Purpose, Freedom, and the Search for Meaning
The question of the meaning of life is perhaps one that we would rather not ask, for fear of the answer or lack thereof.
Still today, many people believe that humankind is the creation of a supernatural entity named God, that God had an intelligent purpose in creating us, and that this intelligent purpose is ‘the meaning of life’.
I do not propose to rehearse the well-worn arguments for and against the existence of God, and still less to take a side. But even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us, no one really knows what this purpose might be, or whether it is especially meaningful.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system—including the universe itself—increases up to the point at which equilibrium is reached, and God’s purpose in creating us, and indeed all of nature, might have been no loftier than to catalyse this process much as soil organisms catalyse the decomposition of organic matter. In a word, we may be no more than complex fungi or enzymes.
If our God-given purpose is to act as super-efficient heat dissipators, then having no purpose at all is better than having this sort of purpose—because it frees us to be the authors of our purpose or purposes and so to lead truly dignified and meaningful lives.
In fact, following this logic, having no purpose at all is better than having any kind of pre-determined purpose, even more traditional, uplifting ones such as serving God or improving our karma.
In short, even if God exists, and even if He had an intelligent purpose in creating us (and why should He have had?), we do not know what this purpose might be, and, whatever it might be, we would rather be able to do without it—or at least to ignore or discount it.
For unless we can be free to become the authors of our own purpose or purposes, our lives may have, at worst, no purpose at all, and, at best, only some unfathomable and potentially trivial purpose that is not of our own choosing.
Can We Really Create Our Own Purpose?
You might object that not to have a pre-determined purpose is, really, not to have any purpose at all.
But this is to assume that for something to have a purpose, it must have been created with that particular purpose in mind, and, moreover, must still be serving that same original purpose.
Many things acquire purposes that were never intended for them.
Many Junes ago, I visited the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the South of France. One evening, I picked up a rounded stone called a galet which I took back to Oxford and put to good use as a bookend.
In the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, these stones serve to capture the heat of the sun and release it back into the cool of the night, helping the grapes to ripen. Of course, these stones were not created with this or any other purpose in mind. Even if they had been created for a purpose, it would almost certainly not have been to make great wine or serve as bookends.
That same evening over a rabbit stew, I invited my friends to blind taste a bottle of Bordeaux—an evil trick, given that we were in the Southern Rhône. To disguise the bottle, I slipped it into one of a pair of socks.
Unlike the galet, the sock had been created with a definite purpose in mind, albeit one very different from (although not strictly incompatible with) the one that it came to assume on that idyllic evening.
The point I’m driving at is that purpose need not be fixed at the moment of creation: it can also emerge afterwards.
What If the Meaning of Life Lies Beyond This Life?
But this raises a related question. Can meaning come from us at all? Or must it come from somewhere beyond us—whether from the intention of a creator or from a life beyond this one?
Many would argue that the meaning of life lies beyond this life, which is merely a prelude to some eternal afterlife.
However, I can marshal at least four arguments against this position:
- It is not at all clear that there is, or even can be, some form of eternal afterlife that entails the survival of the personal ego.
- Even if there were such an afterlife, living forever is not in itself a purpose. The concept of the afterlife merely displaces the problem to one remove, begging the question: what then is the purpose of the afterlife?
- Reliance on an eternal afterlife not only postpones the question of life’s purpose but also dissuades or at least discourages us from determining a purpose or purposes for what may be the only life that we do have.
- If it is the brevity or finiteness of human life that gives it shape and purpose (an argument associated with the philosopher Bernard Williams), then an eternal afterlife cannot, in and of itself, have any purpose.
So, whether or not God exists, whether or not He gave us a purpose, and whether or not there is an eternal afterlife, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
Existence Before Essence
To translate this into Sartrean (or existentialist) terms, whereas for the galet it is true only that existence precedes essence, for the sock it is true both that essence precedes existence (when the sock is used on a human foot) and that existence precedes essence (when the sock is used for an unintended purpose, for example, as a bottle sleeve).
We human beings are either like the rock or the sock, but whichever we are like, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
In fact, let me correct myself. We human beings are neither like the rock nor the sock—because capable of discovering and creating meanings.
This echoes Kant’s insistence that human beings are not merely means to some external end, but self-determining ends in themselves. It is this capacity for autonomy—for rationally determining our own ends—that gives us our special dignity.
Human life may not have been created with any pre-determined purpose, but this need not mean that it cannot have a purpose, or that this purpose cannot be just as good as, if not much better than, any pre-determined one.
And so the meaning of life, of our life, is that which we choose to give it.
But how to choose?
Camus and Nietzsche
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus compares the human condition to the plight of Sisyphus, the mythical king of Ephyra who was punished for daring to defy the gods by being made to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll back down again.
Yet Camus reaches one of the most startling conclusions in all philosophy: ‘The struggle to the top is itself enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’
Even in a state of utter hopelessness, Sisyphus can still be happy. Indeed, he is happy precisely because he is in a state of utter hopelessness, because in recognising and accepting the hopelessness of his condition, and embracing it, he at the same time transcends it.
The tragedy of Sisyphus became the very source of his freedom. The universe may not provide us with a ready-made meaning, but this need not prevent us from creating one, and living with dignity, courage, and even joy.
Nietzsche, too, challenged us to embrace our fate, even to love it. In Ecce Homo, he wrote, ‘My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati [love of fate]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it.’
How to Find Meaning
In Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl (d. 1997) wrote about his experiences during the Second World War.
Tellingly, Frankl found that those who survived longest in the concentration camp were not those who were physically strong, but those who retained a sense of inner freedom and purpose.
He observed:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.
Frankl’s message is ultimately one of hope: even in the most absurd, painful, and dispiriting of circumstances, life can still be given a meaning, and so too can suffering.
Life in the concentration camp taught Frankl that our deepest drive is neither pleasure, as Freud had argued, nor power, as Adler had maintained, but meaning.
After his release, Frankl founded the school of logotherapy (from the Greek logos, meaning ‘reason’ or ‘principle’), which is sometimes referred to as the ‘Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy’ for coming after those of Freud and Adler. The aim of logotherapy is to carry out an existential analysis of the person, and, in so doing, to help them uncover or discover meaning for their life.
According to Frankl, meaning can be found through:
- Experiencing reality by interacting authentically with the environment and with others.
- Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression, and,
- Changing our attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.
‘The point,’ said Frankl, ‘’is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.’
The Final Freedom
Whether or not God exists, whether or not He created us for a purpose, and whether or not there is an afterlife, we are better off creating our own purpose or purposes.
We began with a fear: that if life has no pre-determined purpose, it must be meaningless. But it now seems, the opposite is true. A purpose imposed upon us from outside may give us a goal, but not necessarily meaning—for meaning requires that we recognise and embrace it as our own.
The meaning of life is not hidden in the stars, waiting to be discovered like buried treasure. Nor is it handed to us at birth. Instead, it emerges from our attitudes and choices.
Thus, it is more of an activity than a state—something that we create, discover, and renew throughout our lives.
Continue Exploring
If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my books The Gang of Three, an overview of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and their enduring answers to the question of how to live, and The Art of Failure, on how adversity, loss, and failure can become sources of meaning, growth, and fulfilment.
You may also enjoy
You must be logged in to post a comment.