What Is The Meaning of Life? (Part 2)

On The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

In this second installment of a two part series on that loftiest of philosophical questions - ‘what is the meaning of life?’, I will make a flailing attempt to answer the question but, hopefully, it is an attempt that may have certain traction. Through looking at nihlism and the work of British analytic philospher James Tartagila, I will show that even if we live in a nihlistic universe, this recognition of a nihilistic realism isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's not a good thing either. It's a no-thing. Just the lack of an answer to what is the meaning of life. Within this universe (if nihlism is indeed the case), we must create our own meaning - we must be the authors of our own lives. If this sounds difficult, it actually isn't. We humans do it all the time in finding meaning in what we do. We have whole civilizations of people finding meaning through life and its activities whether embedded in a social context or self-authored. And, any account of these people’ lives would amount to empirical third person data that would hold up in any social science. So, the fact of meaningful lives is empirically grounded - a fact both obvious but often forgotten in philosophical discussion. And, its not living a lie to create your own meaning in a nihlistic universe. It's just living well. In a thoroughly materialist and nihilistic framework, the universe provides the stage for a meaningful life but not the answers.