with the strongest beliefs in the independent authority of their moral judgments. If so, the strength of our moral convictions might be based on a socially necessary deception. Less turns on our beliefs about , say, aesthetic values and thus those beliefs lack the widespread convictions about truth and objectivity surrounding moral values. Thus, our belief in moral objectivity may be a function of our motives. On a second reading, our widespread convictions are themselves substantive value judgments. Understood in this way, they do not presuppose a thick metaphysics, and can be undermined or supported only by other value judgments. Here, refined realism and refined antirealism come closer together. Refined antirealists could accept this understanding as a way of foiling the objection that antirealism makes the truth of value judgments mind-dependent. Refined realists could accept this understanding as a way of distancing themselves from extravagant metaphysics. They could view our widespread convictions as ways of emphasizing or reaffirming our basic moral claims . Once we are making value judgments, radical skepticism flees. We assume, at least for moral judgments, that some of our conclusions are true, that we know them to be true, and that they would be true even if nobody thought so. We may still, however, step away from our value judgments, reflect upon them, and question the entire moral enterprise. The paradox parallels the conflict between the personal and cosmic perspectives regarding the meaning of life. As Thomas Nagel pointed out, the competing perspectives are with in us, they are part of the human condition. As I have already argued , the conflict between the personal and cosmic perspectives need not paralyze life-affirming thought and action . The same can be said for the conflicting value perspectives. Both strong and weak realism presuppose that events, states of affairs, and objects bear special properties that directly cause our beliefs about values. Under these views, valuable ends have a built-in power to attract us, while nonvaluable ("bad") ends have a built-in power to repel us. Spelling out the nature of the properties, the causal relationship between the properties and our normative judgments, and the respective powers is a daunting task. Happily, the enterprise of moral reasoning does not need such foundations . In sum, strong and weak realism and antirealism accept the same assumption : either our value judgments are supported by thick metaphysics or they are groundless and arbitrary. This assumption is unnecessary and false . Neither the certainty sought by the strongest versions of realism ("an independent Reality causes our moral judgments") nor the horrors of abject relativism ("each view is as sound as every other," "no value judgment is true or false") is available to us.

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We have no algorithm of moral decisionmaking which stands above our judgment, no vantage point outside human experience to judge right and wrong. But neither do we have a neutral perspective from which to conclude our judgments are baseless. Our values flow from our natures. While we assume and assert their objectivity, we must distinguish between objectivity as (I) an expression of an ultimate reality standing behind the world of appearances and nature and as (2) a part of the world of appearances and of nature selected by a human community in activities of self-creation. I find (2) more persuasive than (I). Notion (I) is a construct of our minds, as no objective view in this sense is available in our experience. Such a "view from nowhere," if it has metaphysical reality, is inaccessible to human beings." Thinking something is valuable is not the same as desiring it. We often desire things that we also recognize as wrong. To fight temptation is to resist acting on wrongful desires. Our sense of value is different from our set of desires . We judge, correctly or not, that something is worth attaining. We want what we value. Our evaluation explains and justifies our desire. It does not follow, however, that a special faculty of intuition sniffs out what is valuable. Nor does it follow that intrinsic value is woven into the fabric of the universe awaiting our discovery. Our valuations are typically based on some, often conflicting, combination of our socialization into a culture at a time, our experiences, our ideals and imagination, our beliefs about the object, state of affairs, or person being evaluated, our analogies to other things we have or have not found worthy, and the like. The search for purely neutral, impersonal bases for judgment is misplaced. Reason, widely shared human characteristics, and common experiences prevent rabid subjectivism. Unrecognized values are not values independent of interpretation and appraisal. Values reflect interpretation and appraisal. Unrecognized values would be recognized under the proper conditions and with sufficient awareness. Instead of values that exist apart from human appraisals, beliefs, and attitudes, we can conceive of values as requiring the union of object and positive appraisal.

5. What If Our Values Lack Ultimate Foundations? Our values may ultimately be groundless. If we conceive of justification as a chain, we end either in infinite regress, which admits no ultimate justification but only endless contingent justifications, or we must posit a first cause or ultimate foundation, which will bear dubious ontological status. Any ultimate foundation, whether emerging from the dictates of Reason, the presence of a Supreme Being or the imperatives of Nature, is more likely to be an act of faith grounded in our psychological need for a fixed starting point which softens ambiguity, than a neutral report of the structure of reality. Any such starting point must be self-justified, a problem that forces foundationalists to imbue their fixed

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beginnings with special ontological status. This strategy invites extra suspicion from critics . If we conceive of justification as a function of the coherence of our entire body of values, as a system of mutual, interdependent support, we produce a more reasonable scheme. But justification becomes only probable. We can imagine a self-consistent scheme of falsities, we can suppose more than one self-consistent scheme of truths might exist, and we understand that schemes of justification are supported by different ways of life. A coherentist scheme, committed to continual self-correction, may be workable but it cannot eliminate radical doubt. I have not tried to prove that our values are ultimately groundless. I have sketched only a few difficulties theorists face. But let us suppose that our values are ultimately groundless, in the sense that no ultimate foundation exists, or if it exists we lack access to it, and no coherentist scheme can go beyond probabilistic justification. Should this cause despair, gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands? No. We would still have no reason to stop valuing some things and devaluing other things. We would value with awareness that our grounds and reasons for justification do not go all the way down. We would, nevertheless, still have strong desires to discover, create, and fashion a life around our values. Whether our values are ultimately grounded objectively or not is merely a second-order belief about our beliefs. When engaged in our lives, we rarely raise the question whether our values are objective. The problem of grounding value parallels the problem of cosmic and personal perspectives. When stepping back and reflecting on the underlying nature of our values , we can question their ultimate grounding. But when engaged in life we value and create because our natures are to do so. The lack of ultimate justification for our values, like the specter of cosmic meaninglessness, rarely debilitates a life. We may structure our lives around our values whether or not they can be objectively defended all the way down . The structure and way of life we fashion give and reveal the point of our values. We are self-creators with the power of self-transformation, restricted by our natures and environments. Our values play an indispensable role in our self-creation and transformation. One set of concerns and interests is unlikely to engage our entire lives. Thus, the lack of foundational justification is less troubling than it first seems. If no objective values are available, then values depend on human interests and desires. We should stop valuing things, people, events, and states of affairs because of this realization. We should admit only that our reasons for valuing eventually run out, and that we reach a point where reason cannot demand we tum to one instead of another direction. Our goals, purposes and projects do not become senseless just because they cannot be rationally supported all the way down. The meaningfulness, value, and point of our projects do not necessarily depend on their rational superiority. We structure our lives around our projects and the processes by which we pursue them . Through our commitments to both we fashion a way of life and give style to our characters. We create value

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through our choices and our responses to the structure of the world . Our commitments, the values we create, and the changing characters we style provide the motivation that emboldens our sense of meaning. The notion of objectivity is a metaphysical creation of our mind. At best, metaphysical objectiv ity is a regulative ideal, not attainable in experience. The practical consequences of the debate between moral realism and antirealism are obscure. Under either view, we still value, still inquire, still weigh competing alternatives, still give reasons for our choices, still supply arguments for our conclusions, and still take a stand on how to live well. The theoretical debate, the tussle about what to believe about the epistemological status of our normative beliefs, is rich but bears little practical fruit. The theoretical debate focuses on what we believe about value judgments, not on what value judgments are better. Once realism and antirealism are refined, they come closer together and set the stage for critical pragmatism.

6. Critical Pragmatism A critical pragmatism, one capable of halting the degeneration into rabid skepticism , should not rely on the suppositions of metaphysical objectivity. Instead, it should begin with the insight that once inside the enterprise of normative debate , once we are actually arguing for and evaluating moral and legal conclusions, we all presuppose that "some claims are better than others, that some are right and others wrong ."!' The arguments we advance to support our favored normative conclusions are not supported by different esoteric arguments that claim that our conclusions are objectively correct. As Ronald Dworkin points out: "But now suppose someone, having heard my arguments [that slavery is unjust] , asks me whether I have any different arguments for the further view that slavery is objectively or really unjust. I know that I do not because, so far as I can tell, it is not a further claim at all but just the same claim put in a slightly more emphatic form." 12 Unlike discussions about matters involving only subjective preferences Which food is superior, Italian or Chinese? Which color is more attractive, red or mauve? - the phenomenology of normative discourse necessarily implicates an intricate network of beliefs, attitudes, and social practices which themselves generate internal theoretical constraints on judgments. Normative discourse, unlike debates about matters of subjective preference, is characterized by argument in a strong sense: defending our position with non-arbitrary reasons, which at some point implicate concepts of human interests. This process , although constituted by numerous historically shaped criteria, is a structured and rulegoverned enterprise. The experience of robust argument distances normative discourse from disagreements over matters of subjective preferences, but does not necessarily commit us to strong and implausible foundationalist assump tions.

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The aim of nonnative discourse so conceived is not necessarily the end of disagreement and the solace of objective final answers, but instead a commitment to political disputation in its most zestful form: the liberating recognition that more is up for grabs than habit and convention generally permit ; that creativity and experimentation are at the center of, social deliberations, that the historical forces of class oppression cannot be justified by appeals to ahistorical entities , such as inherent human nature, which themselves lack independent justification . Under such a conception, we seek a deeper understanding of disagreement and incommensurability, and a profound comprehension of the connection between the people we are and the disputes in which we engage . The aim here is not to denigrate but to clarify the possibility of moral assessment or moral insight. A moral vision may contradict, for example, what we know or think it rational to believe on other grounds , be they logical, metaphysical, or empirical. But we cannot any longer hope that these kinds of criticisms will leave just one moral vision intact. Ultimately, there is still a point at which one has to say: 'This is where my spade is turned .' 13 Accordingly, we do not begin with aspirations for an ideal vantage point or an abstracted universal human chooser. Instead, we start with the values we presently embody and the social world that is our context: our traditions and conventions have currency because they partly constitute who we are. This strategy does not counsel an arid conventionalism because social transformation is necessary , among other reasons, to close the gap between our political expectations and our institutional outcomes. Once we renounce the search for certainty and fixed foundations, our nonnative inquiries can attend to the social contexts in which we participate in the process of acquiring understanding and knowledge . This conception of moral assessment is compatible with leftist versions of immanent critique:" (I) examining a nonnative theory's classifications, premises, reasoning, and conclusions in order to unmask its internal deficiencies logical contradictions and errors, unexamined or indefensible premises, scope limitations, and gaps between theoretical goals and practical achievements; (2) scanning and interrogating social institutions to discover the reasons theoretical deficiencies exist ; (3) clarifying and restructuring social reality by positing alternative theories, and thus recognizing that current social reality prefigures the future; and (4) replacing the deficient theoretical structure, not by eliminating or ignoring the past, but by invoking superior theoretical constructs dependent on critical insights emerging from serious inspection of current practice. This conception of nonnative discourse, which supports critical pragmatism, assumes that "[w]e cannot isolate 'the world' from theories of the world, then compare these theories of the world with a theory-free world. We cannot compare theories with anything that is not a product of another theory.''" Nor-

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mative justification is thus constituted by theoretical explanation. A normative project is rational "not because it has a foundation but because it is a selfcorrecting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once."!" A different not ion of objectivity, one based on practice and behavior, emerges here: "If we find that we must take a certain point of view , use a certain 'conceptual system,' when we are engaged in practical activity .. . then we must not simultaneously advance the claim that it is not really 'the way things are in themselves. ",17 This conception of objectivity, however, does not force us to relinquish the pluralism and fallibilism urged here: "one does not have to believe in a unique best moral version, or a unique best causal version, or a unique best mathematical version ; what we have are better and worse versions, and that is objectivity.t''" Human knowledge is fallible : what we have the best reasons for believing at any given time. While the world exists independently of us, our knowledge of it depends in part on us. We create explanatory structures, but we need not reify them . Rational considerations can lead to different conclusions. Those who dispute our moral, political, and legal positions are not necessarily irrational, mistaken, or in bad faith. While it is probably true that "[tjhere can be no escape from plurality - a plurality of traditions, perspectives, philosophic orientations.t''" we share a larger situated framework which makes it most unlikely that our "conceptual schemes are so self-enclosed that there is no possibility of reciprocal translation, understanding, and argumentation.v" Instead of approaching contrasting views as philosophic opponents to be confronted and reduced gleefully to absurdity, Richard Bernstein advises us to "begin with the assumption that the other has something to say to us and to contribute to our understanding. The initial task is to grasp the other's position in the strongest possible light ... understanding does not entail agreement. On the contrary, it is the way to clarify our disagreements.t"! If strong realists and anti-real ists have reached the impasse described above, it is because they have shared an adversarial style of confrontation that precludes the type of "engaged fallibilistic pluralism" that Bernstein recommends . [engaged fallibilistic pluralism] means taking our own fallibility seriously - resolving that however much we are committed to our own styles of thinking, we are willing to listen to others without denying or suppressing the otherness of the other. It means being vigilant against the dual temptations of simply dismissing what others are saying by falling back on one of those standards defensive ploys where we condemn it as obscure, woolly, or trivial, or thinking we can always easily translate what is alien into our own entrenched vocabularies."

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Thus, critical pragmatism rejects the view that facts and reasoning must be either metaphysically objective or abjectly conventional. The facts and reasoning indigenous to normative enterprises often involve both objective factors and human choices. The social decisions pertain to the classification and categorization of the objective factors . These factors and practical activity themselves constrain the range of permissible classifications, but generally do not ordain any particular classification. This , underscoring as it does the themes of pluralism, fallibilism, and experimentation, has a healthy, corrective effect on the human inclination to identify current practice as the only natural or the one correct mode of being . Much of the paradigm for critical pragmatism emerges from a contemporary version of philosophy of science : "none of the beliefs we have, about the world and what is in it, is forced upon us by a theory-independent recalcitrant reality .. . . There is no paradox in the proposition that facts both depend on and constrain the theories that explain them;,,23 and . . . a hypothesis or a statement may be warranted, may be reasonable to believe, in an objective sense of the words 'warrant' and 'reasonable,' even though we cannot specify an experiment (or data) such that were we to perform it (or were we to collect them) we would be able to confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis to an extent which would command the assent of all educated and unbiased people." Other elements of the paradigm for critical pragmatism emerge from a vigorous conception of praxis, which holds that cognitive forms emerge from historical development and immanent critique; such emergence is influenced by and reflected in the social institutions of labor and production; and cognitive forms and ideologies are offshoots of and may modify socially dominant practices. Still other elements of the paradigm for critical pragmatism flow from fallibilistic, pluralistic themes sketched previously. The power of certain propositions and conclusions is grounded not in abstract cognition, but in societal practices and activities: "Giving grounds .. . justifying the evidence, comes to an end; but the end is not 'certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game.?" How can critical pragmatism help me live my life? Meaningful lives are connected somehow to value or to other meaning. But what should 1 value? And how can the philosophical disputes examined here help me? Critical pragmatism is an outlook on how best to approach the issue of value . It tries to dissolve some of the philosophical debates that distract academics from the main task : figuring out what we should value and how we should value it. When we value, more is at stake than an academic exercise. Our values partly constitute who we are. They are the ballast of the narrative that is our life. The conflict between personal and cosmic perspectives is paralleled by

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the battle between realism and antirealism . The philosophical debates, beyond distracting us, can also enable us to adopt the healthiest attitude , the most lifeaffirming , for our normat ive quest. The purpose of this chapter is to show you better ways to understand and to connect to meaning and value. I will not tell you what to value. Again, we are condemned to our freedom.

Six WHY HAPPINESS IS OVERRATED With the exception of love, no human experience attracts better press than happiness . We pursue wealth, success , honor, relationships, education, and the like because we believe they will lead to our happiness. Parents often say that what they want most for their children is happiness. Typically, parents utter this bromide self-satisfied that they are open-minded and accepting of the paths their children choose : "I may disagree with what my children are doing , it is not for me, but if their activ ities make them happy I cannot say they are wrong." The intuition is clear : our accomplishments, careers, relationships, the potentials we realize, seem hollow if they do not bring us extended bliss. Assess ing remarks on happiness is difficult because the term is used in different ways . Aristotle understood happiness as human beings flourishing in their natural environment. Others speak of happiness as a joyful, pleasurable, exhilarating state or series of states. Still others view happiness as a global state of contentment, tranquility, and peace . Contemporary sociologists take happiness to be a psychological condition, and insist that self-flattering illusions, not keen insight into reality, are necessary for happ iness . The British utilitarians argued that maximizing happiness and pleasure was the foundation of morality. Yet Nietzsche ridiculed happiness as the refuge of the mediocre. 1. Happiness as Flourishing

Aristotle called happiness the greatest good, the end toward which all other goods aimed , an activity of the soul in accord with excellence. I He thought happiness consisted of living well and faring well. Living well includes under standing and acting on the intellectual and moral virtues : wisdom, understanding, prudence, temperance, generosity. Faring well includes a host of practical factors : a measure of material well-being, a congenial family life, friends, leisure time for contemplation, freedom, health, and a not repulsive physical appearance . By functioning effectively in our world, along intellectual, moral, and practical dimensions, we would find happiness. Aristotle thought that women, slaves, and most males could not be happy because they lacked, by virtue of their social positions or natures , the necessary intellectual ability or the condi tions for faring well. Although we typically judge spans of life as happy or as unhappy, Aristotle insists that happiness is most appropriately judged over an entire lifetime . For Aristotle happiness is neither a mood nor an emotion. Instead, it is an objective condition that arises from leading an exemplary life. Under this view, it often makes sense to say, "Jane thinks she is leading a happy life, but she is not." Aristotelian happiness involves judgments about our success in obtaining the most valuable aspects of our lives. Because happiness is more than a truthful

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report ofa person's current or predominant state of mind, Jane could feel happy, even though she was mistaken about what was most valuable and whether she had achieved it. Under these circumstances, Jane would think that she was happy while she was in fact unhappy in Aristotelian terms. Would Aristotle's living well and faring well be enough for happiness, if they did not bring the expected sense of extended joy, pleasure, or peace? Imagine showing people that they embodied the prescribed intellectual and moral virtues, and the conditions for faring well. Suppose the people agreed but still insisted, "But we are unhappy." If we respond "Oh, you are happy , you just do not know it," our words are odd. If I do not know that I am happy , how can I be happy? Aristotle ignores the experience of happiness and, instead , favors happiness as a condition of the self. He is open to the charge that his flourishing is better understood as praiseworthy moral and intellectual activity, punctuated with a fair amount of luck in practical matters . But without the appropriate state of mind, exper ience, or feelings, achieving Aristotle's condition of the self fails to capture the internal response necessary for happiness. Aristotle assumed that leading a praiseworthy moral and intellectual life, and enjoying the required practical success, would bring people an appropriately positive state of mind . But a person could meet and know they met all the conditions of flourishing, yet be predominantly sad or agitated . Thus, happine ss, in the modem sense, is more than meeting a set of external conditions. Aristotle severs happiness from feelings and attitudes , instead defining it in terms of meeting objecti ve conditions. He also rules out from the start all possibility of the nonvirtuous being happy. Thus , for Aristotle, happ iness is not a state of mind, but an evaluation of a person's life with regard to virtue, intellect, and the circumstances of faring well. Although meeting Aristotle 's list increases our chances for happiness, functioning effectively or flourishing is not always enough . The morale of the story? An appropriate subjective response, a conscious cond ition, whether sustained joy, pleasure, or peace, is also necessary for happiness. Is extended joy and pleasure, regardless of how they are attained, enough for happiness? Is extended joy even required for happiness? Could lingering contentment and overall satisfaction that lack apparent joy define happiness? 2. Happiness as Tranquility Stoicism, the dominant Western ethic for over five hundred years, took happiness to be freedom from pass ion and the realization of inner peace. ' We should be indifferent to joy and grief, and flexible when facing life's changes. Virtue and right attitude are enough for happiness. By living according to nature, elevating reason over the passion s, nurturing good habits, freeing ourselves from the desire to change the unalterable, and being indifferent to pleasure and pain, we can achieve the inner peace that defines happiness . Distinguishing things

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within our control from things beyond our control is paramount. Our judgments, attitudes, and evaluations are the only things under our control. By controlling these we can attain right will and virtue. The usual litany of desirables, such as love, honor, wealth, good health, worldly success, avoiding maltreatment from others, the well-being of friends and relatives, congenial family life, personal freedom, depend too much on external circumstances beyond our control, including the actions of others . Once we accept the slings, arrows, and seductions of life without rebellion or discontent, we are in control of our lives and happiness is attainable. We can adjust our desires to eliminate those which cannot be fulfilled in an extended lifetime. We should hinge our well-being on the attainable . Stoics invented the happiness quotient: divide what you have by what you want, the higher the figure, the happier you will be. The best recipe for happiness is limiting what you want. The happiness quotient is still unveiled breathlessly, without attribution to the Stoics, in popular self-help books today: divide your satisfactions by your desires, the higher the figure the greater the happiness, limiting your desires is the surest road to success. The simplicity and commonsense quality of the happiness quotient, however, is purchased at a stiff cost. The happiness quotient suggests that a life with a perfect score of 1.000, one in which all of our desires are satisfied, is the happiest , even best, life to live. I submit, on the contrary, that it would be a recipe for Schopenhauerian boredom. Happiness requires desiring something which demands effort and creatively undertaking a process thought necessary to attain it. Access to a compliant genie who automatically grants our every wish is the road to short-term delight, but long-term devastation, at least for human beings. Even God presumably created the world and life as a way to express love. Does an omnipotent God, then, need us? Are we necessary for the exercise of God's prime attributes such as creativity, love, and goodness? The critique of Stoicism is by now a cliche. While Stoicism can bring consolation to those struggling under harsh conditions, its expectations are too low for general use. The expansive richness and creativity of human experience are sacrificed on the altar of accommodation. Although it does not insist on passivity, Stoicism inclines in that direction. Stoicism's kernel of insight, that we should not dwell on misfortune, we should put suffering behind us, we should not become intoxicated with unimportant pursuits or frivolous desires, is obscured by its demand that nothing else matters. Even on its own terms, Stocism fails to distinguish earned tranquility from simulated tranquility. Aristotle's keen observation that a person could be mistaken about whether he is happy bears currency. If Bob is peaceful because he has been hypnotized into thinking his life is other than what it is or because he has been drugged, then his tranquility does not translate into happiness. Instead, his state of mind is simulated and unearned. Bob has been tricked into thinking his unsatisfying life is satisfying. Aristotle's intuition that happiness must be earned, not merely induced, rings true. Happiness as an extended feel-

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ing or psychological condition differs from having a happy life. Having a happy life involves flourishing : functioning effectively in our natural environment. For Aristotle , who talks of flourishing, acting well, not feeling pleasurably, is the crux of happiness. More than enjoyment or extended peace is needed for a happy life. Although his categories and reasons now strike us as implausible, Aristotle understood that by their constitution some human beings are incapable of flourishing . In another respect, Stoicism provides a corrective to Aristotle's view of happiness . Stoicism points out that happiness is more than achieving the set of external conditions that define flourishing. Happiness requires some fit between a person's expectations and results, as well as an extended internal peace . While I resist the particular expectations Stoicism urges and question whether extended peace, however attained, is enough, Stoicism contains lessons for seekers of happiness .

3. Happiness and Sociology Social scientists invariably take happiness to be a particular state of mind or psychological cond ition. They report that in our society the fulfillment of certain desires contribute to happiness : a reasonable income, good health , love, longterm romance , satisfying sex, a preferred job, and some success and recognition.' Personal traits such as self-confidence, an articulated value system, a belief that life generally has meaning, and a sense of empowerment and control over our lives also have been found to contribute to happiness. Those who are happiest in our culture are married, but without children living at home, employed in a relatively prestigious and fulfilling job, well-educated, with high income. Strong personal relationships reduce stress, improve health, and promote self-esteem. Social support and a sense of controlling our own fate are the most important sources of well-being. Social support and a sense of control are interchangeable. If people have a heightened sense of control over their lives, social support adds little to their well-being, while if people have much social support, whether they have a sense of personal control matters little. Therefore, those who seek solitude may find well-being in work, creative activity, or choices that heighten their sense of control over their lives; while those who pursue intimate bonds, if successful, may find well-being in spite of a low sense of control over their lives. Happiness is tied less to our objective situation and more to our inner judgments and perceptions, the way we feel about our objective situation. Score one for the Stoics against Aristotle ! We will be happy when we compare our circumstances to our expectations and inner standards , and judge ourselves successful. Thus, our expectations and standards are at least as important as our actual situation in determining our level of happiness . Here happiness is taken to be a healthy psychological state or relatively enduring feeling of pleasure .

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We might be tempted to apply for our membership card in the modem Stoics's club. We might conclude that the trick of the good life is to drastically lower our expectations and standards, thereby ensuring a favorable comparison with our actual situation . But life is not so simple . First, the suggested trick reeks of sour grapes : if we desire something but do not obtain it, we pretend we never wanted it to begin with or that it must be flawed. The fox wanted the grapes, could not reach them, and concludes they were sour anyway . Second , the trick requires too much explicit self-deception. By lowering our expectations as a recipe for happiness, we too often artificially and insincerely simulate desires rather than pursue real ones. "I wanted to marry Mr. Right, but I have not done it. So I will marry Mr. Not-So-Hot. He is not much but he does bathe regularly." Third, we cannot ignore Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In different ways, they understood our tendency to raise not lower the bar of expectations upon meeting initial success. Part of a meaningful and significant life involves reimagining and re-creating our self and our projects, not resting on our laurels or merely contemplating past triumphs. Although the Stoic prescription is prudent under dire circumstances, it too easily surrenders the vast potential richness of human life for the fool's gold of an artificially induced sense of happiness. But good news follows . The happiest and healthiest people have an internal solution to the problem of matching expectations to actual circumstances. They distort reality . They harbor illusions. The happiest and healthiest human beings have unrealistically positive views of themselves, exaggerate the amount of control they have over their lives, and are unrealistically optimistic. In sum, the traditional advice of academ ic philosophy, such as distinguish rigorously between appearance and reality, know ourselves as thoroughly as possible, eliminate illusions , may not be the most reliable path to happiness. People can go overboard. Embracing delusions of grandeur is not a road to happiness. But neither is relentlessly viewing things as they really are. Happiness typically flows from a measure of success in meeting our expectations and internal standards plus slightly enhancing the fit between external circumstances and internal standards in our minds. The enhancement factor consists of selfflattering, optimistic illusions that overestimate our accomplishments in relation to the success of others . If we are below average in a certain respect, we perceive ourselves as average. If we are average , we perceive ourselves as above average , and so on. The self-flattering misperception cannot be wildly exaggerated lest it border on delusion, nor can it be consciously induced: "I understand that I am only average, but I will consider myself above average so I will be happier." The controversial self-esteem programs of self-help literature and education theory may be ways of learning how to innocently induce the enhancement factor . Take a common example. Most motor vehicle operators gleefully recount the driving errors of their fellow operators. Others "drive like maniacs" or "dawdle along like little old ladies" or "fail to keep their attention on the road" or "think they are the only car on the highway." But how many people admit

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that they are below-average drivers? I once asked an undergraduate class of 150 whether any of them considered themselves below-average drivers. Two students raised their hands. Clear evidence that the enhancement factor is alive and well. For the record: I am an above-average driver. Some readers will recoil at the social comparison aspect of happiness. Judging myself, whether realistically or optimistically, in relation to others, introduces an unseemly competitiveness into the happiness quotient reminiscent of the cruel slogan : "It is not enough to succeed. My friends must fail." The danger of desires based on social comparison is that we both depend on and fear others . We need others, particularly those who are "below average ," to feed our selfesteem . Yet others threaten us, particular those who are "above average," by potentially deflating our illusions. Whether the social comparison aspect of happiness is universal or whether it is unique to competitive cultures such as the United States goes beyond the scope of my inquiry . But happiness , at least in this culture, is tied closely to a subjective judgment that the self is worthy and effective. This judgment involves the intersection of objective circumstances, internal expectations and standards, and the enhancement factor. These aspects involve social comparisons. We can also select carefully the relevant social comparisons. I have taught at a state comprehensive college for almost twenty years. Prior to that I was an attorney in New York City. If I compare my salary to those who started at the law firm with me and cont inued as attorneys, my salary is the lowest. If I compare my salary to other 1982 graduates of Harvard Law School , it is among if not the lowest. If I compare my salary to other professors who have taught at my school over the same period, it is among the highest. If I compare my salary to all residents of the United States, it is high. Which comparison should I use? I do not advocate salary comparisons as the road to happiness , but illustrate only how any social comparison is malleable. Sociologists argue that once a person earns a livable salary, additional income is irrelevant to a person's sense of wellbeing. The happ iest among us follow a typical pattern: a gradual pattern of objective successes spiced with periods of celebration, slightly rising but achievable expectations, a lowering of expectations with age. Healthy social relationships, a subjectively meaningful life, reasonable success in achieving goals, appropriate internal expectations and standards, and optimistic illusions are necessary. Happy people are not so much heroic as they are well suited for life in their social environment. They are typically sociable, vigorous , assertive, socially involved , active, humorous, warm, open to experience, have daydreams and fantasies, seek excitement, and embody positive sentiments, ideas, and values. Happiness depends on attitude toward life more than accomplishing specified goals. The pursuit of goals and the reasonable belief that we are progressing toward them are paramount: we are happiest when a great goal has been pursued and seems within reach .

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4. Philosophy and Sociology Social scientists, following the Stoics, talk of happiness in terms of state of mind , feelings, and experiences. They wisely point out that our external circumstances are less important to happiness than our judgment of those circumstances and how they fit with our expectations and social comparisons. But philosophers recoil at the acceptance of salutary illusion and the enhancement factor into the happiness calculus. A typical analytic philosopher might argue as follows: " Happiness is more than attaining a particular state of mind . It requires an evaluation of our lives and a correct assessment of the conditions of happiness, whether they be seen as relevant social comparisons, the fit between internal standards and external success, or the amount of control we have over our lives . The distinction between healthy illusion and delusion of grandeur is unpersuasive. To be truly happy, we need the state of mind that is appropriate to an accurate judgment about the life we have lived and the value to which we have connected. Healthy illusion is no different from induced peace or joy. While it may well aid in bringing about a joyful or peaceful state of mind, illusion depends on inaccurate judgments about social comparisons and the other conditions of happiness. While we may be blameless for harboring such illusions, they produce only an unearned joyful or peaceful state of mind . Such illusions are no better than drugs injected into us while we sleep or the instructions of a master hypnotist. They may stimulate the feelings of happiness, but cannot achieve the real thing." A nonacademic might respond: "But I want only to be happy. I do not care about philosophical neatness. If healthy illusions are the road to happ iness, I hope that I can produce them, although I understand I cannot do that selfconsciously. If people feel happy, report that they are happy, then they are happy. That is all happiness is." But happiness is much more . Numerous movies, television programs, and novels have been produced featuring characters who are drugged, hypnotized, or deceived into thinking they are happy. The message is that such people are the most pathetic, not the most fortunate, among us. Are illusions that lure us into thinking we are happy any different? One difference might be that these illusions are self-produced. But would the media message be different if the characters choose to drug, hypnotize, or deceive themselves? If they inadvertently did so? We might conclude that being an agent in our flight from reality, makes us more, not less, pathetic. If happiness as a state of mind must be earned by living and correctly assessing certain types of lives, then illusions are obstacles to happiness even when they can stimulate happy feelings. The nonacademic is still not convinced: "If those who see reality most clearly are less likely to be happy , what does that say? Give me a little selfinduced illusion any day . Better to be John and Jane Doe happy through the enhancement factor than to be Socrates dissatisfied because he sees the truth so clearly. Remember, Socrates, at least as described by Plato , had to invent an-

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other world of perfection and timelessness . The horror of reality led him to fantasy, too. Socrates's fantasy was much more extensive than slightly selfflattering illusions." This rejoinder is powerful only if the feelings of happiness are more important than happiness, and only if the feelings of happiness are the greatest good. Neither is the case. A life lived well, one connected robustly to meaning and value, that earns the feelings of happiness as a fitting response, is a greater good than feelings of happiness grounded on illusion or deception. Moreo ver, I will soon argue that such a life, devoid of the extended feelings of happiness, is a greater good than the feelings of happiness. But the nonacademic insists: " Look here, happines s is only a state of mind, an extended experience, an aggreg ate of feelings . We may attain that state of mind in better or worse ways, but that does not mean we are happy only when we attain the relevant feelings in the best way . I do not necessarily hold that happiness is always the greatest good, only that it is a good. And I would rather have that good, attained almost any way, than most other goods ." This generates two concessions. I concede that "happiness" is used in several ways, and that my insistence in linking happine ss with both the relevant state of mind and certain accurate judgments about our lives reflects my philosophical bias. My nonacademic critic, though, has conceded that happiness as only the relevant state of mind loses some of its panache and its claim to being the greatest good.

5. What Is Happiness? I understand happiness as combining flourishing, a degree of fit between a person 's expectations and results, and extended joy or peace. Although I am inclined to insist on joy, I do not rule the peaceful out of the happiness equation. We can say much in favor of peace, harmony, and emotion tranquility. Depending on a person's temperament and circumstances, peace , instead of lingering joy, may be enough . Peace and tranquility suggest completion and fulfillment, a satisfaction with self grounded in sufficient reason. The harmony, stability and security flowing from this state of mind were the deepest aspirations of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. They require continuing reflection and a self integrated over time. Peace and tranquility, whether described as a state of mind or an extended experience or a predominant feeling, qualify for the internal , psychological part of happiness . But I do not think they must define the internal part of happiness. Some people, by temperament, will be more attracted to the gleeful process warrior. The person who seeks no final resolved chord, but, instead, basks in the process of reimagining, deconstructing, and re-creating the self through vigorous thought, choice , and action . Process warriors are not motivated by dissatisfaction or general anxiety about who they are. Instead , they luxuriate in recurring self-discovery and relentless actualization of their potentials. They do not sense

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that things are out of kilter or degenerating, but view their lives as grand creation: bestowing form, value, and meaning through contemplation, will, and assertion of freedom . While no final resting point is reached, none is sought. Whereas the ideals of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy energize tranquility seekers, romantic literature, aesthetic creativity, and Nietzs chean philosophy inspire process warriors. The internal, psychological part of happiness is the result of positive evaluations of our lives. The feelings of happiness, whether tranquility or extended joy, are not imposed on us. They do not happen to us. They occur from reflection and a positive assessment of our lives. The feelings of happiness are in an important sense earned : we savor the fruits of a life lived and judged well. Happiness, understood in this way is an emotion: a way of seeing and structuring the world, a function al strategy which helps define our lives. Sensations or feelings are only a part of happiness. The emotion of happiness bears a cognitive structure as it demands judgments, evaluations, and a self-conception. Happiness is not a mood which temporarily makes everything its object, but, instead, is more highly focused and intelligent. We are mainly responsible for being or not being happy because we are responsible for the lives we lead, our evaluations of those lives, our matching of expectations and outcomes, the structuring of our selves , and our responses to ail of these . Happiness is typically an appropriate response to a life well structured. But the qualification "mainly responsible" holds out the possibility that some people cannot give the appropriate response to their well-l ived life, they cannot experience happiness, because of the unusual biochemistry of their brains . lIIs of temperament can overwhelm our objecti ve succe sses and our judgments about expectations and outcomes. Although this analysis does not yield a universal definition of the term, it provides a working structure. Under this view, happiness is concerned with our expectations, values , and circumstances . To achieve happiness, we must like those parts of our total life pattern, including our prospects, that we think are important. We must be satisfied with the fit of our expectations, ideals, and situation. This modest formulation makes no claim that our values must be morally sound , or that our expectations must all be objectively attainable, or that we must experience raucous glee in order to be happy . The presence of happiness, however, does preclude pervasive melancholy, anxiety, and existential malaise. Happiness is more of a global than momentary condition, and must include extended joy or peace . We can be happy about one area of our life but not another. The happiest people are those who like the greater proportion of their life pattern and like them more than those who are less happy . Most of us prefer that our lives, for the most part, be on an upward path . The immediate past forms the baseline of our expectations that we typically seek to surpass. Thus, social scientists find that the happiest among us report a gradual pattern of succe sses punctuated with periods of celebration, followed by slightly rising but achievable expec tations, but followed by a relaxing of expectations with age.

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To return to some of Aristotle's questions and some of our own : Can everyone be happy ? What is the relationship between meaningful lives and happy lives? Is happiness the greatest good? Are moral and intellectual virtues needed for happiness? Is the desired conscious condition, sustained joy or peace, enough for happiness?

6. Can Everyone Be Happy? Although Aristotle incorrectly restricts potential happiness to a small subset of males, he is correct in thinking not everyone can be happy . Some people, perhaps becau se of the biochem istry of their brain, uncongenial temperament, unsuitable personality, or obsessively perfectionist tendencies, will always deny themselves a positive self-appraisal regardless of their objective social circumstances or achievements. Jake LaMotta , a ferocious prize fighter of the 1940s and 1950s, even after becoming the middleweight champion of the world was tormented because he would never weigh enough to fight heavyweight champion Joe Louis . His inability to establish himself as the greatest professional fighter as such and his lack of control over the circumstances that prevented it, were two of many factors that undermined his happiness despite his enormous professional success. Bertrand Russell understood how the appropriate temperament and attitude were indispensable for the subjective experience of happiness: The happy man is the man .. . whose personality is neither divided against itself nor pitted against the world . Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found ." You could argue that I have cited only a contingent factor preventing people from being happy. At least in principle or in theory, you might protest, we can all be happy. I am not so sure. For all of us to be happy we would all need the psychological prerequisites for happiness, and all have to experience the blessed intersection of objective circumstances, internal expectations and standards, and accurate evaluation. Perhaps if we were all inclined temperamentally toward optimism, enjoyed congenial brain biochemistry, chose our social comparisons carefully, and were educated toward self-esteem and nurturing our self-images, we could all be happy . But that is a long shot in principle, and impossible in practice.

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7. What Is the Relationship Between Meaningful Lives and Happy Lives? Consider the lives of the following : Beethoven, Joe DiMaggio, Emily Dickinson, Seren Kierkegaard, Queen Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Michelangelo, Moses, Socrates, Emma Goldman , and Vincent Van Gogh. These lives are paradigms of meaning and significance in religion, sports, literature, music, polit ics, philosophy, and art. In terms of relatively enduring accomplishments, influences, excellences, creations, and social effects these lives are among the best in their fields . Yet these people were unhappy. While each of them flourished in many respects, none realized the extended joy or peace characteristic of happiness. Perhaps they demanded too much of themselves, saw reality too clearly, were unable to harbor self-flattering illusions, could not savor their feelings of pleasure, lacked the necessary biochemistry, or were too heroic to be happy. Meaningful lives, then, are not necessarily happy lives. But happy lives, at least those that are not artificially induced, are invariably meaningful. Happy people report that their lives are meaningful. To hear someone gush, "My life is meaningless. Isn't it grand? I am so happy about it!" would be peculiar.

8. Is Happiness the Greatest Good? We might be led to conclude Aristot le was correct. Happiness must be the greatest good because if my life is happy then it will also be meaningful, but if it is meaningful it may not be happy . If all other goods aim at happiness then Aristotle is on firm ground in arguing that happiness is the greatest good . And the homespun wisdom of parents , "I want only that my children be happy," is upheld . Such a conclusion would be hasty . First, to call two lives meaningful does not suggest they are equally so. If the standard of meaningfulness is minimal having goals, projects, interests, relationships that engage and energize our lives - most of our lives on the whole meet it. But that is not saying much. Few have lives as meaningful as Beethoven, Joe DiMaggio, Emily Dickinson, Kierkegaard, Elizabeth I, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Michelangelo, Moses, Socrates, Emma Goldman, and Van Gogh . Is it better to live Michelangelo 's life and not be particularly happy or to live an obscure, minimally meaningful life, and be happier? If happiness was the greatest good then we should prefer the latter. Yet I am sure many would prefer the former . A person could reasonably value enduring accomplishment, high creativity, powerful social effects, and unparalleled excellence more than happiness. While minimal meaningfulness is surely not the greatest good, robust meaningfulness is at least a candidate. Second, the relationship between happiness and the intellectual and moral virtues is less clear than Aristotle supposed. Under my understanding of happiness - flourishing, a degree of fit between a person's expectations and results , and extended joy or peace - the intellectual and moral virtues can sometimes

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conflict with happiness. High intelligence may make it more difficult to sustain the self-flattering illusions sometimes required for feelings of happiness. The pursuit of truth is sometimes accompanied by hardship, frustration, even persecution. Following the morally correct path may bring a decrease in our personal happiness. The righteous path did not lighten Lincoln's load . At times, pursuing a moral path results not in Aristotle's fortuitous convergence of leisure and a congen ial home life, but in more labor and domestic conflict. In sum, happiness must be sometimes sacrificed for higher concerns: intellectual or moral values, or enriched meaningfulness. On behalf of Aristotle 's view, you could argued that I have not demonstrated that happiness is not the greatest good . Even if someone would prefer the life of Michelangelo to the life of an obscure, minimally meaningful, but happy person, that may show only that having numerous lesser goods in high quantity and quality is preferable to having the greatest good . So on a personal level , high creativity, enduring accomplishment, artistic excellence, and the like, when combined may be preferable to obscurity and basic happiness. Still, you could argue that happiness is the greatest good because all the other goods aim at it. What is the point of high creativity, enduring accomplishment, and artistic excellence other than their contribution to someone's happiness? Even if artists lead unhappy lives, they bring much happiness to others through their creations. Likewise, even if the moral and intellectual virtues do not always lead to happiness for their practitioners, their point is to contribute to the general happiness. Perhaps Michelangelo was a tortured soul, but his art continues to bring joy to others. Perhaps Lincoln was personally tormented by taking the moral path , but doing so increased the overall happiness of future generations. So happiness is the greatest good, despite the considerations raised earlier. This argument is unsound. Aristotle was not describing the greatest happiness for the greatest number, nor was his a conception of general happiness. He outlined the requirements for personal happiness for those few males able to live and fare well. But truth , art, creativity, and meaning do not necessarily lead to personal happiness. Often we must choose between having more truth, creativity, and meaning, or having more happiness. We do not invariably choose hap piness. If happiness was the greatest good toward which all other goods aimed we would expect a different result. To aim directly at happiness may be selfdefeating. At best , happiness is a by-product of a well-lived life, salutary biochemistry, a measure of success in meeting expectations and internal standards, and evaluating life positively. Instead of mouthing the platitude "I want only that they be happy, " parents would better serve their children by helping them value and lead worthwhile and robustly meaningful lives. Such lives bring satisfaction and typically bestow happiness. But even if they cannot guarantee happiness, such lives are more valuable than happy, minimally meaningful lives . Although robustly meaningful lives do not necessarily include extended joy or peace, they almost always include the ecstasy joined to great accomplishments and pursuits. But heroism and greatness often lack extended joy or peace

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because periods of savoring and contentment are more fleeting than in nonheroic meaningful lives . The hero confronts greater obstacles, expends his or her energies more extravagantly, and is less likely to survive than the nonhero.

9. Are Moral and Intellectual Virtues Needed for Happiness? Nietzsche sneered, "Humanity does not seek happiness, only the English do."s He was attacking the British utilitarians who took the greatest happiness and pleasure for the greatest number as the standard of moral action. Although Nietzsche's barb is needlessly harsh, as it dehumanizes British philosophers, it is insightful : creative, cognitive, aesthetic, self-making activities have value independent of the happiness they may produce. For Nietzsche, happiness was far from the greatest good, it was often an obstacle to the highest activities. For what is freedom? Having the will to responsibility for oneself. Maintaining the distance that separates us . Becoming indifferent to trouble, hardships, deprivation, even to life . . . the manly instincts, the instincts that celebrate war and winning, dominate other instincts, for example the instinct for 'happiness.' The human being who has become free, not to mention the spirit that has become free , steps all over the contemptible sort of well-being [happiness] dreamt of by grocers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen, and other democrats.f Nietzsche understood the banality of the happiness of "last men." Their highest ambitions are comfort and security. They are the extreme case of the herd mentality: habit, custom, indolence, egalitarianism, self-preservation, and muted will to power prevail. Last men embody none of the inner tensions and conflicts that spur transformative action: they take no risks, lack convictions, avoid experimentation, and seek only bland contentment. While Nietzsche did not doubt this happiness was achievable, he did not find it valuable much less the greatest good . Last men were tranquilized, not tranquil. In fairness to Aristotle, his notion of happiness is several cuts above the contentment of last men . One of the reasons only a few can achieve Aristotelian happiness is the premium he places on the intellectual and moral virtues. I have already noted some of the problems Aristotle's view confronts on this score: the intellectual and moral virtues sometimes conflict with happiness, high intelligence may make us see reality more clearly making it more difficult to sustain the self-flattering illusions that nurture happy feelings, the pursuit of truth is sometimes accompanied by hardship, following the morally correct path may decrease personal happiness. But are the intellectual and moral virtues necessary for happiness? Can a person be deficient in one or both yet be happy? The answer, 1 think, is yes. While being educated and having socially acceptable values generally correlate with happiness, I can offer no good reason why a person

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lacking either or both could not be happy. Those who are radically evil will find it excruciating difficult to be happy because they are alienated from their social environment and they endure constant fear of exposure and punishment. Those who are stunningly ignorant will have more limited forums for creative activity, enjoyment, social recognition, and self-esteem than the highly educated. But neither type is absolutely excluded from the circle of the happy. And, clearly, the average sinner and mediocre intellect can be happy. The problem here is that people can accurately judge their lives worthwhile given their values, savor the fruits of a life they take to be worthwhile, flourish in terms of those values, and enjoy the feelings of happiness. While I find it difficult to imagine that a career criminal could be happy, it is possible. Philosophers would argue that criminals cannot be happy because they have inaccurately assessed their lives, they have judged them positively while their lives are radically flawed from an objective, moral point of view. I cannot refute this view, and I am inclined to accept it. But I am uncomfortable with ruling out the criminal by definitional fiat. Surely, such blackguards could have the feelings of happiness and, although highly unlikely, they may accurately see their lives as a repudiation of social morality and esteem that. Unlike people who have been drugged or seduced by a master hypnotist into thinking they are happy, and unlike people with inflated illusions due to self-deception, my imaginary, selfreflective criminals accurately see themselves as transformers of values. Difficult, but not impossible.

10. Is the Desired Conscious Condition, Sustained Joy or Peace, Enough for Happiness? A critic could argue that talk about flourishing, a degree of fit between a person's expectations and results , the enhancement factor, and the like, is inflated. All that is required for happiness is the desired conscious condition. Extended joy or peace is enough for happiness, however it is attained. The critic's argument would spin like this : When we ask people whether they are happy , we are not looking for an extended discourse on whether they are flourishing, whether they have met their expectations, the specifics of their personal standards and norms, the details of their self-flattering illusions, or anything else. We are asking about only their conscious condition : Are they experiencing sustained joy or peace? If they, in good faith, answer yes and their actions confirm that answer, we conclude that they appear happy . And that is the entire matter. Perhaps flourishing, meeting personal expectations, adjusting standards, and the like are a recipe that leads many people to extended joy or peace , but the typical recipe is only one means to the desired general condition. To think otherwise is to confuse a means to happiness with the substance of happiness. Under this view, Aristotle's list of requirements for living and faring well is only a recipe for, not a description of, happiness. To criticize Aristotle calls

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only his recipe into question, it does not undermine the claim that happiness is the greatest good. The critic makes a strong point but his or her victory may, ironically, weaken not strengthen the value of happiness. Suppose happiness is merely the experience of sustained joy or peace, and the means by which that experience is attained are irrelevant. Suppose the biochemistry of our brains can be manipulated to make us more likely to experience sustained joy. Perhaps a new pill, an enhanced form of Prozac or Lithium, can alter our brain biochemistry to simulate the desired conscious condition. Happiness is now within the reach of all. We take our medication, we are joyful and peaceful, all in the world seems right. Is this heaven? In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "Not bloody likely ." Savor the irony. Prozac and Lithium are typically prescribed for those who are unhappy or depressed. If a powerful version of these pills could heighten the joy of everyone that might be because we were all depressed. Instead of saying, "Well, old Spike is doing better now that he is on Prozac," his friends could gush, "Old Spike is happy, just like the rest of us." Who Spike was, what values he embodied, what creativity he exhibited, and what he did, would not matter. As long as Spike pounded down the pills, he would exude the conscious state that equals happiness . But Spike's happiness is Nietzsche's sarcastic rendering of last men come to life. Instead of constituting the greatest good, such a sustained state dehumanizes and trivializes us: we have invented happiness, say the last men. And then they blink . Again , I am not trying to define happiness. I am trying only to stipulate a framework for its discussion. While it is true that happiness is often plausibly defined as sustained joy or peace, that is small consolation to happiness mongers. Aristotle understood perceptively that to be the greatest good happiness must embody the most important values. He overplayed his hand and paid too little attention to the conscious condition required for happiness. But the critic inverts the mistake. By attending only to the conscious condition, the critic ignores the most important values. As a result, any gains in defining happiness accessibly set back claims that such happiness is the greatest good . To pursue happiness is self-defeating. If happiness occurs it does so as a by-product of a life lived well , one filled with meaning. The main concern of human life is not merely to gain pleasure and avoid pain, but to capture meaning. The best human lives pursue adequate reason to be happy, instead of seeking only the feelings of extended joy or peace regardless of how they are induced . Creative activity, robust relationships, turning personal tragedy into triumph, and confronting difficult situations with courage and verve are but a few ways of embracing the meaning that is the adequate reason for extended joy or peace. Finding meaning in life, then, opens the possibility of achieving the only happiness worth possessing. But the discovering or creation of meaning cannot guarantee happiness will follow. Some people who claim they are happy do not deserve to be happy. I do not mean in the moral sense, but in the sense that they miscalculate the worthi-

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ness of their lives. Happiness cannot be induced, it must be won. My immigrant forebears did not come to America to strive for happ iness. Although they would not put it this way , they came here for a chance to actualize their potentials, to be somebodies within their own circle, to challenge themselves in a land of opportunity. Happiness requires a measure of good luck. But happiness is never only a matter of luck. First, flourishing often requires some good fortune, or at least the absence of debilitating calamities. Second, the feelings of extended joy or peace are partially a function of a person 's biochemistry in the brain . So a person must not have the bad luck of unusual, unhealthy biochemistry. But our attitudes, efforts, expectations, and deeds are crucial to happiness as I understand it: happiness as flourishing, a degree of fit between a person's expectations and results, and extended joy or peace. Much is within our control. If we live robustly meaningful, valuable lives we, hopefully, increase our probability of attaining happiness. But happiness is the byproduct, not the determinant, of a life lived well. Happiness as an experience, pleasant sensations, or enduring psychological state differs from happiness as a condition, state of affairs, or fulfillment of criteria . People are aware of whether they have the required psychological state, but they can be mistaken about whether they fulfill the rest. Do we want the experience of happiness? Or do we want the condition of happiness? We want both . We want to experience happiness because we have the appropriate condition. But suppose we could have only one or the other? Advocates of the experience model could argue that the condition of happiness is worthless unless we experience happiness. But they would be mistaken. The condition of happiness could bring great meaning and value in our lives even if we remained downbeat, even if we did not experience enduring peace of mind or pleasure. Advocates of the condition model could argue that the experience of happiness can be simulated, fraudulent, or based on deep delusion: better to be a somber Michelangelo than a giddy Howard Stem. The persuasiveness of the condition model flows from taking meaning and value to be more important than the experience of happiness. This analysis provides another reason why happiness is overrated. The minimally meaningful, but happy, life is less worthwhile than the robustly meaningful, but unhappy, life. Robustly meaningful, but unhappy, lives embody higher quality of activities, greater social effects, enduring legacies, manifested excellences, and greater values. Admitting this does not dismiss the allure of happiness. The best lives are both robustly meaningful and happy. I conclude only that happiness is not the greatest good, and that Aristotle's prescriptions and conventional parental wisdom require adjustments.

Seven DEATH Lurking quietly but closely behind all human lives is the shadow of the Grim Reaper , the Duke of Doomsday, the Terrible Terminator, the Master of Disaster, Death . Human beings search for meaning in life with full knowledge of our mortality. What relevance, if any, is our inevitable death to the meaning of our lives? 1. Death Is Irrelevant

Some human beings take comfort in a belief in personal immortality. Energized, typically by theistic faith, they view earthly life as a preparation for an eternally blissful afterlife. Under this view, death is often seen as a separation of a selfsubsistent soul from the body. Others deny the dualism - the separation of immaterial soul from material body - in the immortality thesis and take death to be the cessation of all experience, the irrevocable termination of consciousness. The denial of dualism and immortality can lead to personal despair and suffocating doubt about the meaning and value of life. What can it all matter if in a few years our lives will be coldly , cruelly, and efficiency snuffed out by an unfeeling cosmos to which no appeal for mercy is possible? The Greek philo sopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) rejected dualism yet maintained that death is not an evil.' He argued that death is irrelevant to us . For Epicuru s, all good and evil consists in sensations; death is the end of all sensations, so death is nothing to us. Death, reasoned Epicurus, must be nothing to us because death is not with us while we are living and when it arrives we no longer exist. Therefore, death does not concern either the living or the dead, because for the living death is not, and the dead are no more. For Epicurus, death is the cessation of all experiences, and at death a human being decomposes and no sensations can persist because no physical object remains to sense anything. Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensations .. . . So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more." The Roman philosopher Lucretius (98-55 BC) echoed Epicurus's remarks.' Life is finite. We are not anxious or upset because we did not exist prior to our actual births , so we should not fear a comparable nonexistence after death . Put in a modem context: the year 1505 was nothing to us and conjures no anxiety in

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the year 2000 ; so, too, the year 2099, by which we will all be dead, should cause us no anxiety now. Think too how the bygone antiquity of everlasting time before our birth was nothing to us. Nature therefore holds this up to us as a mirror of the time yet to come after our death. Is there anything in this that looks appalling, anything that wears an aspect of gloom ? Is it not more untroubled than any sleep?" Both Epicurus and Lucretius accept a hedonistic assumption: the sensations of pleasure and pain define what is good and bad for us. But this assumption is unacceptable. The following counterexample to the hedonistic assumption has been around a long time : Your neighbor is an incorrigible peeping tom who gains much pleasure from monitoring the nightly activities of others. One weekend while you are away, he enters your home and installs monitoring devices in your bedroom. He is so profic ient that you never learn of his act. You suffer no painful sensations or unpleasant states of consciousness because you are unaware that your bedroom has been bugged . You continue to act as you had prior to your neighbor's misdeed. Meanwhile, your neighbor gains great pleasure from listening to and watching your nightly activities. Despite the fact you suffer no unpleasant sensations, your neighbor has perpetrated an evil and a wrong against you. Your right to privacy has been invaded, although you are unaware of the transgression. You have been harmed, your rights have been violated, even though you have not been hurt because you are unaware of the harm, and have not suffered unpleasant states of consciousness from the violation. Imagine that a police officer discovers the peeping tom and begins to take the miscreant into custody. The peeping tom objects: "Look here, officer. If you arrest me, you will have to inform my neighbors. My neighbors will then be very upset and suffer greatly because they will now know that I have been monitoring their activities for the past five years. The net effect will be great pain for them, pain for me because I face prosecution, no apparent joy for anyone. But if you let me go, I will stop my activities, and the net effect will be great pleasure for me as I really enjoyed watching them at night, no pain for them as they will continue to be unaware of what I did. You have a moral obligation on hedonist grounds to let me go." Alternate speech, if the perpetrator is feeling lucky: "But if you let me go, I will continue my activities, and the net effect will be even more pleasure for me, no pain for them, and the overall pleasure to pain ratio will increase dramatically. You have a moral obligation to let me go." The peeping tom will be unsuccessful even if the calculation of net effects is correct. The example demonstrates brightly that the hedonistic assumption is unpersuasive. We can be wronged and victimized even though we suffer neither painful sensations nor unpleasant states of consciousness as a result of that wrong . Good cannot simply be identified with pleasant sensations, evil with

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painful sensations. Thus, we cannot conclude that death is nothing to us because it is the end of all sensations. Instead of being nothing to us, death makes us nothing, if we reject , with Epicurus, dualism and the immortality thesis. Death renders us incapable of enjoying pleasure and suffering pain. If death is an evil it must be because it is a deprivation, it ends those aspects of our lives that are mean ingful, valuable, and good . Even if the hedonistic assumption was correct, death could still be cons idered a detriment. If a death cuts off a life that could have enjoyed a much greater balance of pleasurable over unpleasurable sensations if it had continued, then that death could reasonably be viewed as tragic, an unfortunate deprivation, even if we restrict, as do the hedonists, good and bad only to sensations. The person would have been better off if he or she had not died . Lucretius might rejoin that the deprivation argument plays into his hands. If death is sometimes bad because it deprives us of future goods , why is not birth bad because it deprives us of the goods we might have enjoyed if born earlier? First, we should brush aside difficult, murky metaphysical questions Would I really be the same person had I been born in, say, 1928 instead of 1948? Is my date of birth itself a constitutive attribute of who I am? - because the answers could dismiss Lucretius 's rejoinder from a hearing on the grounds that if born earlier I simply would not be "me." Next, we must hold the comparative life spans constant. If Jones were born in 1948 and died in 2000, then we cannot fairly compare Jones 's life to one in which he or she was born in 1928 and died in 2000 . The earlier birth would gain appeal only by increasing Jones's life by twenty years. Now we can see why Jones's being born in 1948 rather than in 1928 is not a deprivation in the way Jones 's dying in 2000 rather than in 2020 is a deprivation . A life lived from 1928 to 1980 is not obviously distinguishable from a life lived from 1948 to 2000 . If anything, the later birth life might seem preferable. I may fantasize about living during the glory days of the Roman republic or the golden age of Greece, but not if the cost is nonexistence during the twentieth century . Thus, dying in 2000 instead of2020 is often a deprivation in a way that being born in 1948 instead of 1928 is not. Dying in 2000 cuts short an active life in progress, while being born in 1948 merely locates the beginning of a life-span not quantitatively different than the one that might have begun in 1928. My understanding of the years prior to my birth is second-hand: 1 have learned of the past through reading , conversations with elders , movies, and the like. But once I am alive, my death severs connections with people, projects, interests, values and commitments that define my deepest aspirations. As I imagine the future rushing forward without me, I may conjure a hollowness. When I imagine the time prior to my birth 1 imagine a life to which I was never actually connected. As beings-impelled-toward-the-future it is natural that human beings sense an asymmetry between the future-without-me and the historical-past-when-I-did-not-exist. Even within the confines of our actual lives, we value events differently depending on their relation to our pasts and futures.

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Remembering the experience of having a broken arm when I was fourteen is qualitatively different from being informed that my arm will be broken next week. Death sometimes deprives us of the goods linked to our greatest concern, while prenatal nonexistence deprived us only of an histor ical past to which we are tenuously joined. We do not necessarily fear the "condition" of being dead, or even the process of dying, but the deprivation of goods that constitute our lives. Following Lucretius, the condition of death, if nonexistence, may be no more horrifying that the condition of nonexistence prior to birth. But, against Lucretius, the two time periods have a glaring difference: we lose nothing prior to birth, while at death we lose our lives and the goods our lives embody . Nor is it merely the state of being unconscious that is frightening. If we were in a temporary coma for, say, fifty years , but regained consciousness unaged and ready to enjoy a normal span of life, we would not necessarily regard the period in the coma as a terrible evil. We would mourn the loss of loved ones who had died while we were in the coma, regret having to make new friends, and be frustrated by the interrupt ion of our projects. But the prospect of such a coma would not overwhelm us. Nor is the process of dying our greatest fear. The horror of the process of dying can be softened by medication or even by hastening the moment of death . While usually painful and personally degrading, most of the terror of dying is that the process leads to death. If the process typically culminated in additional life and health it would not be feared to the extent it is now. I am not claiming that the process of dying, the condition of nonexistence, and the state of being unconscious do not add to our fear of death . They do. I claim only that these factors are not the main sources of our anxiety. Certainly how we die is important to most of us. We desire a painless, honorable, respectful demise, instead of a painful , dishonorable, degrading death . But even if a painless death could be guaranteed, certain fears would remain. Epicurus and Lucretius have mislocated the source of our anxiety . For those who reject dualism and immortality, death terrorizes us because we fear nothingness, extinction, and deprivation, not because we anticipate that death is a painful state. The ancient philosophers intended well: to alleviate our fears about our inevitable mortality and to nurture the tranquil life. Seduced, however, by the hedonistic assumption, they focus only on the absence of sensation and the condition of nonexistence. Even if they are correct about nonexistence being nothing to us, the Epicureans leave much unattended: the process of dying and the deprivation death exacts . Valuable aspects of life, such as interpersonal relationships, projects, goals, aspirations, interests, and associations, end at death. And that is why death often seems so bad. Biological survival is not paramount. We do not hope for a permanent coma, even if we are thereby kept biologically alive. A life completely lacking value and meaning would be a life not worth living to the person in that condition. Death ensures, stipulating the rejection of dualism and the immortal-

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ity thesis, that we are permanently deprived of the value, meaning, and good connected to our lives. This deprivation is the main reason we fear death and regard it as an evil. Against Lucretius, nonexistence prior to birth does not deprive us, but nonexistence at death permanently deprives us. Some deaths are more tragic than others, even though the democracy of death commands we all die once. The tragedy of a death is directly proportional to the actual and potential value of the life that has been terminated. Death is not always tragic because it does not always end a meaningful and valuable life. A meaningless and valueless life is one in which the kinds of activities and aspirations previously mentioned cannot be engaged in, nor is there a potentiality for future participation. If life itself, or a life, is not a good then its termination is not an evil. Dying is bad when continued life would be good. Dying is good when continued life would be bad. Although death is inevitable, this does not make the deprivation of life any less evil. Inevitability means that death is not within our control , but this need not make death any less evil. If, on every first Thursday, all human beings suffered severe stomach cramps, bleed profusely from the nose, and were afflicted with double vision , would the inevitability of these ills make them less evil, painful or bad? The inevitability of death suggests that worrying about whether we will die is pointless, but that is all.

2. Death Is Irrelevant to Value and Meaning in Life Kurt Baier argues that death is irrelevant to assessing the worthwhileness, value, 5 and meaning of life. If life is worthwhile at all, then a short life can also be worthwhile. If life is not worthwhile, then eternal life would be infinite terror. Death is sad only if life is beautiful and worthy. Although well-intentioned, this approach is unsuccessful. A person could still feel grave disproportion between effort invested in life and what life is and offers : "sound and fury signifying nothing." If a life, or life in general, could be more meaningful, valuable, and worthwhile if it had continued longer, then untimely death, or death as such, is relevant. As I reflect today, I would have judged my life worthwhile had I died at age thirty . But to have lived an additional two decades, with hope for more, has enhanced my life considerably. An inventory of projects pursued, relationships begun and maintained , children born and raised, experiences and adventures realized, knowledge gained, communities joined, and the like, shows conclusively that my life would have been less worthwhile, meaningful, and valuable than it is had it ended twenty years earlier. Baier's musings amplify an important insight: permanence is not a necessary condition of worth , meaning, and value . But he overinflates that insight and concludes that death is irrelevant. While eternal life is not a requirement for a meaningful life, the duration of a life is relevant for at least three reasons. First, the length of life is important for assessing the degree of worth , meaning, and

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value embodied by a life. Second, awareness of our mortality shapes our relationship to the features of life that produce worth, meaning, and value. Our possibilities are connected to our limitations. Third, the length of life is relevant in evaluating the proportionality between our efforts and our results. This evaluation is relevant to assessing the meaningfulness of life. 3. Death Gives Life Meaning Some have argued that death gives life its meaning. Personal immortality on earth would result in boredom, indifference, and a significant loss of intense experiences. Mortality provides structure and coherence to our lives. If death is necessary for life to be meaningful, then death is not an evil, but a necessary ingredient for avoiding absurdity. Death might still be reasonably regarded as an evil, though, if we have a categorical desire to live. Contemporary philosopher Bernard Williams is suspicious of all attempts to depict infinite satisfaction, whether earthly or otherworldly : [There is] a profound difficulty of providing any model of an unending , supposedly satisfying, state or activity that would not rightly prove boring to anyone who remained conscious of himself and who had acquired a character, interests, tastes, and impatiences in the course of living, already, a finite life . . . if a man has and retains a character there is no reason to suppose that there is anything that [could be guaranteed to be at every moment utterly absorbing] , [when] one tries merely to think away the reaction of boredom, one is no longer supposing an improvement in his consciousness of them ." If someone were given endless life, a chance to remain, say, fifty-two, in good health forever, the result would inevitably be boredom: "all the sorts of things that could make sense to one [person of that age] of a certain character'" would have occurred. Williams hinges much on the role character plays in personal identity and how it limits, by molding a person, the activities that are compatible with it. Living a finite life presents no problem in this regard. Life is short and few, if any, human beings exhaust the possibilities compatible with their character. Infinite life, however, would impose the problem of boredom. If the person's character changes over time, perhaps eliminating boredom, the life of the future person does not seem suitably related to the life of the earlier person. Williams's position may be less compelling than it first seems. Valuable goods, associations, and projects, binding us through a generational chain, may well be themselves infinite. Personal immortality need not cause boredom and indifference. Characters are evolving, not static. Perhaps if we were forced to live continuously at a particular age, Williams's point is forceful, regardless of the particular age chosen. But imagine an evolving, aging, infinite process of

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life. We would at some point be 2,457 years old and celebrate, with peers, a 2,439th anniversary of high school graduation. Granted many would still rehash some lies about how good they were way back then, retell the same tales of derring-do on the sports field or in the back seat of a Chevy, remember fondly or not Miss Cross , the harsh disciplinarian school marm, and the like. But if at 2,457 we had evolved new interests, projects, purposes, and perspectives from what we had at fifty-two , maintained robust health and the capability for living and loving, why is boredom inevitable ? Maybe the high school reunion scenario was a poor illustration. These are typically boring on the second or even the first shot. Williams 's claim about the unrelatedness of events as character changes over time is also inconclusive. Much depends on the process of change. If our character is altered radically by external forces, we might feel disconnected to our past, whether we live a finite or infinite life. But jf character changes are self-directed, perhaps by accepting a moderate version of Nietzsche's call for reimagination, deconstruction, re-creation, the unrelatedness of events over time need not produce acute effects . Our character is not strictly tied to chronological age, so remaining, say, fifty-two for infinity need not fix our character so tightly that we would exhaust all experiences for that age after a short time. You might argue that infinite life would destroy aspects of mortal life that make it worth living . Could we view ourselves as continuous beings, as subjects of a coherent biography, if we lived forever? Would not earlier aspects of our selves , say experiences from 2,000,000 years ago, be so disconnected from who we are now as to be irrelevant? Would we lose our sense of limits, a sense that gives structure to our lives? Can we even understand a life that crawls endlessly into the future? Would our lives lose unity and integrity? Would our choices lose significance because our possibilities are endless and not urgent? The answers are as speculative as the questions. From the standpoint of our finite lives, the questions are ominous. I have a difficult time remembering events from my early childhood. I would surely have no chance of remembering events from 2,000 ,000 years ago. Likewise , we often talk about being "different people" in our fifties than we were as teenagers. Many of our actions, ideas, and choices then seem radically disconnected to whom we are now . Ifwe experience that during a span of less than forty years, the coherency of an endless life seems impossible. I could go on to affirm the power of the other questions in the same way . But what would that show? Only that an infinite life is stunningly unlike a finite life. That is hardly news. Perhaps infinite lives would be graced with more powerful capacity for memories. Or not. Perhaps they would understand the connections of past and future better than we currently do, and identify more closely the people they are and those they were . Or not. Infin ite lives, though, would not have endless possibilities. Not in the sense that all humanly-possible things would be available to all. I may have infinity to work on my basketball game, but unless I gain some divinely-inspired attributes,

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Michael Jordan has no worry . I may have infinity to develop subtle courting schemes, but Sophia Loren may refuse my entreaties forever. Frustration writ large is yet another of my possibilities. I have, literally, all the time in the world, but I would nevertheless lack the abilities to fulfill all my dreams . Failure would still be a part of endless life. Infinite life, under any rendering, would be stunningly different from our finite lives. That is why the depictions of eternal life in Western religions are, understandably, so vague. Perhaps infinite life is a series of stories, instead of one biography with a finish. Perhaps there are disconnections between eras spanning those stories. Perhaps much unity and coherence are lost, while possibilities to pursue are gained. Perhaps later selves, those say 1,000 or more years removed from a past self, would be so stunningly different that they would be indistinguishable from distinct persons. Does this establish that infinite life would be a curse? I think not, especially in light of the radical speculation required to imagine a version of infinite life. To rule out religion's prize of immortality is unfair on conceptual grounds that are so speculative. A series of lives, although beyond our understanding now, might be more fulfilling than one, coherent, finite life. The choice need not be framed as between infinite life and a life of three score and ten. Even if all the problems discussed above infect infinite life it does not follow that they would adversely affect a life, say, of 200 or 300 years. The intention of the infinite-life-is-a-curse advocates is to ease our concern about our mortality and show that the alternative is incoherent. But there are other alternatives . Death might still be viewed as an evil, a harm, a deprivation becomes it comes too soon . Even if we accept the arguments of the infinite-life-is-a-curse advocates, it does not follow that a life of average life span is an unabashed blessing. Human lives that were on average 200 or 300 years, modeled on the lines described earlier, might well be preferable to the lives we know now. Lives that span 200 or 300 years cannot be disparaged on the same grounds available to undermine infinite lives. Unified personal existence might be impossible over infinity, but possible over spans of life three, four, or more times greater than current norms. An infinite series of lives or one augmented finite life might be more valuable than our typical lives of seventy or eighty years. Accordingly, the finite lives we know are not necessarily the best alternative, and the arrival of death is not necessarily a gift that frames our lives . If we try to imagine infinite life from the standpoint of our well-known finite lives, or if we constrict infinite life to a particular age, or if we stipulate that infinite life is not human life, we simply beg the question . We must , instead, try to do the impossible: fantasize an infinite life that parallels in grand form the growth, character development, successes and failures, agonies and ecstasies, opportunities for actualizing new potentials, trial and tribulations of earthly life, but without the specter of death . Only when conceived as a fixed, specific state does infinite life imply boredom.

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The fantasy is inconclusive because it is a major flight from what we are and know. I cannot prove Williams is mistaken. I can only cast suspicion on whether he is persuasive. Even if immortality would inevitably cause boredom, death is still an evil because the Grim Reaper terminates lives when they are or could be meaningful. To concede that death is necessary for life to be meaningful does not entail that particular deaths are not evil. Life is worth prolonging under appropriate conditions. Those, such as Williams, who argue that endless life would be meaningless, make their case only by specifying unappealing conditions for our extended lives. But the conditions are subject to imagination. Under those specified by Williams, many will conclude, with him, that endless life is not only unappealing but a stone cold disaster. Under other conditions, those permitting continued growth, creativity, novelty, and learning, our intuitions about endless life will be otherwise. Because the notion of endless life springs from imagination, no specification of the conditions can be demanded. So the answer to the question "Is an endless life desirable or meaningful?" is an uninspiring, "It depends." What sort of endless life, under what kind of conditions, including what types of activities, surrounded by what variety of social and natural environment? The popularity of a view such as that of Williams among twentieth-century philosophers is remarkable. Charles Hartshorne writes: No animal endowed with much power of memory ought to live forever, or could want to .. . for the longer it lives, the more the just balance between novelty and repetition, which is the basis of zest and satisfaction, must be upset in favor of repetition, hence of monotony and boredom . .. one has felt and done most of the things that must be felt and done so many times before. .. . Death is needed for the solution of an aesthetic problem, how memory is to be reconciled with zest." One of the most unabashed apologists for this line of thought was Walter Kaufmann. For most of us death does not come soon enough. Lives are spoiled and made rotten by the sense that death is distant and irrelevant. One lives better when one expects to die, say, at forty, when one says to oneself long before one is twenty: whatever I may be able to accomplish, I should be able to do by then; and what I have not done then, I am not likely to do ever... . Not only love can be deepened and made more intense and impassioned by the expectation of impending death; all life is enriched by it.9 Hartshorne and Kaufmann are undoubtedly making autobiographical remarks. Their words, however, are desperate, unsuccessful attempts to picture death as redemptive. I wonder, especially, how an otherwise brilliant man such as Kaufmann could gush such silliness. Even a short litany against their paeans

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to death is devastating to their project. First, our imaginations are more expansive than portrayed. Vast possibilities for human beings to enjoy enduring novelty and zest are available. A dose of Nietzschean deconstruction, reimagination, and re-creation of the self belies the inevitability of boredom. Second , repetition need not be limited to doing the same thing in the same way. We often experience variety in repeating tasks. Even mundane tasks such as washing our face and brushing our teeth need not become boring. Third, memories often energize new activities instead of conflicting with zest. Nostalgia is not the opposite of brio. Instead , our memories may trigger desires to repeat the experiences of the past or to reimag ine new possibilities. Fourth, the death-worshiping philosophers wrongly underplay the human capability for growth and creative achievement. Fifth, in regard to Kaufmann 's excess, creative life does not end at forty. Numerous experiences can typically, or only, be enjoyed after forty. Experiencing life as a fifty-year-old is one, trivial example. Thousands of artists, musicians, thinkers, politicians, leaders of armed forces, and everyday people have performed their most glorious work and experienced their greatest accomplishments after they reached forty , fifty, sixty, or later. Possibilities for meaning and value do not meekly obey a calendar. Finally, a sense of impending death can paralyze experience as easily as it can enhance . Kaufmann's romance novel mindset of lovers ironically vivified by a sense of imminent doom is unconvincing. While background danger, risk, and rendezvous with death can sometimes stimulate our sense of adventure, they are not a prerequisite for meaningful or valuable experiences. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) takes a different, more subtle tack. He argues that human beings are beings-toward-death." This stilted expression means that human existence is saturated by the understanding that it is finite and headed toward extinction. We suffer inevitable and recurrent anxiety because of our impending deaths . This anxiety is not psychological, it is not a problem we mayor may not endure. The problem is ontological, it is inseparable from human existence. Awareness of death is an immanent structure of human consciousness. Death is an ever-present potentiality, a constant foreshadowing of the future . Human beings often deal with ontological anxiety inauthentically. We take flight in routine, habit, and diversion as a way to forget our destiny . Or we imagine , irrationally, that death is something that happens only to others and applies abstractly to us. Or we regard death as the great disaster that we need not confront until a later, undefined moment. Such approaches are inauthentic because they falsely try to bracket, instead of confront, ontological anxiety . To confront ontological anxiety authentically requires continual awareness of our destiny. Death is part of human experience and should not be denied, either explicitly or implicitly through the strategies of bracketing. We should affirm ontological anxiety as a step toward liberation. Starting from the distractions of everydayness, we confront nothingness self-consciously. Heidegger takes the dread of our own nonexistence as the road to authenticity. My death is

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the one event of my life that no one can duplicate: it is my own and no one can understudy my role. Thus, awareness of death confers on us a sense of our own individuality. To bracket awareness of death is to renege on individuality. Awareness of death energizes life by stimulating a sense of urgency life would otherwise lack. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) correctly points out that death is not the one event of my life no one can duplicate. I I Virtually every experience I have, from the high of love, creative fulfillment, and self-actualization to the mundane of sleeping and breathing, is uniquely my experience. I can adopt an attitude of concern and importance to numerou s experiences. Although we can anticipate our deaths, we are usually unaware of the precise moment when the Terrible Terminator will sharpen the scythe and rudely demand our final farewell. The timing of our deaths is paramount: we may die prior to realizing the full meaning of our life, well after, or somewhere in between. Heidegger draws us to the particularities and concreteness of our experience, instead of our typical definitions in public terms. He is not counseling an obsession with death, but a more authentic understanding of our own individual lives. Keen awareness of the ontological anxiety we confront in our death, shakes us out of the everydayness of habit and diversion that dulls our sensibilities. Our desperation can no longer be silenced. Received opinion, inherited social structures, and preexisting political institutions turn us toward stultifying conformity. But getting in touch with the anxiety spurred by impending nothingness turns us back toward authentic living . Learning to confront our death teaches us how to live as authentic individuals. The unspoken dictatorship of social conformity, the leveling tendencies of group -think, and the push and pull toward mediocrity require a strong antidote . The cost of being tranquilized is inauthenticity. The flight from mortality corrodes the spirit. Heidegger's call to rise from everyday structures, thought, and action is inspiring. But is confronting death the answer? Other strong moods and emotions such as love, vengeance, compassion, hate, and conviction can awaken us from dogmatic complacency. Confronting death, then, is not necessary for individuality and concreteness. Confronting death is not always enough to elevate us above social conformity. Even direct experiences with death do not necessarily lead to authentic living. Nevertheless, Heidegger's main insights can be refashioned : sharpening our awareness of death can be one path toward more robust and authentic living; confronting death is connected to learning how to live; and tranquilized immersion in the everydayness of habit and diversion dulls our spirits and dishonors the narrative of our life. But we must temper Heidegger: We are more than beings-toward-death. Death is not the center of our existence. Heidegger assumes that only the monumental can elevate the everydayness of human life to authenticity. Death, then, is for Heidegger a source of meaning. But how much awareness of death is liberating? Existentialists such as Heidegger are invariably dramatic . They stress dread, nausea, angst, and high anxiety as primary moods. Sometimes the drama works, sometimes it does not. In the case

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of awareness of death, too much concern becomes the kind of obsession and neurosis parodied by the films of Woody Allen. Preoccupation with death paralyzes rather than liberates. Much human activity aims at nurturing and extending life, and struggling against death. A healthy attitude toward death includes fully recognizing its inevitability, refusing to live less energetically, constructing our projects in ways compatible with viewing ourselves as part of a long generation chain, pursuing ideals that affirm life's possibilities, maintaining a zest for the adventures, triumphs, and failures that constitute life, and appreciating the chance to be part of human history . I am not necessarily criticiz ing Heidegger. I do not think his view must end with a neurotic obsession with death. But he tends to downplay our survival instincts and to venerate ontological anxiety in ways that invite correction. While it is true that the denial of death and distraction by the routines of everydayness are self-defeating, and that recognizing mortality can provide opportunities for meaning, Heidegger leaves the impression that only immersion in our finitude produces liberation. Sartre sounds the right note when he scolds Heidegger: death is not the completion of life, it is not "a resolved chord at the end of a melody."J2 Death is not the meaning of life.

4. Death Deprives Life of Meaning For Sartre, death intrudes on life as a cruel external power that swoops down and sadistically destroys the project s of human consciousness. Death is not the meaning or even part of life. Death eliminates my possibilities. For an existentialist such as Sartre, this is crucial. We are free to construct our natures through our choices and actions. The meaning of life unfolds as we freely choose among possibilities. Although limited by the givenness of our existence, we cannot alter our births, the identity of our biological parents, our historical context, and the like, we are nevertheless radically free to construct ourselves and project value in the world . Death eliminates our possibilities and cannot give meaning to life. Death is a brute fact, another facticity or given ness, that imposes itself on being. My death is never a reality for me because I do not experience death . I experience the process of dying, but my death is a reality only for others. Others will bury, mourn, eulogize me, and regret my extinction. Or they will break out the champagne and dance on my grave in celebration of my departure. Or they will react less extremely. For them my death is a reality because they will experience connected events. For me there is only nothingness. 13 Sartre grapples with the meaning of death in his play, No Exit. Three people have died and gone to hell. Hell does not contain mirrors, we have no way of seeing ourselves except through others and their opinions. Hell is not a place of physical torture, but a room where the three people judge one another. The constant presence of evaluating Others defines torment. The world is full of meanings that are independent of our choices, but to depend on Others to be your mirror is hell. Mirrors are truthful , undemanding, and unreflective, while

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Others can be mendacious, demanding, and refuse to reflect, although they are able . Instead of controlling the world through our creative valuing, in Sartre's hell we are at the mercy of other meaning makers. Sartre insists that selfreflection is the path to self-recognition, while other people are distorting obstacles . The reflection of others energizes self-consciousness. Thus, we are at the mercy of other people. They have the power to make us into what we are . A human paradox is that we need the reflections of others to gain self-identity, but we also decl ine the invitation to become the creation of others. The characters in No Exit reap the evil they have sown on earth : having practiced bad faith in life, by fleeing from their freedom and responsibility, they forfeit their freedom and exist as objects. Having died, they cannot change anything and are themselves fixed . They exist only in each other's gaze and have lost their own subjectivity by defining themselves in accordance with the evaluations of Others. Hell, then , replicates the self-imposed torment many people choose on earth. The antidote on earth is to embrace our freedom and responsibility, and create our selves through our choices and actions. Sartre corrects Heidegger, but his solution conjures new dangers. Our projections, projects, purposes, interests, and relationships are textured by our awareness of our mortality. Whereas Heidegger offered us consciousness of death that could easily shade into obsession, Sartre serves up a stark distinction between life and death that can lead to self-defeating bracketing strategies. Our death can provide chances for meaning, not just in obviously heroic situations, say , throwing myself on a grenade to save my fellow soldiers thereby affirming my deepest values, but in more common venues. Heroes do not always get their names in the newspaper. The way we manage the process of dying, the messages we send, the relationships we energize illuminate who we were . Sartre might rejoin that acts prior to death or performed in the process of dying are not his target. They remain free choices that constitute our selfconstruction in the world. Instead, it is death, extinction, nothingness that Sartre stigmatizes as alien facticity. Th is response, however, has limited value. Our awareness of death creates opportunities for meaning that would not otherwise exist. I would argue that death also creates opportunities for meaning. How we die can add post -mortem meaning to our life, even though we will not experience that meaning. Some philosophers dispute this. Jay Rosenberg argues, for example, "There is no possibility that a person's history might extend beyond that person 's death.,,14Ifhe means only that human beings are mortal , not immortal, his words are harmless, although disputed by theists. But if he means what he literally says, that the history of a person ends with death, then he is mistaken. The idea of biographical life revolves around human life as a narrative, a story. We are a series of stor ies in that we understand and identify ourselves through a chain of events, choices, actions, thoughts, and relationships. Our biographical lives , including value and meaning connected to our death and events thereafter, extend beyond our biological lives . The legacy of figures such as Jesus, Lincoln,

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Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Jackie Robinson, and their like, bears meaning and value that transcend their deaths . And in some cases , such as Jesus, the way we die brightens the legacy. The narrative of human lives often continues beyond our deaths. Many human beings recognize this by consciously nurturing legacies, images , creative works, children, and projects that flourish beyond their deaths . We are aware, however, that our projects cannot endure forever and we pursue them in that light. Death, then, does not supervene on life; it provides a context for life. Admittedly, for most of us, our biographical story does not continue long after our deaths . Our fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not indispensable. At most, our departure would bring deep sorrow to those closest to us. Once those few who actually knew us and were influenced by us themselves die, most of us remain, at most, represented only by uncaptioned photos in webcovered albums stored in the comer of neglected attics . Most of our deaths will not be accompanied by massive displays of anxiety and gnashing of teeth . Beyond family, friends, and close associates, others will take note of our demise, perhaps attend a service , moan, "Too bad about Old Spike," or whisper, "No great loss," and get on with the mundane rhythms of life. Still, the question of what my future death means to me now is crucial. As Nietzsche insisted, the brio with which I live each moment of my live, the spirit of amor fati , is paramount. The meaning of my death hinges on the quality of my life. But we cannot exude a lifelong giddiness. As we project toward the future we can, however, become more aware of the processes, not merely the outcomes, that constitute our lives. To make our activities more fulfilling , to focus our creative interest in the act of creation instead of only on the result, speeds us toward the Nietzschean ideal. Heidegger and Sartre represent two poles of an unappealing dilemma: either death merits much awareness because it is the meaning of what has preceded it, or death is an external imposition that supervenes on life. Heidegger rightly rejects the second alternative and is left with the first. Sartre rightly rejects the first alternative and is left with the second. Neither sees clearly that the dilemma itself is phony . Why should these poles define our choices? Why should we all, or those who live authentic lives, share a common stance on our deaths? Another strain of the death- is-not-meaningful arguments contends that death should always be resisted. Dylan Thomas's "rage, rage against the dying of the light" vivifies this attitude . IS Refusing any accommodation with death, rejecting all appeals to meaningful deaths, and shunning every collaboration that makes death more palatable, the resisters demand all out battle . Although the battle must be lost, we exemplify pride, courage, and boldness in the struggle. Such uncompromising stubbornness exudes refreshing heroism. Part of us admires those who fight the unvanquishable foe with relish. But the project is also radically self-deceptive. First, it fails to understand how death still provides meaning under its own terms . By raging against death and by exemplifying positive values and attributes we recognize once again that our attitude toward

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death deeply influences our possibilities for maximally affirming life. The death-is-not-meaningful crowd does not demonstrate the vacuity of death, it takes a different road to meaning than accommodationists. The resisters shake their fists at death and, at best, manifest great value in a hopeless struggle, while the accommodationists accept death and hope to make it another occasion for meaning . The approaches differ only in their approach to death . They both tacitly agree that our possibilities for robust living are tied to our attitudes about death. Second, the death-is-not-meaningful crowd fails to appreciate how death is not always an evil or a harm. Depending upon our condition, circumstances, and reasonable expectations, death is sometimes a benefit and a fitting closure to a life lived well. 5. Death Is a Transition

Theisms hold that death is a transition to another form of life. Western religions, for example, believe in dualism and personal immortality: we survive death, are judged by a Supreme Being based on our earthly deeds, and gain eternal bliss, perhaps after a term of punishment and repentance, or endure eternal suffering. Death is not extinction or the cessation of experience, it is a transition to a transcendent world . This view of death , grounded on the suppositions of religion, carries all the hopes, fears, advantages, disadvantages, plausibilities, and implausibilities of theism . Our awareness and the reality of our mortality is a fundamental human horror. Our efforts to come to terms with mortality issue in numerous activities designed to evade death, if only symbolically. A persuasive case can be made that theism depends on mortality : if we were not physically mortal then invoking a Supreme Being or Absolute would not be necessary. Near-death experiences call our spiritual mortality into question. They usually include a pronouncement of death; a loud ringing; a feeling of moving rapidly through a dark tunnel ; the feeling of being outside the physical body , but still in the immediate physical environment; seeing our body from a distance; watching resuscitation attempts ; becoming accustomed to our new condition; noticing we have a new, astral body; meeting others who help; glimpsing the spirits of dead relatives and friends; meeting a loving, warm being of light; having that being ask a nonverbal question that impels the subject to evaluate his or her life; reviewing the major events of that life; approaching a barrier, thought to be the separation of earthly life from afterlife ; discovering that the subject must return ; resisting that return as we are overwhelmed by intense joy, love, and peace ; nevertheless reuniting with the physical body and returning to earthly life; and finding our life transformed by the near-death experience. Carol Neiman and Emily Goldman summarize such experiences in this way :

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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HUMAN LIFE? Some tell stories of traveling to a luminous world where they are greeted by loving beings. Others tell of panoramic visions of the events in their lives that amount to a kind of intimate, personal, and utterly nonjudgmental review of both good deeds .. . and harmful acts . .. . An extraordinary number . . . assert that they now understand that love is the most important quality to cultivate in our lives. Almost all of them speak of a blissful detachment from the body during their experiences, and many report that they have felt quite free from their usual emotional entanglements as well. 16

Critics argue that such experiences are triggered, or are deeply affected, by subjects' prior notions of heaven and the hereafter. They argue that near-death experiences are comforting hallucinations produced by the body and brain under stress . Finally, they insist that near-death experiences are, at most , only that: they are not death or afterlife experiences. The question of what happens after death is different from the question of what happens near-death. Believers, however, respond that near-death experiences transform lives: When they are told they must return to life, these travelers to the borders of the hereafter often obey reluctantly. But once they are back they find an appreciation for the beauty of life that they have never experienced before. They are no longer afraid of death, they say, because now they know that death is not the end. 17 Although religious beliefs affect interpretations of the being of light (God? Krishna? The Absolute?) encountered in near-death experiences, descriptions of the luminous being are remarkably similar regardless of subjects' religious beliefs or disbeliefs. Unlike typical hallucinations, many near-death experiences include accurate accounts of events and people surrounding the subject from vantage points inaccessible to their bodies . They have seen and heard the conversations of anxious relatives waiting outside emergency rooms, described the actions of medical personnel as viewed from a vantage point near the ceiling, and even noted that the tops of light fixtures were in need of dusting. IS Even the most sanguine believer, however, must concede the difference between near-death and death , a difference that reinstates the mystery of the afterlife. While near-death experiences challenge some of the scientific community 's most cherished convictions, they do not establish human immortality. Schopenhauer advanced an interesting secular version of the death-istransition view ." Greatly influenced by Eastern theism , Schopenhauer argued that our fear of death stems from a false understanding of our individuality. All earthly phenomena are aspects of an ultimate metaphysical force, the will, that pervades nature. The will has no inherent purpose but follows invariable laws

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and patterns. Saturated by a nonrational, striving power, without grand design, nature exhibits only conflict, stress, and tension unleavened by ultimate meaning. Our instincts for self-preservation manifest the will but do not flow from an underlying substratum called the self. Our notion of individual is an illusion . At death , our personal energy, force, and matter are recycled by the cosmic force we embodied while alive. Death is thus a transition: it destroys the illusion of individuality, rechannels our cosmic energy, but does not obliterate anything essential The glorification of the self, as we celebrate our rights, uniqueness, specialness, ambitions and achievements, is the calling card of the Western perspective. Schopenhauer, in contrast, accepts the Eastern teaching that the individual self is a roadblock to spiritual liberation. Selflessness becomes necessary to dislodge our anxieties over our deaths . The less we are obsessed with our selves the less our future deaths threaten our well-being now . In Eastern thought, life and death are not separate. They are the incremental processes of change . Human beings are embedded in a world that is an unbounded process. Death enables new phenomena to come into being and helps drive the process. Our elements persist in a different form, while our biographical life continues through the remembrances of our descendents. This social memory extends the narratives of our lives. To be forgotten , exiled, or isolated while biologically alive is a greater extinction than to be remembered, to be venerated, and to have extended influence, although biologically dead . The best way to die is not by raging against the dying of the light, but by minimizing ego attachments and gracefully yielding to inevitable transition. And the best way to die guides us to the best way to live. Schopenhauer indirectly raises an important issue : the role societal conditioning plays in our perceptions of death. Western religions, for example, greatly altered these perceptions. While these religions softened the fear of death for those confident their earthly deeds would win them eternal bliss, they amplified the fears of those with a keen sense of their checkered moral record . Based on what we have done on earth, which group is larger: righteous, religious followers cheerful about their prospects of ascending to eternal reward, or ambivalent, fallible sinners terrorized by the possibility of eternal damnation? We search without resolution for consolation. Schopenhauer rises to a vantage point from which he declares individuality an illusion . But that illusion partially constitutes who we are. We do not and cannot understand ourselves as fungible energy , force, and matter. Once we embody these materials, live a certain type of life, forge an evolving character, playa small but distinctive social role, link with a particular generational chain, and connect with specific value and meaning, our " illusion" of individuality becomes part of us. At death we lose that sense . Whether the energy, force, and matter we embodied is reproc essed and redirected, or is simply destroyed may not be a pressing issue for us. Human beings often yearn for personal immortality. Western religions are grounded on that desire . Schopenhauer's suggestions are unlikely to fill the

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void. Will we become delirious at the prospects of our recycled energy? Not likely. Schopenhauer might retort that he is not in the business of jollying up the masses, only of discovering and reporting the truth. His account of death fits nicely with his pessimistic understanding of desire generally. But two weaknesses undermine his account. First, as discussed earlier, his general understanding of desire is unpersuasive. That his account of death fits with that understanding is not a recommendation. Second, he began his account by heralding it as an antidote to fear of death . While his account might lighten the load of those whose fears flow from the prospects of eternal torment because they recognize the wantonness of their lives and they are plagued by the teachings of Western religions, Schopenhauer offers no elixir to those who already reject dual ism and personal immortality. Reprocessed and redirected energy, force, and matter are not preferable to extinction. 6. Death Is Relevant But Not Determinant A better view of the relation of death to meaning emerges from the analysis of the previous positions. The result may seem a middle-of-the-road approach: the mushy compromise between two frightening extremes. Texans are fond of report ing, "The only thing s in the middle of the road are white lines and dead armadillos." But Texans exaggerate. Awareness of death is certa inly relevant to a meaningful human life. Although I disagree with those who insist that immortality would necessarily bring boredom or disassociation from past identity, I agree that mortality provides a clear context and coherency to our lives. The existentialist philosophers awaken us to the dangers of bracketing our awareness of inevitable death . While I have argued that Heidegger and Sartre embrace a false dilemma, either death is the meaning of what has preceded it or death is merely an imposition that supervenes on life, they sharpen the stakes of the debate and rightly caution us against inauthentically forgetting about our mortality. You might argue that I have a class-influenced view of death , that only an intellectual could romanticize death as I do. For most of us death is unglamorous and mean ingless . Talk of timely death, when grand projects are complete and creative energies are exhausted, betrays an academic bias . Everyday people cannot see death in that light because their projects are not grand and their creative energies are expended on the brute struggle to survive, endure, and, hopefully, enjoy simple pleasures. We fear death because we are haunted by the process of dying, the deprivation of our simple pleasures, the terror of possible eternal damnation because of our guilt over earthly acts, and the understanding of our ultim ate alienation. Maybe Heidegger was wrong in thinking dying is the only thing we do uniquely, but he was surely correct in thinking our unique deaths are monumental because they intens ify our estrangement: we are all in this world alone, although we may not admit it until our dying gasp .

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Perhaps I take a "You are what you accomplish" view of life. Saturated with an academic's obsession with compiling an impressive curriculum vitae, seduced by the individualism and competitiveness of my society, and intoxicated by the heroic-romanticism of existentialists such as Nietzsche, I, predictably, am trapped by the philosopher's fallacy : mistaking a particular, culturebound, character-bound observation as a wider insight about the nature of what is being examined. Is not the entire history of Western philosophy based on thinkers giving autobiographical accounts of their temperament and character, then projecting them on the world, universalizing them as truths of human nature? That slogan, "On their deathbeds people don't regret not having spent more time at the office," is useful because it gives us a sense of priorities . But the reason we might regret on our deathbeds failed relationships is that at that point we sense most sharply our isolation . We are about to die, we are scared, we are leaving the world, the others we know are staying, some of us are terrorized by eternal damnation. We need comfort. Extra time at the office, watching another episode of Xena, Warrior Princess or Walker, Texas Ranger, completing the cement work on our front porch steps, going to the racetrack one more time , none of these actions provide that comfort. Nor does finishing another desperate book on the meaning of life. Comfort can be supplied only by those who share our fate or by a benevolent Supreme Being willing to forgive and forget. Or we suppose they are our final best hope . Who but an unrepentant philosopher such as Socrates could sit about calmly speculating about the immortality of the soul while awaiting the hemlock that would consume his life? Maybe I am correct in thinking that the way we die can make a difference, at times even be meaningful. The living appreciate it when a dying person is noble, humorous, and strong, instead of cowardly, bitter, and weak . But the living appreciate it because it diminishes their own fears of death and makes it easier to deal with the dying person: just as during life, our companions can substitute bluster, easy smiles, lame brav ado , and retread humor for the serious, intimate conversations about the meaning of life that make us so uncomfortable. Suppose science developed to the point where it could accurately predict, barring fatal accidents, the date of our deaths. Would you want notice of the date of your death? Having that information would make it impossible to forget death on an everyday basis. The information would paralyze action . Imagine someone with a short-timer's calendar, crossing out each day, knowing the date of his or her death , as time creeps on its petty pace. Forgetting and bracketing may not be as inauthentic as the existentialists claim. Such a rejoinder is a powerful critique of my position. But it contains some cheap shots . I never claim that my remarks capture universal truths embedded in the cosmos. Quite the contrary. My conclusions reflect my station and my class memberships, and are autobiographical in a broad sense. For most young people, death is no more than an abstraction: a regrettable end to their lives they know rationally will arrive, but not something they can take concretely to be real.

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Death has little or no conscious role in their lives. I remember going to movies by Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen when I was in my middle-thirties. I was stunned by their obsession with death. I could not figure out their fascination with death and, probably, lost much of the meaning of their work. I understand both the obsession and the meaning much more clearly now that I am in my fifties. Blaise Pascal conjures a bleak image: Let us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of rnen.i" Although the metaphorical power of Pascal's observation is stunning, human life is not so dreary. Most of us are not so obsessed with death that we have only the obituary pages to highlight our days. We are not merely in chains awaiting our turn. We have opportunities to pursue meaning and value . We are not consumed with our demise every waking moment. We attend to projects, interests, and relationships that animate our spirits and brighten our days . We do, however, watch the physical deterioration and deaths of love ones, endure suffering, and inch closer to the turnstiles of doom with each passing hour . Once more , we face the personal and cosmic perspectives. From a personal perspective, my death is the end, as long as we do not adopt theism , of the world . My consc iousness is obliterated, the planets and heavenly bodies evaporate. From a cosmic perspective, my death is part of the process of change, allowing another person the time and space to enjoy or to suffer. My death itself is insignificant. An intermediary perspective would deny both extremes. My biological death need not toll the end of my biographical life, nor the end of those projects, meanings, and values upon which my life centered. While permanence is denied me, lingering influence is not. Although I have romantic inclinations, I am hardly a full-fledged romantic. Our attitude toward death deeply influences our possibilities for maximally affirming life. The end of our existence is less significant than the effects our knowledge of morality has on the way we live. A life does amount to what a person does, but that need not fuel an inveterate striver's winner-takes-all mentality, or academic's understanding of success. Against Nietzsche, the possibility of a robustly meaningful life is not restricted only to the greatest among us. A healthy, adequate awareness of death can energize meaningful activities. Human beings often take a romantic-heroic path in trying to transcend death by part icipating in projects that endure beyond their deaths. We achieve a fragile immortality by raising children, sharing grand political and social causes, creating new technological and communication networks, making artistic contributions , and the like. My writing this book , a text that will outli ve its author, is an

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effort in that direction . We connect to value by extending beyond ourselves through relationships, projects, and creative endeavors upon which we stamp our identities. We can achieve a heroism that resists mortality by courageously struggling against a hard lot. An entire line of thinkers such as William James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nietzsche, and Roberto Unger sees the heroic quest as an attempt to transcend death by participating in projects of lasting worth. Die at the right time ... the death that consummates - a spur and a promise to the survivors. He that consummates his life dies his death victoriously, surrounded by those who hope and promise . ... To die thus is best; second to this, however, is to die fighting and to squander a great soul . . . the free death which comes to me because I want it. . . . He who has a goal and an heir will want death at the right time for his goal and heir." We know, however, that we cannot transcend death, our projects do not last forever, the stamp of our identities smudges with time, and for all but a few our footprints are trampled upon, then obliterated. But the experiences, the stream of processes, the struggles, defeats and triumphs elevate our lives with meaning . The heroic quest may be a response to the terror of human vulnerability, limitation, and inevitable death. Perhaps an unearned narcissism fuels the journey. Perhaps human life is impossible to live robustly without illusions . Are you listening philosophers? Do you nurture your own unacknowledged illusions? Perhaps religious commitment, instead of being the vehicle by which dominant classes solidify power, or by which the herd minimizes the glory of potential nobles, or by which human beings project their need for a Great Father, is an especially seductive narrative of the heroic quest for personal immortality. We must choose and act in a partly self-forgetful way. A personal perspective allows us to luxuriate in the heroic quest by temporarily marginalizing explicit awareness of death . Yes, this can become inauthentic: we cannot live entirely in personal perspectives without yielding our reflective powers that elevate us from a purely animalistic life. But neither can we live entirely in a cosmic perspective that calls into question the justification of each conscious moment. The struggle to triumph over life's limitations , the hunt for ersatz immortality, the yearning for connection with value and meaning , render us noble in the face of our terror. Confronting the Grim Reaper at the moment of ultimate Truth can itself crown the meaningfulness of our lives, or not. This is, perhaps, what Nietzsche meant in celebrating amor fati and disparaging the last man. Embracing life fully means accepting its tragic dimensions including human limitation, individual estrangement, and inevitable death . Celebrants of amor fati distinguish themselves by the quality of their performance: their confrontations with obstacles and suffering, their ability to forge a unified style out of their inherent multiplicity, their recurring self-creations and self-overcomings, their ability to luxuriate in the immediacy of life, and their understanding of life as a sequence of aesthetically self-fulfilling moments . A

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full acceptance of life and the surrounding world includes, for Nietzsche, the realization that prior to death our life has been fulfilling and is in need of no further acts to complete it. As the final curtain falls over our life, we savor the whole and wish only that it could be relived over and over, infinitely. Granted, this is a Nietzschean ideal, as death arrives on its own schedule and too often interrupts our best hatched plans, but Nietzsche imagines a praiseworthy attitude toward death which sees mortality as neither necessary for a meaningful life nor necessarily depriving life of meaning. Mortality is our unchosen context malleable within limits by our attitude . Living with adequate recognition of mortality, yet responding zestfully, can vivify meaning in our lives and elevate death beyond meaningless termination . Mortality is our context, not necessarily our defeat. We need not glorify death, we need not pretend we do not fear death, but we should temper the Grim Reaper's victory by living and dying meaningfully. Is this image merely an armadillo lying lifeless in the middle of the road? Our impulses to generate legacies are honorable even if permanence eludes us. For in the end, you will die, I will die, and the stars will fade away .

NOTES Chapter One 1. Leo Tolstoy, My Conf ession, tran s. Leo Wiener (London: J. M. Dent and Son s, 1905) , pp. 19-20. 2. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, ed . J. M. Rob son (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, (981) , vol. I, ch. 5, p. 143. 3. John M. Koller, Oriental Philosophies (N ew York: Scribner and Sons, 1985) . 4. See , e.g., Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah , N. J. : Paul ist Pre ss, 1994) . 5. Kurt Baier, 'T hreats of Futility," Free Inquiry, 8:3 (Summe r 1988) , pp . 47-53 ; Irving Singer , Meaning in Life (New York: Th e Free Pres s, 1992), chs. 1,3 . 6. Karl Marx , Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed . David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford Un iversity Press, 1977) . 7. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, tran s. James Strachey (New York: W.W . Norton & Co ., 1961). 8. Fri edrich Nietzsch e, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vin tage Books, 1966); and On the Genealogy of Morals, tra ns. Wa lter Kaufmann an d R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). 9. Plato , The Dialogues of Plato, 2 vols. tran s. B. Jow ett (New York: Random House, 1920 ). 10. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tran s. J. B. Baill ie (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). C hapter Two I. Will iam Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, in Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed . Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988), pp . 997-998. 2. See, e.g.. Albert Camus, The Rebel (New York: Vint age Boo ks , 1956); Keith An sell -Pe arson , An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp . 39, 200-20 J. 3. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, 3 vols., trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948) . 4. Albert Camu s, The Myth of Sisyphus, tran s. Justin O'Brien (N ew York: Vintage Book s, 1991 ). 5. Friedrich N ietz sche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, tran s. Walter Kaufmann (New York : Vik ing Press, 1954) ; "Zarathustra's Prologue," sec . 5. See, generally, Beyond Good and Evil, trans . Walter Kaufmann (New York : Vintage Books, (966); On the Genealogy of Morals, trans . Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New Yo rk: Vin tage Books, 1967); The Gay Science, trans. Walter Ka ufmann (New Yo rk : Random Hou se, 1967); The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Wa lter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967). 6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, tran s. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Pres s, 1954), "Morality as Anti-Nature," sec . 3; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Spirit of Gr avity ," sec . 2; "On Old and New Tablets," sec . 17; "The Other Dancing Song," sec . I; "The Seven Seals," sec. 1-7; "O n Love of the Ne ighbor" ; and "On the Pitying." 7. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 272 .

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8. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "Zarathustra's Prologue," sec. 3--4; "On Priests ." 9. Ibid., "On the Thousand and One Goals ." 10. Nietzsche, Twilight ofthe Idols, "The Problem of Socrates," sec. 2.

Chapter Three 1. Albert Camus , The Myth of Sisyphus , trans. Justin O'Brien (New York : Vintage Books , 1991); The Rebel (New York: Vintage Books , 1956). 2. Camus, The Myth ofSisyphus, p. 123. 3. Ibid. 4. Thomas Nagel , "The Absurd," The Journal of Philosophy (21 October 1971), pp. 716-727. 5. See, e.g., Matthew 5:18; Matthew 24:34-35; Mark 13:30-31 ; Luke 16:17; Luke 21:32- 33; I Corinthians 13:10; Hebrews 12:27. 6. Richard Taylor, Good and Evil (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1970), p. 259. 7. Ibid., p. 265. 8. See, e.g., W. D. Joske , "Philosophy and the Meaning of Life," Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy, 52:2 (1974), pp. 93-104. 9. Taylo r, Good and Evil, p. 59. 10. Ibid ., p. 260 . II . Ibid., p. 263. 12. Ibid ., p. 266. 13. Ibid ., p. 267 . 14. Richard Taylor, "Time and Life's Meaning ," Review of Metaphys ics, 40 (June 1987),pp.675-686,679. 15. Ibid., p. 681. 16. Ibid., p. 684. 17. Ibid ., p. 686. 18. Richard Taylor, "The Meaning of Human Existence," in Values in Conflict, ed. Burton M. Leiser (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1981), p. 24. 19. Richard Taylor, "The Meaning of Life," Philosophy Now, 24 (Summer 1999), pp. 13-14. 20. Ibid., p. 14. 21. Ibid . 22. Ibid . 23. Roberto Unger, Passion: An Essay on Personality (New York : The Free Press, 1984),pp. 3-5,7-10,20-39,53-55,57-62,65-67,69-76,95-100. 24. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 571-619.

Chapter Four I. Kurt Baier, The Meaning of Life , The Inaugural Lecture at Canberra University College (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1957), pp. 1-29. 2. Paul Edwards, "Life, Meaning and Value of," The Encyclop edia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Co., 1967), vol. 4, pp. 467--476. 3. Ibid., p. 473 .

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4. Marvin Kohl , "Meaning of Life and Happ iness: A Prelim inary Outl ine ," Dialectics and Humanism, 4 (19 81), pp. 39-43. 5. Irving Singer, Meaning in Life (New York: The Free Press, 1992), pp . 104, 106. 6. Ibid., p. 95. 7. Ibid., p. 101. 8. Ibid., p. 102 . 9. Ibid., pp . 105-106. 10. Ibid., p. 132. Il.fbid., p. 117. 12. Ibid., p. [28. 13. See, e.g., Isa iah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (Prince ton: Princeton Uni versity Pre ss, 1999 ). 14. Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merr ill, and Rebe cc a R. Merr ill, First Things First (New York : Simon & Schuster, 1994) , pp . 17-31.

Chapter Five I. See , e.g., G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Pres s, 1903); John O 'Neill, "The Varieties of Intr insic Value," Monist, 75 (April 1992), p. 121; Noah Lemos, Intrinsic Value (New Yor k: Cambridge University Press, 1994 ); Monroe Beardsley , "Intrinsic Value," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 26 (1965 ), p. 6. 2. See , e.g.. Tara Smith, " Intrinsic Value," The Journal of Value Inquiry, 32 (1998), pp. 539, 549-550. 3. Irving Singer, The Harmony of Nature and Spirit (Baltimore: Joh n Hopkins Un ive rsity Press, 1996), p. 147. 4. Ibid., p. 149. 5. Da vid Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1752 ), ed . L. A. Selby-B igge (Ox ford: O xford University Press, 1902), p. 173. 6. See , e.g., Richard J. Bern stein , Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: Un iversity of Penn syl van ia Press, 1983); Rich ard J. Bern stein, The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl van ia Press , 1976 ); Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame , Ind.: Un ivers ity of No tre Dame Press, 1982) . 7. John McDowell, " Values and Secondary Qualities," in Morality and Objectivity, ed. Ted Honderich (Londo n: Routl edg e & Kegan Paul , 1985), pp. 110-1 29. 8. George Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in The Works of George Berkeley, 4 vols ., ed. A. C. Fraser (Londo n: J. M . Dent and Son s, 1901). 9. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, [98 I) , pp. 505 -570. 10. Thomas Nagel, The View fro m Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) . I I . Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, Ma ss.: Harv ard Un iversity Press, 1985), p. 167. 12. Ibid., pp . 171, 173. 13. Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism (LaSalle, Ill: Open Court Publishing Co ., 1987), p. 86. 14. See, e.g., Jiirgen Haberrnas, " Between Ph ilosophy and Science: Marxism as Cr itique," in his Theory and Practice (Bosto n: Beacon Press, 197 3); Karl Kor sch , Three Essays on Marxism (Londo n: Pluto Press, 1971 ).

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15. Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy (Madison, Wis .: University of Wisconsin Pres s, 1989), p. 197; Richard Rorty, "The World Well Lost," Journal of Philosophy, 69 (26 October 1972), p. 665 . 16. Wilfred Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind ," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy ofScience, vol. I, ed. Herbert Fiegl and Michael Scriven (Minneapolis, Minn .: University of Minnesota Press 1956), p. 289 . 17. Putnam, The Many Faces ofRealism, p. 70 . 18. Ibid., p. 77. 19. Richard Bernstein, "Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Healing of Wounds," American Philosophical Society Proceedings, 63 (1989), pp. 5, 10. 20. Ibid., p. 16. 21. Ibid., pp . 16-17. 22. Ibid., p. 15. 23. Dworkin, A Matter ofPrinciple, p. 169. 24. Putnam, The Many Faces ofRealism, p. 67. 25. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed . G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans . Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), sec . 200.

Chapter Six I. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans . Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc ., 1985), bk. I, chs . 10, II . 2. See, e.g., Epictetus, The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments, trans . W. A. Oldfather (Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 196 I) ; Cicero, Marcus Tullius, De Fato, trans . H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1933); Diogenes Laert ius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers , trans . R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1931). 3. Robert E. Lane, "The Road Not Taken: Friendship, Consumerism, and Happiness ," Critical Review, 8 (1994), pp. 521-554; M. J. Stones, Thomas Hadjistavropoulos, Holly Tuuko, and Albert Kozma, "Happiness Has Traitlike and Statelike Properties," Social Indicators Research, 36 (1995), pp. 129-144; Roy F. Baumeister, Meanings of Life (New York: The Guilford Press, 1991); Ruut Veenhoven, Conditions of Happiness (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel Publishers, 1984); Ruut Veenhoven, " Is Happiness a Trait?", Social Indicators Research , 33 (1994), pp. 101-160. 4. Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (London : Horace Liveright, Inc., 1958) quoted in The Good Life, ed. Charles Guignon (Indianapolis, Ind .: Hackett Publishing Co . Inc., 1999), p. 182. 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight ofthe Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans . Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press , 1954), "Epigrams and Arrows," sec . 12. 6. Ibid., sec . 38.

Chapter Seven

I. Epicurus, "Letter to Menoeceus," in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, ed. Whitney 1. Oates, trans . C. Bailey (New York : The Modem Library, 1940), pp . 30-34. 2. Ibid., p. 31.

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3. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers , ed . Whitney J. Oates, trans. H. A. J. Munro (New York : The Modem Library, 1940), pp . 69219. 4. Ibid., p. 131. 5. Kurt Baier, The Meaning of Life, The Inaugural Lecture at Canberra University College (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1957), pp . 1-29. 6. Bernard Williams, "The Makropulos Case : Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality," in The Metaphysics of Death, cd. John M. Fischer (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 87. 7. Ibid., p. 82 . 8. Charles Hartshorne, "Outlines of a Philosophy of Nature," Personalist, 39 (Fall 1958) , pp . 380-391, 387 . 9. Walter Kaufmann, The Faith ofa Heretic (New York : Anchor Books, 1963), pp . 372-373. 10. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans . John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), sec . 50-53 . 11. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans . Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966), pp. 678-690. 12. Ibid., pp. 682-683 . 13. Jean -Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays (New York: Vintage Books, 1989) . 14. Jay Rosenberg, Thinking Clearly about Death (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : PrenticeHall, Inc., 1983), p. 96. 15. Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," in The Collected Poems ofDylan Thomas. 1934-1952 (New York: New Directions, 1971), p. 128. 16. Carol Ne iman and Emily Goldman, After Life (New York: Penguin Books, 1994) , p.16. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., p. 21. 19. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans . by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, 3 vols . (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948). 20 . Blaise Pascal , Pensees , trans . W. F. Trotter (London: J. M . Dent, 1908), p. 199. 21 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York : Viking Press , 1954), "On Free Death."

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ansell-Pearson, Keith . An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Irwin . Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 1985. Baier, Kurt. "Threats of Futility," Free Inquiry, 8:3 (Summer 1988), pp. 47-53 .

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Raymond Angelo Belliotti is Distinguished Teaching Profes sor and Chairperson of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He received his undergraduate degree from Union College in 1970, after which he was conscripted into the United States Army where he served three years in military intelligence units during the Vietnamese War . Upon his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Miami where he earned his master of arts degree in 1976 and doctorate in 1977. After teaching stints at Florida International University and Virginia Commonwealth University, he entered Harvard University as a law student and teaching fellow . After receiving a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, he practiced law in New York City with the firm of Barrett Smith Schapiro Simon & Armstrong. In 1984, he joined the faculty at Fredonia. Belliotti is the author of four other books : Justifying Law (1992), Good Sex (1993) , Seek ing Identity (1995) , and Stalking Nietzsche (1998) . He has also published fifty-five articles and twenty-five reviews in the areas of ethics, jurisprudence, sexual morality, medicine, politics, education, feminism , sports, Marxism, and legal ethics . These essays have appeared in scholarly journals based in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. Belliotti has also made numerous presentations at philosophical conferences, including the 18th World Congress of Philosophy in England, and has been honored as a featured lecturer on the Queen Elizabeth-Z ocean liner. While at SUNY Fredonia , he has served extensively on campus committees and as the Chairperson of the College Senate . For six years he was faculty advisor to the undergraduate club, the Philosophical Society, and he has served that function for II Circolo Italiano. Belliotti has been the recip ient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, the William T. Hagan Young Scholar/Artist Award , and the Kasling Lecture Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship.

INDEX Bonaparte , Napoleon, 75, 76, 86, 107 Brahman, 16, 17 Brooks, Mel, 9 Buddhism, I, 14-17, 19-20,33,63 Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, 75

Absolute, the, 23, 25, 26, 69, 71, 86, 89, 149, 150 Buddhist A., 14-17 Hegelian A., 26-28 Hindu A., 16-17 absurd, the, 31, 51-56 and Camus, 51-52 and Nagel, 54-56 absurdity, 31,49,51,54-56 acts, 6, 57 futile a., 6, 57 pointless a., 6, 57 trivial a., 6, 57 worthless a., 6, 57 Advaita Vedanta, 16-17 aesthetic creativity, 47, 61-62, 77-78, 82-83 afterlife, 149-152 Allah, 18, 21 Allen, Woody, 9, 146, 153 amor fati, 38, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46-47 , 89, 90, 148, 155 anti-realism, 98-102, 106-110, 114 Archimedean point, 67, 102, 104, 115 aristocracy, 47-48 Aristotle, 8, 119-120, 121-122, 128, 130,131 ,132-134 armadillo, 10, 53-54, 152, 156 art, 35,36,46,47,48,68-69 attitude , 41-45, 120-122 and Stoicism, 8, 41, 71, 120-122 maximally affirming a., 38, 41, 42, 44,45,46-47,89-90,148, 154-155 atman, 16 authenticity, 52-53, 144-146, 147-149, 153

Camus , Albert, 8, 51-54 and absurdity, 51-54 and authenticity, 52-53 and Myth of Sisyphus, 8, 51-54 Catholicism, Roman, 17-18,29-30 Christianity, 12, 13, 14, 17-18,20-24, 42,48 and romanticism, 64 and theism, 14, 17-18 City Slickers, 89 conflict , 84-85, 154 Confucianism, 63-64 contentment, 35, 78, 82, 91 conventionalism, 103 Cool Hand Luke, 52 cosmic meaninglessness, 6, 31, 43, 5471 cosmic perspective, 6, 8,49, 52, 53, 54-71,78-84 as distorting, 56 using for practical advantage, 55-56 cosmos, 28,29,30, 32, 33,46 and meaning, 14,36,42,71 and meaninglessness, 14,36,43,71 as rational and just, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25,26 creati vity, 40-42,78-79, 141 , 144 aesthetic c., 47,61-62,77-78,82-83 critical pragmatism, 114-118 Crockett, Davy, 76 Curie, Marie, 61

Baier, Kurt, 8, 20, 73-74, 139-140 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 2-3, 129 Bentham, Jeremy, 13 Bergman , Ingmar, 153 Berkeley , George, 106 Bernstein , Richard, 116-117 biographical life, 88,147-148,151, 154 biological life, 88, 147-148, 154

death, 3, 8, 12,59, 152-156 and meaning, 3, 139-140, 141-149, 152-156 and transition, 149-152 and value, 139-140 fear of d., 135-139 irrelevance of d., 135-139 near death experiences, 149-150 decadence, 32,41

172

INDEX

deconstruction, 38, 40-42, 64, 68, 70, 78-79,83,141,144,155 dependent origination, 15, 16 despair, 12,52,55 Dewey, John, 2, 97-98 Dickinson, Emily, 61, 129 DiMaggio, Joe, 108, 129 discourse, nonnat ive, 93-105, 114-118 dualism, 35, 39, 135, 137, 139 Dworkin, Ronald, 114

God, I , 14, 17-18,25,28,32,42,48, 89,95-96,104,109,121,150 and theism, 17-18,20-24 proofs for existence of G., 20-21 Goldman, Emily, 149-150 Goldman, Emma, 129 Good, Form of the, 24-26 good, greatest, 8, 129-131 grand transcender, the, 62, 71, 78, 108, 126-127

Edwards, Paul, 8, 74-75 Elizabeth 1,Queen, 129 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 155 enduring value, 11, 18-19,25-30,3233 enhancement factor, 123-124, 125-126, 132 Epicurus, 135-139 epistemological foundationalism, 80, 102-103,112-114 eternal recurrence, 41-43, 44-45, 155 eternal striver, the, 62-71, 126-127, 154 eternity, 59, 91,140-143 euthanasia, 7, 101 Euthyphro, 104 evil, 19, 107-108 , 135 exemplary living, 7, 86-88, 93 existential dilemma, 63 existential problem, 11-14,30 existentialism, 144-149, 152-153 experience machine, 64-65

hallucination, 6, 8, 75, 76, 86, 123-124 , 132-134,150 happiness, 2-3, 8, 15, 108, 119-134 as flourishing, 3, 119-120 as tranquility, 120-122 and Sociology, 122-126 and meaningful lives, 129-131 and greatest good, 129-131 and virtue, 131-132 critique of h., 132-134 hannony, 35,78, 82,91 Hartshorne, Charles, 143- 144 hedonism, 35, 73-74 hedonistic assumption, 136-137 , 138 Hegel, Georg W. F., 1, 24, 25-28 Hegelianism, 14,26-28,49 critique of H., 27-28 explanation of H., 26-27 Heideggcr, Martin, 144-146, 147, 148, 152 herd, 22, 48, 155 mentality, 35-36, 48 values, 47-48 hero, 30-31 , 54, 147, 148-149, 152, 154,155 heroic ethics, 63 Hinduism, 1, 14, 16-17, 19-20,63 Hitler, Adolf, 2, 7, 61, 74, 78,87,88, 93 human nature, 63-64, 69 Hume, David, 102

faith, 6, 12-13,27,41, 135 and meaning oflife, 79, 84, 85, 89, 90,98 and religion, 23, 29, 149-150 fallibilism, 114-118 Fascism, 27 finitude, 12, 17, 82, 135-136, 140-156 flourishing, 119-122, 132-134 Forms, Platonic, 24-25 foundationalism, 80, 102-103, 112-114 Freud, Sigmund, 22, 27 fusion with Absolute, 63 Gandhi, Mahatma, 107

Idea-Conscious-of-Itself, 26 Idea-In-Itself, 26 Idea-Outside-Itself,26 idealism, 26-28, 109-110 immortality, 14-17 ,22-23,30,88, 135-156

INDEX important lives, 7, 86-88, 93 incommensurability, 116-118 infinite life, 59, 140-143 infinite regress , 2, 8, 20-21, 93-94, 95-

97,101 instrumental value, 97 intrinsic value, 2, 65-66, 69-70, 92-98,

108-109, 112 Islam, 18, 21 James, William, 155 Jesus Christ, 18, 107, 129, 147, 148 Jordan, Michael, 142 Judaism, 14, 18, 21 karma, 15, 16, 17, 19,20 Kaufmann , Walter, 143-144 Kierkegaard, Seren, 129 Kohl, Marvin, 75-76 Krishna, 150 LaMotta, Jake, 128 last man, 35-36,40, 75,131,133,155 laughter, 36, 37 legacies, 8, 88-91, 156 Leonardo Da Vinci, 2, 7, 61, 87, 108 life, meaning of, 9-11,14,73-91 questions surrounding I., 9-11 rank order of I., 40 Lincoln, Abraham, 107, 129, 130, 147 lives, 7, 86-88, 93 exemplary I., 7, 86-88, 93 happy 1.,119-134 important I., 7, 86-88 , 93 minimally meaningful I., 6-7, 86-88 ,

90,93, 130-131

robustly meaningful I., 7, 76, 86-88,

93,129-131,134,139 significant I., 7, 77-78, 85-88, 93 valuable I., 87-88 worthwhile I., 6-7, 93 Locke, John, 105 Loren, Sophia, 142 Louis, Joe, 128 love, 37-39, 41-44,46 decadent I., 38, 39 life-affirming I., 38, 39 Lucretius, 135-139

173 Macbeth, 31, 81, 82 Marx, Karl, 21-22, 23, 27, 28 Matlock, 75 McDowell, John, 105 McGwire, Mark, 64 meaning, 6, 8, 9-30, 51-71 and cosmos, 14 and legacies, 88-91 and significance, 56, 85-88 and Myth of Sisyphus, 1,6,8,51-71 and theism, 9-30 and value, 8, 93-118 oflife, 2, 9, 73-91 subjective m., 58-60, 75, 77-78, 8081 objective m., 58-60, 75, 77-78, 8081 meaningful lives, 6, 7, 86-88, 90, 93, 130-131 metaphysical realism, 80, 103, 113 Michelangelo Buonarotti, 61,129,130, 134,148 Mill, James, 13 Mill, John Stuart, 13-14, 80 morality, 47-48,87-88,98-102 mortality, 14, 17,22-23,30,88,135156 Moses, 129 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 61 multiplicity, 68, 82, 155 Murder, She Wrote, 75 Nagel, Thomas, 8, 54-56, III Nazism, 27 Neiman, Carol, 149-150 Newman, Paul, 52 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1,8,22,27,33,

34-49 ,62,70,71,75,83,84,86, 87,88,90,98,119,123,127, 131,133,141,144,148,152, 154-156 and amor fati, 38, 41-42, 44-47,148, 155 and eternal recurrence, 41-43, 44-45 and herd mentality, 35-36, 47-48 and last man, 35-36, 40, 75, 155 and meaning, 36-48 and movement, 36-38 and nihilism, 31-33, 40

174 and overman, 40 and pleasure, 35-36 and religion, 47, 48 and value, 45-48 criticism ofN., 38-40, 42-44, 45, 48, 49 tragic view oflife, 36, 37 nihilism, 8, 31-33 active n., 8, 32, 40 anarchistic n., 32 epistemological n., 32 existential n., 31 moral n., 32 passive n., 32, 41 skeptical n., 31 Nirvana, 15, 16,25 No Exit, 146-147 nonnative discourse, 115-118 nothingness, 144-149 Nozick, Robert, 8, 62, 64-66, 68-71, 106-109 objectivism, 2, 98-104,105,107,112, 113-114,116 ovennan,40,83 Palance, Jack, 89 Pascal, Blaise, 154 path, eightfold, 15-16 peace, 91 personal perspective, 6, 8, III, 154, 155 perspective, 6, 8,49,52-56,58-71 , 78-84 cosmic p., 6, 8, 55-56, 81-82, III, 154,155 intermediary p., 82, 154 personal p., 6, 8, III, 154, 155 pessimism, 8, 32-35, 71 Picasso, Pablo, 87-88 pictorial symmetry, 55-56, 81 pity, 38 Plato, 1,24--26,34, 104, 125 Platonism, 14 pleasure, 131, 136-137 power, 12,35-36,46 pragmatism, 95, 97-98, 114-118 primary qualities, 102, 105-106 problem, existential, 11 -14,30

INDEX process, 76, 83 Pythagoras, 25 Python, Monty, 9, 51 qualities, 102, 105-106 primary q., 102, 105-106 secondary q., 102, 105-106 realism, 98-102, 103-106, 111-112 strong r., 98-102, 103-104, 110-112, 114

weak r., 105-106, 111-112 realizationism, 106-109 rebellion, 52-53 re-creation, 38, 40-42, 64, 68, 70, 7879,83, 141, 144, 155 redemption, 54, 84 reimagination, 38,40-42, 64, 68, 70, 78-79,83,141 ,144,155 reincarnation, 15, 16, 17, 19,20,25 relational value, 64, 66, 68, 71, 90, 96, 97,100 relativism, 64, 102-104, III, 114--118 religion, 14--24,29-30,73, 155 resentment, 35-36, 47-48 retarded people, 2, 7, 86, 87, 88 Robinson, Jackie, 148 romanticism, 4, 9, 49, 53, 55, 62, 64, 68,71,78, 152, 154 Rosenberg, Jay, 147-148 Russell, Bertrand, 128 Sabrina . Teenage Witch, 90 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 30, 145, 146-149, 152 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1,8,33-35,4849,151,152 Scrooge, 48 secondary qualities, 102, 105-106 Seinfeld, Jerry, 133 self, 15,41 ,45-49, 83 glorification of s., 83, 151 illusion ofs., 14--17,33-35 self-actualization, 36, 40-42, 155 self-creation, 35, 38, 40-42, 45, 55, 64, 68,70,78-79,83, 141, 144, 155 self-mastery, 36, 38, 42, 68 self-overcoming, 38, 40-42, 45, 155 self-perfection, 36, 40-42, 155

INDEX Shakespeare, William, 31 significance, 7, 73-74 , 77-78, 85-88,

93 Singer, Irving, 8, 20, 77-78, 97-98 Sisyphus, Myth of, 1,6, 8,34,36,49,

51-71 , 86 as armadi llo, 53-54 as Cool Hand Luke, 52-53 as creator, 60-62 as grand transcender, 62-71 as ironist, 54-56 as master arch itect , 57-58 as robot, 58-60 Slinky toys, 8, 71, 98 and meaningful life, 78-84, 89 social comparisons, 122-126 and happiness, 122-126 and meaningful life, 124-126 socialism, 27 soc io logy , 122-126 and happiness, 122-124 and philo sophy, 125-126 Socrates, 8, 107, 125-126, 129, 153 soul , 15-16, 22-23 Stalin, Josef, 87, 93 Stem, Ho ward , 134 Sto icism , 8, 4 1, 71, 120- 122 strugg le, 84-85, 154 subj ectivism , 93-95, 96-98, 105, 155 su ffering, 15, 17,34-35,39,43 ,46, 84-85, 154 suicide, 7, 12, 52 Taylor, Richard, 8, 57-62, 71, 74 tele scopes, 8, 71, 78-84, 89 and meaningful life, 78- 84 Teresa, Mother, 108, 148 theism, 1,7 ,14-30,52,81 ,149-150,

154 and meaning, 1, 14-30 attraction to t., 29 Eastern t., 1,7,14-17,25,29,150 philosophical t., 24-28 weaknesses oft., 19-24 Western t., 17,7 ,17-1 8,29-30 thei stic assumption, 13,23-24,32,49

thing-in-itself, 33 Thomas, Dylan, 148-149 Th oreau, Henry David, 10

175 time , 41--45 circular t., 41--43,44--45 linear t., 41--43, 44--45 Tolstoy, Leo , 12-13 , 23,24,29,49,

59-60, 80

and crisis, 11-13 and trinit y, 13 Tol stoy ' s trinity, 13, 18, 19,20,25,26,

27,28,29-30,32,33,46 tranquility, 120-122, 126-127, 131 tran scendence, 16, 17, 24, 43, 48, 154 tran scender, the grand, 62-71 , 78, 126-

127 transmigration of soul, 14, 17,19,20,

25 Trump, Donald , 91 truth , 98-102 Truths, Four Noble , 14-15

Obermensch, 40,83 Unger, Roberto, 8, 62-64, 66-68, 69,

70,71,155 un ifier , noble , 68-70, 108 uni ty, organic, 65-66, 68-69, 106-109 Unlimited , the, 65, 69-70 utilitar iani sm, 13, 35, 11 9, 131 value, enduring, 11 , 89 and cosmo s, 11 and mean ing of life, 11 and Tolstoy's trinity, 13, 18-20,25-

26 values, 2, 8, 20, 40, 90-91 , 93-118 ae sthetic v., 47, 88 and anti-realism , 98-102, 109-110,

114 and foundationalism , 80, 102-103,

113 and and and and

idealism, 26-28, 109-110 meaning, 64-66, 68-71 Nietzsche, 45--48 organic unity, 65-66, 68-69,

107-109 and relig ion, 47, 48 and strong realism, 98-102, 104-105,

111 -112 ,114 and wea k realism , 105-106, 111-112 cognitive v., 47,56, 88

176 intrinsic v., 2, 65-66, 69-70, 93-98, 108-109, 112 instrumental v., 97 moral v., 47, 87-88, 98-102 process v., 36-38, 45-48 relational v., 96, 97, 100 religious v., 45-48 scientific v. , 45-48 Van Gogh, Vincent, 129 Walker. Texas Ranger, 153 war, 84-85 will , 33-35 Williams, Bernard, 140-143 worthwhile lives, 6, 73-74 worthwhileness, 6, 57, 73-74, 86 X-Files, 86 Xena. Warrior Princess, 153 Zorba the Greek, 10

INDEX

VIBS The Value Inquiry Book Series is co-sponsored by: Adler School of Professional Psychology American Maritain Association American Society for Value Inquiry Association for Process Philosophy of Education Canadian Society for Philosophical Practice Center for Bioethics, University of Turku Center for International Partnerships, Rochester Institute of Technology Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Centre for Applied Ethics, Hong Kong Baptist University Centre for Cultural Research, Aarhus University Centre for the Study of Philosophy and Religion, College of Cape Breton College of Education and Allied Professions, Bowling Green State University Concerned Philosophers for Peace Conference of Philosophical Societies Department of Moral and Social Philosophy, University of Helsinki Gannon University Global Association for the Study of Persons Ikeda University Institute of Philosophy of the High Council of Scientific Research, Spain International Academy of Philosophy of the Principality of Liechtenstein International Center for the Arts, Humanities, and Value Inquiry International Society for Universal Dialogue Natural Law Society

Philosophical Society of Finland Philosophy Born of Struggle Association Philosophy Seminar, University of Mainz Pragmatism Archive R.S. Hartman Institute for Formal and Applied Axiology Research Institute, Lakeridge Health Corporation Russian Philosophical Society Society for Iberian and Latin-American Thought Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love Yves R. Simon Institute .

Titles Published I.

Noel Balzer, The Human Being as a Logical Thinker.

2.

Archie J. Bahm, Axiology: The Science of Values.

3.

H. P. P. (Hennie) Lotter, Justice for an Unjust Society.

4. H. G. Callaway, Context for Meaning and Analysis: A Critical Study in the Philosophy ofLanguage. 5.

Benjamin S. Llarnzon, A Humane Case for Moral Intuition.

6. James R. Watson, Between Auschwitz and Tradition : Postmodern Reflections on the Task of Thinking. A volume in Holocaust and

Genocide Studies.

7. Robert S. Hartman , Freedom to Live: The Robert Hartman Story, edited by Arthur R. Ellis. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology

Studies. 8.

Archie J. Bahm, Ethics: The Science of Oughtness.

9 . George David Miller, An Idiosyncratic Ethics; Or, the Lauramachean Ethics. 10. Joseph P. DeMarco, A Coherence Theory in Ethics.

11. Frank G. Forrest, Yaluemetrics": The Science of Personal and Professional Ethics. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies. 12. William Gerber, The Meaning of Life: Insights of the World's Great Thinkers. 13. RichardT. Hull, Editor, A Quarter Century of Value Inquiry: Presidential Addresses of the American Society for Value Inquiry. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies. 14. William Gerber, Nuggets of Wisdom from Great Jewish Thinkers: From Biblical Times to the Present. 15. Sidney Axinn, The Logic of Hope : Extensions of Kant's View of Religion. 16. Messay Kebede, Meaning and Development. 17. Amihud Gilead, The Platonic Odyssey: A Philosophical-Literary Inquiry into the Phaedo. 18. Necip Fikri Alican, Mill's Principle of Utility: A Defense ofJohn Stuart Mill's Notorious Proof A volume in Universal Justice. 19. Michael H. Mitias, Editor, Philosophy and Architecture. 20. Roger T. Simonds, Rational Individualism: The Perennial Philosophy of Legal Interpretation. A volume in Natural Law Studies. 21. William Pencak, The Conflict ofLaw and Justice in the Icelandic Sagas. 22. Samuel M. Natale and Brian M. Rothschild, Editors, Values , Work, Education: The Meanings ofWork. 23. N. Georgopoulos and Michael Heim, Editors, Being Human in the Ultimate: Studies in the Thought of John M. Anderson. 24. Robert Wesson and Patricia A. Williams, Editors, Evolution and Human Values. 25. Wim J. van der Steen, Facts, Values, and Methodology: A New Approach to Ethics.

26. Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality. 27. Albert William Levi, The High Road of Humanity: The Seven Ethical Ages of Western Man, edited by Donald Phillip Verene and Molly Black Verene. 28. Samuel M. Natale and Brian M. Rothschild, Editors, Work Values: Education, Organization, and Religious Concerns. 29. Laurence F. Bove and Laura Duhan Kaplan, Editors, From the Eye ofthe Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace . A volume in Philosophy of Peace. 30. Robin Attfield, Value, Obligation, and Meta-Ethics. 31. William Gerber, The Deepest Questions You Can Ask About God: As Answered by the World's Great Thinkers. 32. Daniel Statman, Moral Dilemmas. 33. Rem B. Edwards, Editor, Formal Axiology and Its Critics. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies. 34. George David Miller and Conrad P. Pritscher, On Education and Values: In Praise of Pariahs and Nomads. A volume in Philosophy of Education. 35. Paul S. Penner, Altruistic Behavior: An Inquiry into Motivation . 36. Corbin Fowler, Morality for Modems. 37. Giambattista Vico, The Art of Rhetoric (lnstitutiones Oratoriae, 17111741), from the definitive Latin text and notes, Italian commentary and introduction by Giuliano Crifo, translated and edited by Giorgio A. Pinton and Arthur W. Shippee. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy. 38. W. H. Werkmeister, Martin Heidegger on the Way, edited by Richard T. Hull. A volume in Werkmeister Studies. 39. Phillip Stambovsky, Myth and the Limits of Reason.

40. Samantha Brennan, Tracy Isaacs, and Michael Milde, Editors, A Question of Values: New Canadian Perspectives in Ethics and Political Philosophy. 41. Peter A. Redpath, Cartesian Nightmare: An Introduction to Transcendental Sophistry. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy. 42. Clark Butler, History as the Story of Freedom: Philosophy in Intercultural Context, with Responsesby sixteen scholars. 43. Dennis Rohatyn, Philosophy History Sophistry. 44. Leon Shaskolsky Sheleff, Social Cohesion and Legal Coercion: A Critique of Weber, Durkheim, and Marx. Afterword by Virginia Black. 45. Alan Soble, Editor, Sex, Love, and Friendship: Studies of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, 1977-1992. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies. 46. Peter A. Redpath, Wisdom 's Odyssey: From Philosophy to Transcendental Sophistry. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy. 47. Albert A. Anderson, Universal Justice: A Dialectical Approach. A volume in Universal Justice. 48. Pio Colonnello, The Philosophy of Jose Gaos. Translated from Italian by Peter Cocozzella. Edited by Myra Moss. Introduction by Giovanni Gullace. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy. 49. Laura Duhan Kaplan and Laurence F. Bove, Editors, Philosophical Perspectives on Power and Domination: Theories and Practices. A volume in Philosophy of Peace. 50. Gregory F. Mellema, Collective Responsibility.

51. Josef Seifert, What Is Life? The Originality, Irreducibility, and Value of Life. A volume in Central-European Value Studies. 52. William Gerber, Anatomy of What We Value Most. 53. Armando Molina, Our Ways: Values and Character, edited by Rem B. 'Edwards. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies.

54. Kathleen J. Wininger, Nietzsche's Reclamation of Philosophy. volume in Central-European Value Studies.

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55. Thomas Magnell, Editor, Explorations of Value. 56 . HPP (Hennie) Lotter, Injustice , Violence, and Peace: The Case of South Africa. A volume in Philosophy of Peace. 57. Lennart Nordenfelt, Talking About Health: A Philosophical Dialogue. A volume in Nordic Value Studies. 58. Jon Mills and Janusz A. Polanowski, The Ontology of Prejudice. volume in Philosophy and Psychology.

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59. Leena Vilkka, The Intrinsic Value ofNature. 60. Palmer Talbutt, Jr., Rough Dialectics: Sorokin's Philosophy of Value , with Contributions by Lawrence T. Nichols and Pitirim A. Sorokin. 61 . C. L. Sheng, A Utilitarian General Theory of Value. 62. George David Miller, Negotiating Toward Truth: The Extinction of Teachers and Students. Epilogue by Mark Roelof Eleveld . A volume in Philosophy of Education. 63. William Gerber, Love, Poetry, and Immortality: Luminous Insights of the World 's Great Thinkers. 64. Dane R. Gordon, Editor, Philosophy in Post-Communist Europe. volume in Post-Communist European Thought.

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65. Dane R. Gordon and Jozef Niznik, Editors, Criticism and Defense of Rationality in Contemporary Philosophy. A volume in Post-Communist European Thought. 66. John R. Shook, Pragmatism: An Annotated Bibliography, 1898-1940. With Contributions by E. Paul Colella, Lesley Friedman, Frank X. Ryan, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. 67. Lansana Keita, The Human Project and the Temptations ofScience. 68. Michael M. Kazanjian, Phenomenology and Education: Cosmology, CoBeing, and Core Curriculum. A volume in Philosophy of Education.

69. James W. Vice, The Reopening of the American Mind : On Skepticism and Constitutionalism. 70. Sarah Bishop Merrill, Defining Personhood: Toward the Ethics of Quality in Clinical Care. 71. Dane R. Gordon, Philosophy and Vision. 72. Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, Editors, Postmodernism and the Holocaust. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 73. Peter A. Redpath, Masquerade ofthe Dream Walkers: Prophetic Theology from the Cartesians to Hegel. A volume in Studies in the History of

Western Philosophy. 74. Malcolm D. Evans , Whitehead and Philosophy of Education: The Seamless Coat of Learning. A volume in Philosophy of Education.

75. Warren E. Steinkraus, Taking Religious Claims Seriously: A Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael H. Mitias. A volume in

Universal Justice. 76. Thomas Magnell, Editor, Values and Education.

77. Kenneth A. Bryson, Persons and Immortality. A volume in Natural Law Studies. 78. Steven V. Hicks, International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order: An Essay on Hegel's Universalism. A volume in Universal

Justice. 79. E. F. Kaelin, Texts on Texts and Textuality: A Phenomenology of Literary Art, edited by Ellen J. Bums. 80. Amihud Gilead, Saving Possibilities: A Study in Philosophical Psychology. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology. 81. Andre Mineau, The Making ofthe Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

82. Howard P. Kainz, Politically Incorrect Dialogues: Topics Not Discussed in Polite Circles.

83. Veikko Launis, Juhani Pietarinen, and Juha Raikka, Editors, Genes and Morality : New Essays. A volume in Nordic Value Studies. 84. Steven Schroeder, The Metaphysics of Cooperation: The Case of F. D. Maurice. 85. Caroline Joan ("Kay") S. Picart, Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche: Eroticism, Death, Music, and Laughter. A volume in Central-European

Value Studies. 86. G. John M. Abbarno, Editor, The Ethics of Homelessness: Philosophical Perspectives. 87. James Giles, Editor, French Existentialism : Consciousness, Ethics, and Relations with Others. A volume in Nordic Value Studies. 88. Deane Curtin and Robert Litke, Editors, Institutional Violence. volume in Philosophy of Peace.

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89. Yuval Lurie, Cultural Beings: Reading the Philosophers of Genesis. 90. Sandra A. Wawrytko, Editor, The Problem of Evil: An Intercultural Exploration. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology. 91. Gary J. Acquaviva, Values, Violence, and Our Future. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies. 92. Michael R. Rhodes, Coercion: A Nonevaluative Approach . 93. Jacques Kriel, Matter, Mind, and Medicine: Transforming the Clinical Method. 94. Haim Gordon, Dwelling Poetically: Educational Challenges in Heidegger's Thinking on Poetry. A volume in Philosophy of

Education. 95. Ludwig Grunberg, The Mystery of Values: Studies in Axiology, edited by Cornelia Grtinberg and Laura Grunberg. 96. Gerhold K. Becker, Editor, The Moral Status ofPersons: Perspectives on Bioethics. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics.

97. Roxanne Claire Farrar, Sartrean Dialectics: A Method for Critical Discourse on Aesthetic Experience. 98. Ugo Spirito, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Translated fromItalian and edited by Anthony G. Costantini. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy. 99. Steven Schroeder, Between Freedom and Necessity: An Essay on the Place of Value. 100. Foster N. Walker, Enjoyment and the Activity of Mind: Dialogues on Whitehead and Education. A volume in Philosophy of Education. 101. Avi Sagi, Kierkegaard; Religion, and Existence: The Voyage ofthe Self. Translatedfrom Hebrewby BatyaStein. 102. Bennie R. Crockett, Jr., Editor, Addresses of the Mississippi Philosophical Association. A volume in Histories and Addresses of Philosophical Societies. 103. Paul van Dijk, Anthropology in the Age of Technology: The Philosophical Contribution ofGunther Anders. 104. Giambattista Vico, Universal Right. Translated from Latin and edited by Giorgio Pinton and Margaret Diehl. A volume in Values in Italian Philosophy. 105. Judith Presler and Sally J. Scholz, Editors, Peacemaking: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future. A volume in Philosophy of Peace. 106. Dennis Bonnette, Origin of the Human Species. A volume in Studies in the History of Western Philosophy. 107. Phyllis Chiasson, Peirce's Pragmatism: The Design for Thinking. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values. 108. Dan Stone, Editor, Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 109. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, What Is the Meaning ofHuman Life?