philosophy of life essay introduction

Life Philosophy 101 – An Introduction

Personal life philosophies are not a common subject and quality information on them can be difficult to find. They can tend to be grouped with other more prescriptive philosophies or reduced to personal slogans like bumper stickers or t-shirts.

Personal Life Philosophies are unique in that there are as many of them as there are individuals. Just as no two people are alike, no two life philosophies are the same. We each have our own basis for understanding ourselves, our lives and the world and our own aspirations for how we seek them to be.

This introduction touches on the essential knowledge that everyone should have to understand personal life philosophies, why they are essential life tools and how they can enrich your life.

Introduction to Life Philosophy Resources

These key concepts establish a common foundation of knowledge. This foundation will be helpful as you develop and live your personal life philosophy.

Start here if you are unfamiliar with life philosophy or want a refresher. Expand each of the sections if you would like more in depth information.

Life philosophy can be a tricky subject to embrace. There are common misconceptions that can bias your understanding and lead you to avoid the whole topic.

Understanding these misconceptions can stop them from preventing knowing and embracing your unique personal philosophy.

Just as we all have our own life philosophy; we all have our own way of learning.

If you prefer, choose the topics you want to cover in the order that works best for you.

Key Concepts about Personal Philosophies

What is a personal philosophy?

A personal life philosophy is your unique understanding of and perspective on the world and life including how you think life should be lived and the world should be.

Why does this matter? Your personal philosophy is a way to crystalize and make real your understanding of the world and life to help you make sense of it, know what is essential, sharpen your vision and bring clarity to a complex world.

The concept of a personal philosophy is something that is unique and something that is not generally well known or widespread, at least personal philosophies that are well developed and that can bring real value to one’s life. One can wonder why this is so, especially considering the importance of one’s personal philosophy .

In general, personal philosophies include things like your most essential truths and insights about, and highest aspirations, for life and the world. They bring value to your life both through the process of developing them and through helping make more definite thoughts and feelings that can be abstract and difficult to readily access and use in your life.

A personal philosophy encapsulates what is most essential, of great consequence, vital, enlightening and imperative. It is based upon what captures your imagination, demands your attention, comes naturally to you, incites you to action, inspires you, infuriates you, drives you or frees you to the greatest degree.

Personal philosophies are typically stated in a written form such as a set of principles or tenets and sometimes are written in an essay format, though they can take any from that you find useful.

Note: There are a series of related terms used for referring to personal philosophies including personal philosophy on life, living philosophy. Just about every conceivable combination and variation of the words philosophy, life and personal that are used to refer to personal philosophies. Here, the terms personal philosophy, personal life philosophy and life philosophy are used interchangeably.

What is life philosophy?

Life philosophy is the development and application of your personal philosophy to your life. Life philosophy includes two primary components: your personal philosophy and the ongoing act of making it real through developing and living it.

Why does this matter? Personal philosophies that cannot be or are not used in one’s life, may be interesting to contemplate and discuss over an adult beverage, but they cannot enrich your life unless you actually use them in it.

Beyond the potentially transformational experience of developing a personal philosophy, most of its value is realized through living it. A personal philosophy that is only vague concepts or even one is well formed but unused is of little value. Your personal philosophies can be of great value, but only if it is clear to you and made real in your life. Living your personal philosophy is how you realize the value of it for yourself and the world. There are a wealth of practical and enriching ways that your personal philosophy can be used in your life .

Why should I put effort into developing my personal philosophy?

Although each of us naturally has the basis for our personal philosophy, most of us do not understand our basis in ways that help us or in ways that we can make use of. Developing your personal philosophy clarifies it for you and helps you gain active knowledge of it.

Why does this matter? The experience of developing your personal philosophy includes connecting with what is essential to you in the world, which is a rewarding and enriching experience itself. Most importantly developing and actively knowing your personal philosophy enables you to use it in your life and realize the value it can bring .

When following a good approach for developing yours, you start to realize the value early in the process. Because of the nature of personal philosophies, you necessarily need to consider your perspective on the world and to understand your thoughts and feelings about it. Most of us do not take the time or invest the effort into actively working to understand our perspective on the world and ourselves. Developing your personal philosophy gives you an opportunity to indulge in doing so in a way that gets around much of the challenge of being too actively introspective, or touchy-feely. With the right approach, getting in touch with your perspective on the world and yourself is rewarding, freeing and simply enjoyable. You may even find it an experience that is affirmational or transformational.

Beyond the enriching personal experience, developing your personal philosophy will clarify your unique understanding of the world and life for you and make it something that you actively know. A personal philosophy that is just thoughts and feelings floating around in your mind has about as much value as a personal desire to become Yoda. It may be an interesting thought, but it probably won’t go much further than that. Your personal philosophy needs to be clear to you and something that you actively know. Clarity is critical so that when you need to use it in your life you don’t have to sort through it to figure out how it applies. Actively knowing your personal philosophy allows you to use it in your life. Not being able to clearly remember your personal philosophy makes it difficult to use in the moment. If you have to refer back to it in some written form it probably doesn’t have the clarity needed to be a real and present part of your life. Part of developing your personal philosophy is crafting it to be clear so that you can and actively know and use it in your life in large and small ways.

The importance (value) of your personal philosophy in life.

Your personal philosophy begins to bring value to your life through the experience of developing it and continues to do so for the rest of your life. It will help you make sense of the world, understand what is meaningful to you, clarify your insights, motivate and inspire you, and help you find and maintain your direction.

What does this mean to me? Your personal philosophy is a real-world life tool. Without it you are in many ways unequipped for life in an increasingly complex and difficult world for you as an individual.

The process of developing your personal philosophy necessarily requires being in touch with the world and yourself. The experience of doing so in a concerted, intentional way helps you crystalize what is meaningful in the world to you. This is one part of the reason why you should put the effort into developing your personal philosophy .

Beyond the experience of developing your personal philosophy, the real importance of a personal philosophy is that it equips you for life in a complex world in ways that can be difficult to do otherwise. Knowing and understanding your essential truths about, and aspirations for, life and the world as well as what you value and what is meaningful to you helps you with some of the most challenging aspects of life. Many of the traditional sources that people have relied upon for these answers are outdated and not relevant in today’s world. Without a personal philosophy you can be left searching for answers when challenges in life arise. Your personal philosophy helps you make sense of life and the challenges you encounter. It also helps you identify things you do that are out of sync with what you place value in and be a source of strength for changing them. It will help you fend off the constant barrage from others trying to make you do and think what they want you to. It provides a clear source of personal direction that can help with difficult or important decisions that you need to make in life. It can help you better understand your unique insights about life and the world and make the most of them. It can even inspire you to do something that is wildly aspirational that you would likely not do without the clarity, vision and meaning that your personal philosophy makes real for you. Knowing and living your personal philosophy will help you be more effective in the world and help you to contribute to realizing the things that you aspire for life and the world to be.What

Why aren't personal philosophies taught on a wider basis?

The primary purpose of education in most parts of the world is to produce individuals that are effective members of society and productive workers. Secondarily the concept of personal philosophies and the individual or “self” are relatively new (see the brief history of personal philosophies ).

Why should I care about this? A personal philosophy is something that is not needed to be a productive worker or effective member of society. It is needed if you are going to live an engaged, meaningful life that aligns with who you are and what you seek for your life and the world to be.

The value of education cannot be overstated. Knowledge is empowering. Self-knowledge, like that used in one’s personal philosophy, is an especially powerful form of knowledge. Unfortunately, self-knowledge is something that most of us must learn on our own without significant guidance or education about it.

An important part of developing a personal philosophy is quality self-knowledge. While some education systems do seek to develop the individual, but even they do not overtly educate individuals on developing self-knowledge. The concept of personal philosophies, the self and self-knowledge are relatively new. Most education systems are based upon century old theory and have not kept up with these concepts or integrated them into their method and curriculum. Imagine if our education systems sought to help people become self-aware, develop self-knowledge and become more enlightened about life and the world, instead of just seeking to produce productive contributing members of society.

A personal philosophy is something that can help you get beyond the narrow vision and relatively low expectations that many educational systems have for you. It can help you become more self-aware, more knowledgeable and more enlightened about life and the world.

What can be included in a personal philosophy.

What can be included in your personal philosophy?

Anything that you think or feel is essential to your understanding of and perspective on life and the world.

Why is the point? There are some things that can be helpful to include to make your unique personal philosophy more valuable in your life, but in the end, it is up to you.

A personal philosophy is the encapsulation of one’s most essential truths about, and aspirations for, the world, life and one’s self. That said, you can choose what to include in yours. To be able to apply your personal philosophy to your life, it is helpful if one includes things that you uniquely understand about life and the world, or your truths, and how you would like to see the world be, or your aspirations. The two together create a view of what you know about the world that is most significant to you, how you think life and the world should be and your desires for them. Your personal philosophy can include anything you find essential such as what you place value in and find especially meaningful. If there are other aspects of your understanding of yourself, life or the world that you think are substantive, you should include them.

One of the key attributes of your personal philosophy is that it draws upon your unique knowledge of the world and yourself. The types of knowledge that can be used in your life philosophy are those encompassed by knowledge in a broad sense. Often the concept of knowledge is constrained to specific types of knowledge such as that which is taught through formal education or that which can be attained through science and reason. While there are no hard rules about personal philosophies, constraining yourself to narrow definitions of knowledge is limiting. Including what you know beyond your capacity for reason and the realm of scientific proof, such that which you know through emotion and intuition, helps to create a personal philosophy that captures the nature of being human. Einstein’s essay in Living Philosophies is a great example of how this is true. If you are going to apply your personal philosophy to your life, it should be substantive and not oversimplify the nature of life to the point of being of little value in it. It also should not be limited to someone else’s definition of what a life philosophy should entail, or what it should be based upon. Too, it should not be limited to systems thought and belief that have been formalized and categorized. In many ways, personal philosophy allows you to move beyond these prescribed ways of understanding and create a perspective that is rich in meaning to you.

Including those things that are the most significant to you, especially what sets you apart from others, is one approach. For instance, we all place high value on our families, health and livelihood. These are universal and stating them as a personal philosophy, while perfectly valid, may not be very insightful about your personal truths or aspirations for life and the world. In a similar way, a personal philosophy is not necessarily about defining universal truths or answering life’s big questions such as the purpose or meaning of life. These can be included if your knowledge of them is especially significant to you. Your personal philosophy is about understanding and expressing the things that stand out to you above all others.

What do I need to know to develop my personal philosophy?

Having a reasonably broad view of life and the world is helpful, as is being able to connect with and understanding your perspective on it. An understanding of personal philosophies is also helpful.

Why does this matter to me? While having a broad view of life and the world is important, you can never know, feel or experience everything. When you decide to develop your personal philosophy, it is important to use your perspective on the world to the greatest extent possible. Too, your personal philosophy will likely evolve as you and the world change.

Your personal philosophy necessarily draws upon your understanding of life and the world. If you have limited experience with life and the world, it can be helpful to work to expand your perspective. Even if you have an expansive perspective on the world, being in touch with that perspective is important. You may find it helpful to spend some time reconnecting with your perspective on the world as you craft your personal philosophy. Too, you continue to learn and change throughout your life and the world continues to change at a rapid pace. An effective approach for crafting your personal philosophy should help you connect with what is essential in the world to and to understand why throughout your life.

Having a good connection with yourself is also helpful. This connection allows you to understand your perspective on the world including your thoughts and feelings about it. You may find it necessary to work to create this connection, or to reconnect with yourself if you have lost touch. One of the challenges with creating and maintaining it is the constant barrage we are under from others wanting us to think and do what they want us to. A good connection with yourself helps cut through this barrage. An effective approach for developing your personal philosophy will also help.

Like with most things that you undertake, a good understanding of what you are taking on and what is involved with accomplishing it is advisable. Having an understanding of personal philosophies and what is involved with developing one can help you successfully craft yours so that it is valuable in your life.

Where did the concept of personal philosophies come from?

While the roots of personal philosophies, individual’s interpretations on what is important in the world, can be seen even in the earliest artwork and myths, personal philosophies per se arrived on the scene much more recently. They appear to have come into general use within the last century or so.

Like most forms of modern thinking, the roots of personal philosophies appear to have evolved along with human thought. Prehistoric evidence for personal views on the world and what is most significant in it are likely captured in the earliest myths and paintings. These early forms of expression undoubtedly included some personal interpretation of the world for practical use. Yet, considering them to be statements of personal philosophy is a stretch at best. The first formal thinking related to personal philosophies dates back to the time of the early thinkers on human condition and the nature of the world that we live in. Religious beliefs and religions evolved from individuals’ personal understanding of the world. Confucius’s writings can be considered a good example of how this happened. Undoubtedly, many of those who have focused their life on the pursuit of philosophy necessarily include what would constitute their own philosophy on life in their work including the first recognized philosophers in the 600-500 BC period. One perspective on philosophy itself is that it can be considered the pursuit of making sense of life and the world. Beyond those who pursued philosophy per se, many great thinkers and people who have put their imprint upon the course of history have recorded their philosophical perspective behind their thinking and actions. Abraham Lincoln is a familiar, notable example, and there are many more. Yet none of these can be considered a personal philosophy per se.

Personal philosophies in the context used here, are prevalent in modern times. In 1931 a volume of Living Philosophies was published by Simon & Schuster and includes short essays about their philosophy on life from notable figures including Albert Einstein. These insightful essays capture their perspective on the world including their beliefs and ideals. Two subsequent volumes were published with essays from other notables, I Believe in 1942 and Living Philosophies in 1990. All of which are worth reading. These essays seem to come the closest to the concept of personal philosophy as used here. Interestingly the concept of individual identity and the self appears to have come into prominence on a similar timeline, within the last century.

The rapid escalation of the challenges facing humanity in general, the shift away from traditional sources and authorities for answers to life’s important questions, the increasingly difficult global environmental and political situation and the escalating assault on our individuality through the ever-present screens we view all seem to be reasons why personal philosophies are becoming more prominent. In many ways, personal philosophies have become a vital form of empowerment for the individual actualizing their individuality.

Using your personal philosophy in your life.

There are virtually limitless ways that you can use your personal philosophy in your life. How you do so will vary based upon where you are in life and what is happening in yours.

Your personal philosophy can be made part of your life in ways large and small. In looking at the importance (value) of your personal philosophy in life , we touched upon many of the ways your personal philosophy brings value to your life including as a source of meaning, a source of guidance for important decisions, a source of strength, a source of vision and insight, even a source of inspiration.

Through actively knowing your personal philosophy you can use it in your daily life as you make decisions and to help guide your actions to be in line with how you seek to be. It can be easy to take the path of least resistance or to succumb, even momentarily, to the toxic messaging constantly targeting you. Actively knowing your personal philosophy helps you be more intentional and fend off this and other forces working against you.

Making your personal philosophy a part of your daily life helps keep what you find essential, place value in, and draw meaning from present in your life. It also provides a reassuring sense of understanding and direction through your essential truths and aspirations.

Your life philosophy can help you better understand yourself and your perspective on just about everything and under any circumstances. Having a well-developed life philosophy also allows you to share and discuss it with others, if you choose to. It can help them understand you and your actions. Sharing your life philosophy or some part of it can be helpful in many situations such as when you have to explain choices that you make which are different from others or that don’t align with their expectations of you.

Your life philosophy can help you achieve a greater sense of meaning and fulfillment. Some think that it is only possible to achieve higher levels of meaning and happiness through the understanding and awareness that knowing and living a personal philosophy can provide.

Common Misconceptions About Personal Philosophies

I don’t have or need a personal philosophy.

Short Answer : Everyone has some form of a personal philosophy. Most just have not developed it into something they actively know or use in their lives.

Each individuals’ personal philosophy, including yours, is their unique understanding of the world that is developed into a form that can be actively known and used in their life. When you consider the scope of the human experience, including what we can know and feel and how we can know and feel it, and the diversity of individuals, we all truly have our unique understanding of the world.

There is strength in diversity. You as an empowered, self-actualized and enlightened individual build upon what it means to be human and for us to collectively be humanity. Understanding your unique knowledge and wisdom about life and the world will help you become an empowered, self-actualized and enlightened individual.

The kinds of changes that are confronting individuals and humanity require something more than for all of us to live and think the same way, or even subscribe to a defined set of philosophic and religious systems. The scales are tipped toward you becoming more like everyone else. The intentional attempt to control your thoughts and actions through messaging and artificial intelligence is invading all aspects of your life. It is an attempt to make you think and behave in ways that others seek for you to. Actively knowing your understanding of the world and your aspirations for it is not only essential for surviving in an increasingly complex and difficult world, it is key to advancing us as humanity and overcoming the crises that confront us now and in the future.

Personal philosophies are only for big thinkers.

Short Answer : Each of us has a unique understanding of the world and the ability to define our own personal philosophy. Be wary of anyone or any entity that tries to make you think otherwise. Question their motives.

Society puts undue importance on the personal philosophies of famous people and preserves their perspective through time disproportionally. Historically, this may have largely been a product of our ability to record and publish the thoughts of any one person. It may be no coincidence that as our ability to record our individual thinking and share it broadly the importance of the big thinkers’ thoughts is diminishing.

For some reason, we have a tendency to treat some and their thoughts effectively as idols. We often turn to those that we view as authorities for answers to life’s important questions when the reality is that they are just people and their answers are merely that, theirs. They are not better than the answers that we each have, yet we often place more value in them than our own.

In the end, you determine your personal philosophy. If you decide to adopt a philosophy or components of a philosophy that is defined by someone else, that is your choice. The important thing is that you have explored the world enough to know what makes sense to you and works for you. Too, nothing in life is cast in stone. The world changes and we all grow and learn. As you do, your personal philosophy should as well.

But it is not only the famous who leave their marks. Every single one of us has, I believe, a significant part to play in the scheme of things. Some contributors that go unrecognized may nevertheless be of the utmost importance.

– Jane Goodall in her personal philosophy within Living Philosophies 1990.

A personal philosophy is a one sentence maxim.

Short Answer : You’re not a car and your personal philosophy shouldn’t be a bumper sticker.

Everyone likes a concise statement that captures the essence of a common experience in life. It’s also good to have simple rules in life to remind us of basic things we know. They have practical value in specific situations. That said, simple rules of life, even a collection of really good ones do not amount to a personal philosophy.

An effective personal philosophy encompasses the scope of your unique perspective on life and the world. To be effective it needs to be able to help you make sense of a complex and dynamic world. It needs to be able to help you derive meaning from your life, understand what you value and what you seek for life and the world to be. If you truly can express your personal philosophy in one sentence, beyond likely being an amazing sentence, it would no longer be a maxim that is applicable only in specific situations. It would be a broad, robust expression of your unique perspective on the world and life including your truths about them and how you think they should be.

Like philosophy in general, personal philosophies are esoteric and don’t have practical value.

Short Answer : This misconception is completely understandable. Philosophy is generally something that can be challenging to convert to real world value. Personal philosophies are different as they are practical real-life tools.

Unfortunately, there is not a good substitute for the word “philosophy” in the English language that fully captures its meaning in the sense of being “a set of basic concepts and beliefs that are of value as guidance in practical ways.” When we hear or read the world philosophy, we most often think of one of the other meanings primarily “systems of thought” as in skepticism, pragmatism or existentialism and the famous men (typically) that professed their virtues and argued for their specific flavor as the one best perspective on the world and life. In many ways, personal philosophies are the antithesis of these systems of thought. Personal philosophies are individual perspectives meant to have meaning and value for one individual rather than general principles that apply to all. Applied practical value in life is one of the defining characteristics of personal life philosophies. If a personal philosophy is not of practical value in life, it is not much of a personal philosophy at all.

I already know my personal philosophy. I don’t need to develop it.

Short Answer : If you have and know your personal philosophy, you should be able to state it now in a clear and concise way that you can apply in your life. If not, crafting it into a clear form to you and that you actively know will help you realize real-world value from it.

I’m just one normal person, my personal philosophy is of no value to the world.

Short Answer : Humanity is a collective of unique individuals. Who we are, what we know, what we will become and what defines us our humanity is determined by the sum total of each of us. Your individuality, including your unique understanding of and perspective on life and the world, has real implications for humanity collectively.

It can be easy to sell oneself short considering the hype and focus given to people with power, money and fame. This is exactly what you are doing if you truly think that your personal philosophy is not of consequence to the world.

At the very least, understanding your unique perspective on the world and life, will hedge off the homogeneity we are being driven toward by the systems and institutions that we have created. Systems and institutions controlled by and for the benefit of those with power, money and fame. Systems, institutions and people that want you to think and act in ways that benefit them. Dismissing the value of your personal philosophy and not developing yours is playing their game. Their game of control lets them have power over you and makes you even more susceptible to thinking and acting like they want you to as long as you are passive to it.

Your personal philosophy will lead you to a better understanding of the world. That understanding will prompt you to take some action to make it better, at least within your immediate world. Developing and knowing your personal philosophy may even lead you to do something that you never thought you would. That action may have implications beyond what you expect, and makes a substantial difference in the lives of others and the course of the world.

Be better equipped to develop and live your personal philosophy.

On Terms of Your Own:

The Pursuit of Being and Fulfillment in a Challenging World.

Navigate 101 by Topic

Key Concepts :

The importance (value) of a personal philosophy.
Why aren’t personal philosophies taught on a wider basis?
What can be included in a personal philosophy?
Using my personal philosophy in my life .

Common Misconceptions :

Like philosophy in general, personal philosophies are esoteric and don’t have any practical value.
I already know my personal philosophy. I don’t need to formalize it.

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Essay on Philosophy of Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on Philosophy of Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Philosophy of Life

Understanding life’s philosophy.

Life’s philosophy is a personal outlook or attitude towards life. It’s how one perceives life and its purpose. Some believe in living every moment, while others seek a deeper meaning.

Importance of Life’s Philosophy

Having a life philosophy is crucial. It guides our actions and decisions, helping us navigate life’s challenges. It acts like a compass, pointing us in the right direction.

Varying Philosophies

Life philosophies vary from person to person. Some advocate for happiness, others for knowledge, while some focus on love. It’s all about finding what resonates with you.

In conclusion, life’s philosophy is a personal belief system that gives life direction. It is unique to each individual and shapes our existence.

250 Words Essay on Philosophy of Life

Introduction: the enigma of existence.

Life, a profound mystery, has been a subject of contemplation since the dawn of human consciousness. The philosophy of life, a subfield of philosophy, aims to explore this enigma, seeking answers to fundamental questions about existence, purpose, and the nature of reality.

The Absurdity of Life

Existentialist philosophers like Albert Camus posited the concept of life’s absurdity. They argued that the human quest for meaning is inherently futile in an indifferent, chaotic universe. This perspective encourages individuals to create their own subjective meaning, emphasizing personal freedom and responsibility.

Life as a Journey

Contrarily, some philosophers view life as a journey towards self-realization. Drawing from Eastern philosophies like Buddhism and Hinduism, they suggest that life is a process of learning and growth, with suffering and pleasure acting as essential teachers. This viewpoint promotes mindfulness and compassion as key components of a fulfilling life.

The Social Construct of Life

Other philosophers have emphasized the social aspect of life. They argue that our identities and realities are shaped by societal structures and norms. From this perspective, life becomes a continuous process of negotiating our place within society, highlighting the importance of social justice and equality.

Conclusion: The Personal Philosophy

In conclusion, the philosophy of life is a multifaceted discipline that offers various perspectives on existence. Whether viewing life as an absurdity, a journey, or a social construct, it ultimately boils down to personal interpretation. Each individual, through their experiences and introspection, formulates their unique philosophy, shaping their understanding of life’s complex tapestry.

500 Words Essay on Philosophy of Life

The essence of life.

The philosophy of life is a broad topic that has been explored by numerous philosophers, thinkers, and scholars throughout history. At its core, it concerns the purpose, meaning, and nature of life, as well as the ethical, moral, and existential questions that arise in our everyday lives.

Existentialism and the Search for Meaning

Existentialism, a critical school of thought, emphasizes the existence of the individual as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. The existentialist believes that life is fundamentally absurd and devoid of objective meaning, and it is up to each individual to create their own purpose. This philosophy, championed by thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, encourages introspection, authenticity, and personal responsibility.

Stoicism and the Art of Living

In contrast to existentialism, Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy, teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means to overcome destructive emotions. The Stoics, like Seneca and Epictetus, believed that understanding the nature of the universe, its logic, and our place within it can lead us to live virtuous lives. They stressed that happiness can be achieved by accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or the fear of pain.

Buddhist Philosophy and the Middle Way

Buddhism, on the other hand, offers a different perspective on life’s philosophy. It proposes the Middle Way, a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. The Buddha taught that life is characterized by suffering, but through understanding the nature of suffering and following the Eightfold Path, one can attain a state of enlightenment and peace.

Humanism and the Value of Human Life

Humanism, a philosophical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, posits that humans are capable of morality and self-fulfillment without supernatural intervention. Humanists like Paul Kurtz argue that ethics, knowledge, and the best life can be determined only through reason and human experience.

In the end, the philosophy of life is a deeply personal and subjective topic. Each individual, drawing from their experiences, beliefs, and values, constructs their unique philosophy. It is a continuous process, evolving and changing as we grow and learn. It is a lifelong journey of questioning, discovering, and understanding the world and ourselves. The philosophy of life is not about finding definitive answers, but about seeking wisdom and perspective that can help us navigate the complexities of life.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Journal of Philosophy of Life

Masahiro Morioka

This book is a collection of all the papers and the essay published in the special issue “Philosophy and Meaning in Life Vol.3,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.11, No.1, 2021, pp.1-154. We held the Third International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life online at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, on July 21–23, 2020. This conference was co-hosted by the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion, and the Waseda Institute of Life and Death Studies. We accepted about 50 presentations from around the world. Professor Lisa Bortolotti and I gave keynote lectures. After the conference, we called for papers for publication from the speakers, and we accepted seven papers and an essay for the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life. We would like to give special thanks to the anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the submitted manuscripts. The accepted papers deal with a variety of topics, such as the subjective/objective debate, narrative meaning, Simone de Beauvoir, and Alain Badiou, and they are all discussed from the perspective of the philosophy of meaning in life.

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Introduction, introductory works.

General Overviews
Anthologies
Precursors to the Contemporary Debate
The Meaning of “Meaning”
God-based Theories
Soul-based Theories
Subjectivism
Intersubjectivism
Objectivism
Non-Naturalism

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The Meaning of Life by Thaddeus Metz LAST REVIEWED: 11 November 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 10 May 2010 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0070

For millennia, thinkers have addressed the question of what, if anything, makes a life meaningful in some form or other. This article concentrates nearly exclusively on approaches to the question taken by analytic philosophers in the postwar era, by and large omitting reference to prewar Anglo-American works, texts from other traditions such as Continental or African philosophy, and writings from nonphilosophical but related fields such as religion and psychology. Much of the contemporary analytic discussion has sought to articulate and evaluate theories of meaning in life, i.e., general and fundamental principles of what all meaningful conditions have in common as distinct from meaningless ones. This entry accordingly focuses largely on these theories, which are distinguished according to the kind of property that is held to constitute meaning in life (see Supernaturalism , Naturalism , and Non-Naturalism ).

These texts are more introductory or have been written in a way that would likely be accessible to those not thoroughly trained in analytic philosophy. Baggini 2004 and Eagleton 2007 are pitched at a very wide, popular audience; Thomson 2003 and Belshaw 2005 would be best for undergraduate philosophy majors; and Belliotti 2001 , Martin 2002 , and Cottingham 2003 are probably most apt for those with some kind of university education or other intellectual development, not necessarily in Anglo-American philosophy.

Baggini, Julian. What’s It All About? Philosophy and the Meaning of Life . London: Granta, 2004.

Defends the view that meaning in life is largely a function of love; addresses approaches or maxims (e.g., Carpe diem ) more than it does principles.

Belliotti, Raymond Angelo. What Is the Meaning of Human Life? Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.

A thoughtful treatment of a variety of issues; defends an objective naturalist approach to meaning in the context of critical discussion of classic thinkers such as Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer.

Belshaw, Christopher. Ten Good Questions about Life and Death . Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.

Engagingly written, analytic treatments of several key “life and death” issues, many of which bear on meaningfulness, which the author cashes out objectively in terms of relationships and projects.

Cottingham, John. On the Meaning of Life . Thinking in Action. London: Routledge, 2003.

An elegantly written book that defends an Aristotelian, God-based (but not soul-based) approach to meaning in life.

Eagleton, Terry. The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

A light and lively essay on a variety of facets of the question of life’s meaning, often addressing linguistic and literary themes. Rejects subjective or “postmodern” approaches to meaning in favor of a need for harmonious or loving relationships.

Martin, Michael. Atheism, Morality, and Meaning . Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002.

A vigorous defense of a naturalist approach to morality, in the first half of the book, and to meaning, in the second. Very critical of Christian approaches to both.

Thomson, Garrett. On the Meaning of Life . London: Thompson/Wadsworth, 2003.

Argues that nine common views on meaning in life (e.g., that an infinite being is necessary for meaning or that meaning is exhausted by happiness) are flawed. Emphasizes that meaning must reside largely in activities we engage in, lest our lives be reduced to “tools” for the sake of ends beyond us.

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The Meaning of Life

Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms. Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and morality, they are straightforwardly construed as accounts of which final ends a person ought to realize in order to have a life that matters. Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only in the last 50 years or so that something approaching a distinct field on the meaning of life has been established in Anglo-American philosophy, and it is only in the last 30 years that debate with real depth has appeared. Concomitant with the demise of positivism and of utilitarianism in the post-war era has been the rise of analytical enquiry into non-hedonistic conceptions of value, including conceptions of meaning in life, grounded on relatively uncontroversial (but not certain or universally shared) judgments of cases, often called “intuitions.” English-speaking philosophers can be expected to continue to find life's meaning of interest as they increasingly realize that it is a distinct topic that admits of rational enquiry to no less a degree than more familiar ethical categories such as well-being, virtuous character, and right action.

This survey critically discusses approaches to meaning in life that are prominent in contemporary Anglo-American philosophical literature. To provide context, sometimes it mentions other texts, e.g., in Continental philosophy or from before the 20 th century. However, the central aim is to acquaint the reader with recent analytic work on life's meaning and to pose questions about it that are currently worthy of consideration.

When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people often pose one of two questions: “So, what is the meaning of life?” and “What are you talking about?” The literature can be divided in terms of which question it seeks to answer. This discussion starts off with works that address the latter, abstract question regarding the sense of talk of “life's meaning,” i.e., that aim to clarify what we are asking when we pose the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful. Afterward, it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question about the nature of meaning as a property. Some accounts of what make life meaningful provide particular ways to do so, e.g., by making certain achievements (James 2005), developing moral character (Thomas 2005), or learning from relationships with family members (Velleman 2005). However, most recent discussions of meaning in life are attempts to capture in a single principle all the variegated conditions that can confer meaning on life. This survey focuses heavily on the articulation and evaluation of these theories of what would make life meaningful. It concludes by examining nihilist views that the conditions necessary for meaning in life do not obtain for any of us, i.e., that all our lives are meaningless.

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

2.1 God-Centered Views
2.2 Soul-Centered Views

3.1 Subjectivism

3.2 objectivism, 4. nihilism, works cited, collections, books for the general reader, other internet resources, related entries.

One part of the field of life's meaning consists of the systematic attempt to clarify what people mean when they ask in virtue of what life has meaning. This section addresses different accounts of the sense of talk of “life's meaning” (and of “significance,” “importance,” and other synonyms). A large majority of those writing on life's meaning deem talk of it centrally to indicate a positive final value that an individual's life can exhibit. That is, comparatively few believe either that a meaningful life is a merely neutral quality, or that what is of key interest is the meaning of the human species or universe as a whole (for discussions focused on the latter, see Edwards 1972; Munitz 1986; Seachris 2009). Most in the field have ultimately wanted to know whether and how the existence of one of us over time has meaning, a certain property that is desirable for its own sake.

Beyond drawing the distinction between the life of an individual and that of a whole, there has been very little discussion of life as the logical bearer of meaning. For instance, is the individual's life best understood biologically, qua human being, or instead as the existence of a person that may or may not be human (Flanagan 1996)? And if an individual is loved from afar, can it logically affect the meaningfulness of her “life” (Brogaard and Smith 2005, 449)?

Returning to topics on which there is consensus, most writing on meaning believe that it comes in degrees such that some periods of life are more meaningful than others and that some lives as a whole are more meaningful than others (perhaps contra Britton 1969, 192). Note that one can coherently hold the view that some people's lives are less meaningful than others, or even meaningless, and still maintain that people have an equal moral status. Consider a consequentialist view according to which each individual counts for one in virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life (cf. Railton 1984), or a Kantian view that says that people have an intrinsic worth in virtue of their capacity for autonomous choices, where meaning is a function of the exercise of this capacity (Nozick 1974, ch. 3). On both views, morality could counsel an agent to help people with relatively meaningless lives, at least if the condition is not of their choosing.

Another uncontroversial element of the sense of “meaningfulness” is that it connotes a good that is conceptually distinct from happiness or rightness (something emphasized in Wolf 2010). First, to ask whether someone's life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is happy or pleasant. A life in an experience or virtual reality machine could conceivably be happy but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, many would say that talk of “meaning” by definition excludes the possibility of it coming from time spent in an experience machine (although there have been a small handful who disagree and contend that a meaningful life just is a pleasant life. Goetz 2012, in particular, bites many bullets.) Furthermore, one's life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one's happiness, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one's self-interest.

Second, asking whether a person's existence is significant is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there seem to be ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with morality, at least impartially conceived, for instance, making a scientific discovery.

Of course, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if (or even because) it were unhappy or immoral, particularly given Aristotelian conceptions of these disvalues. However, that is to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, and is far from indicating that speaking of “meaning in life” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness, which is what I am denying here. My point is that the question of what makes a life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the question of what makes a life happy or moral, even if it turns out that the best answer to the question of meaning appeals to an answer to one of these other evaluative questions.

If talk about meaning in life is not by definition talk about happiness or rightness, then what is it about? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One answer is that a meaningful life is one that by definition has achieved choice-worthy purposes (Nielsen 1964) or involves satisfaction upon having done so (Hepburn 1965; Wohlgennant 1981). However, for such an analysis to clearly demarcate meaningfulness from happiness, it would be useful to modify it to indicate which purposes are germane to the former. On this score, some suggest that conceptual candidates for grounding meaning are purposes that not only have a positive value, but also render a life coherent (Markus 2003), make it intelligible (Thomson 2003, 8–13), or transcend animal nature (Levy 2005).

Now, it might be that a focus on any kind of purpose is too narrow for ruling out the logical possibility that meaning could inhere in certain actions, experiences, states, or relationships that have not been adopted as ends and willed and that perhaps even could not be, e.g., being an immortal offshoot of an unconscious, spiritual force that grounds the physical universe, as in Hinduism. In addition, the above purpose-based analyses exclude as not being about life's meaning some of the most widely read texts that purport to be about it, namely, Jean-Paul Sartre's (1948) existentialist account of meaning being constituted by whatever one chooses, and Richard Taylor's (1970, ch. 18) discussion of Sisyphus being able to acquire meaning in his life merely by having his strongest desires satisfied. These are prima facie accounts of meaning in life, but do not essentially involve the attainment of purposes that foster coherence, intelligibility or transcendence.

The latter problem also faces the alternative suggestion that talk of “life's meaning” is not necessarily about purposes, but is rather just a matter of referring to goods that are qualitatively superior, worthy of love and devotion, and appropriately awed (Taylor 1989, ch. 1). It is implausible to think that these criteria are satisfied by subjectivist appeals to whatever choices one ends up making or to whichever desires happen to be strongest for a given person.

Although relatively few have addressed the question of whether there exists a single, primary sense of “life's meaning,” the inability to find one so far might suggest that none exists. In that case, it could be that the field is united in virtue of addressing certain overlapping but not equivalent ideas that have family resemblances (Metz 2013, ch. 2). Perhaps when we speak of “meaning in life,” we have in mind one or more of these related ideas: certain conditions that are worthy of great pride or admiration, values that warrant devotion and love, qualities that make a life intelligible, or ends apart from base pleasure that are particularly choice-worthy. Another possibility is that talk of “meaning in life” fails to exhibit even this degree of unity, and is instead a grab-bag of heterogenous ideas (Mawson 2010; Oakley 2010).

As the field reflects more on the sense of “life's meaning,” it should not only try to ascertain in what respect it admits of unity, but also try to differentiate the concept of life's meaning from other, closely related ideas. For instance, the concept of a worthwhile life is probably not identical to that of a meaningful one (Baier 1997, ch. 5; Metz 2012). For instance, one would not be conceptually confused to claim that a meaningless life full of animal pleasures would be worth living. Furthermore, it seems that talk of a “meaningless life” does not simply connote the concept of an absurd (Nagel 1970; Feinberg 1980), unreasonable (Baier 1997, ch. 5), futile (Trisel 2002), or wasted (Kamm 2003, 210–14) life.

Fortunately the field does not need an extremely precise analysis of the concept of life's meaning (or definition of the phrase “life's meaning”) in order to make progress on the substantive question of what life's meaning is. Knowing that meaningfulness analytically concerns a variable and gradient final good in a person's life that is conceptually distinct from happiness, rightness, and worthwhileness provides a certain amount of common ground. The rest of this discussion addresses attempts to theoretically capture the nature of this good.

2. Supernaturalism

Most English speaking philosophers writing on meaning in life are trying to develop and evaluate theories, i.e., fundamental and general principles that are meant to capture all the particular ways that a life could obtain meaning. These theories are standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, i.e., in terms of which kinds of properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are views that meaning in life must be constituted by a certain relationship with a spiritual realm. If God or a soul does not exist, or if they exist but one fails to have the right relationship with them, then supernaturalism—or the Western version of it (on which I focus)—entails that one's life is meaningless. In contrast, naturalist theories are views that meaning can obtain in a world as known solely by science. Here, although meaning could accrue from a divine realm, certain ways of living in a purely physical universe would be sufficient for it. Note that there is logical space for a non-naturalist theory that meaning is a function of abstract properties that are neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been paid to this possibility in the Anglo-American literature (Williams 1999; Audi 2005).

Supernaturalist thinkers in the monotheistic tradition are usefully divided into those with God-centered views and soul-centered views. The former take some kind of connection with God (understood to be a spiritual person who is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful and who is the ground of the physical universe) to constitute meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal, spiritual substance). The latter deem having a soul and putting it into a certain state to be what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Of course, many supernaturalists believe that certain relationships with God and a soul are jointly necessary and sufficient for a significant existence. However, the simpler view is common, and often arguments proffered for the more complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler view.

2.1 God-centered Views

The most widely held and influential God-based account of meaning in life is that one's existence is more significant, the better one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one's life is meaningful to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in the particular way God wants one to do so (Affolter 2007). Fulfilling God's purpose by choice is the sole source of meaning, with the existence of an afterlife not necessary for it (Brown 1971; Levine 1987; Cottingham 2003). If a person failed to do what God intends him to do with his life, then, on the current view, his life would be meaningless.

What I call “purpose theorists” differ over what it is about God's purpose that makes it uniquely able to confer meaning on human lives. Some argue that God's purpose could be the sole source of invariant moral rules, where a lack of such would render our lives nonsensical (Craig 1994; Cottingham 2003). However, Euthyphro problems arguably plague this rationale; God's purpose for us must be of a particular sort for our lives to obtain meaning by fulfilling it (as is often pointed out, serving as food for intergalactic travelers won't do), which suggests that there is a standard external to God's purpose that determines what the content of God's purpose ought to be (but see Cottingham 2005, ch. 3). In addition, some critics argue that a universally applicable and binding moral code is not necessary for meaning in life, even if the act of helping others is (Ellin 1995, 327).

Other purpose theorists contend that having been created by God for a reason would be the only way that our lives could avoid being contingent (Craig 1994; cf. Haber 1997). But it is unclear whether God's arbitrary will would avoid contingency, or whether his non-arbitrary will would avoid contingency anymore than a deterministic physical world. Furthermore, the literature is still unclear what contingency is and why it is a deep problem. Still other purpose theorists maintain that our lives would have meaning only insofar as they were intentionally fashioned by a creator, thereby obtaining meaning of the sort that an art-object has (Gordon 1983). Here, though, freely choosing to do any particular thing would not be necessary for meaning, and everyone's life would have an equal degree of meaning, which are both counterintuitive implications (see Trisel 2012 for additional criticisms). Are all these objections sound? Is there a promising reason for thinking that fulfilling God's (as opposed to any human's) purpose is what constitutes meaning in life?

Not only does each of these versions of the purpose theory have specific problems, but they all face this shared objection: if God assigned us a purpose, then God would degrade us and thereby undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the purpose (Baier 1957, 118–20; Murphy 1982, 14–15; Singer 1996, 29). This objection goes back at least to Jean-Paul Sartre (1948, 45), and there are many replies to it in the literature that have yet to be assessed (e.g., Hepburn 1965, 271–73; Brown 1971, 20–21; Davis 1986, 155–56; Hanfling 1987, 45–46; Moreland 1987, 129; Walker 1989; Jacquette 2001, 20–21).

Robert Nozick presents a God-centered theory that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite (Nozick 1981, ch. 6, 1989, chs. 15–16; see also Cooper 2005). The basic idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning. So, if one's life is meaningful, it might be so in virtue of being married to a person, who is important. And, being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. And this work must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful finite conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something infinite, a being so all-encompassing that it need not (indeed, cannot) go beyond itself to obtain meaning from anything else. And that is God.

The standard objection to this rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition; perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, or obtain its meaning by being related to something beautiful, autonomous or otherwise valuable for its own sake but not meaningful (Thomson 2003, 25–26, 48).

The purpose- and infinity-based rationales are the two most common instances of God-centered theory in the literature, and the naturalist can point out that they arguably face a common problem: a purely physical world seems able to do the job for which God is purportedly necessary. Nature seems able to ground a universal morality and the sort of final value from which meaning might spring. And other God-based views seem to suffer from this same problem. For two examples, some claim that God must exist in order for there to be a just world, where a world in which the bad do well and the good fare poorly would render our lives senseless (Craig 1994; cf. Cottingham 2003, pt. 3), and others maintain that God's remembering all of us with love is alone what would confer significance on our lives (Hartshorne 1984). However, the naturalist will point out that an impersonal, Karmic-like force of nature conceivably could justly distribute penalties and rewards in the way a retributive personal judge would, and that actually living together in loving relationships would seem to confer much more meaning on life than a loving fond remembrance.

A second problem facing all God-based views is the existence of apparent counterexamples. If we think of the stereotypical lives of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Pablo Picasso, they seem meaningful even if we suppose there is no all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good spiritual person who is the ground of the physical world. Even religiously inclined philosophers find this hard to deny (Quinn 2000, 58; Audi 2005), though some of them suggest that a supernatural realm is necessary for a “deep” or “ultimate” meaning (Nozick 1981, 618; Craig 1994, 42). What is the difference between a deep meaning and a shallow one? And why think a spiritual realm is necessary for the former?

At this point, the supernaturalist could usefully step back and reflect on what it might be about God that would make Him uniquely able to confer meaning in life, perhaps as follows from the perfect being theological tradition. For God to be solely responsible for any significance in our lives, God must have certain qualities that cannot be found in the natural world, these qualities must be qualitatively superior to any goods possible in a physical universe, and they must be what ground meaning in it. Here, the supernaturalist could argue that meaning depends on the existence of a perfect being, where perfection requires properties such as atemporality, simplicity, and immutability that are possible only in a spiritual realm (Metz 2013, chs. 6–7; cf. Morris 1992; contra Brown 1971 and Hartshorne 1996). Meaning might come from loving a perfect being or orienting one's life toward it in other ways such as imitating it or even fulfilling its purpose, perhaps a purpose tailor-made for each individual (as per Affolter 2007).

Although this might be a promising strategy for a God-centered theory, it faces a serious dilemma. On the one hand, in order for God to be the sole source of meaning, God must be utterly unlike us; for the more God were like us, the more reason there would be to think we could obtain meaning from ourselves, absent God. On the other hand, the more God is utterly unlike us, the less clear it is how we could obtain meaning by relating to Him. How can one love a being that cannot change? How can one imitate such a being? Could an immutable, atemporal, simple being even have purposes? Could it truly be a person? And why think an utterly perfect being is necessary for meaning? Why would not a very good but imperfect being confer some meaning?

2.2 Soul-centered Views

A soul-centered theory is the view that meaning in life comes from relating in a certain way to an immortal, spiritual substance that supervenes on one's body when it is alive and that will forever outlive its death. If one lacks a soul, or if one has a soul but relates to it in the wrong way, then one's life is meaningless. There are two prominent arguments for a soul-based perspective.

The first one is often expressed by laypeople and is suggested by the work of Leo Tolstoy (1884; see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Tolstoy argues that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that nothing is worth doing if nothing one does will make a permanent difference to the world, and that doing so requires having an immortal, spiritual self. Many of course question whether having an infinite effect is necessary for meaning (e.g., Schmidtz 2001; Audi 2005, 354–55). Others point out that one need not be immortal in order to have an infinite effect (Levine 1987, 462), for God's eternal remembrance of one's mortal existence would be sufficient for that.

The other major rationale for a soul-based theory of life's meaning is that a soul is necessary for perfect justice, which, in turn, is necessary for a meaningful life. Life seems nonsensical when the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, at least supposing there is no other world in which these injustices will be rectified, whether by God or by Karma. Something like this argument can be found in the Biblical chapter Ecclesiastes , and it continues to be defended (Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, like the previous rationale, the inferential structure of this one seems weak; even if an afterlife were required for just outcomes, it is not obvious why an eternal afterlife should be thought necessary (Perrett 1986, 220).

Work has been done to try to make the inferences of these two arguments stronger, and the basic strategy has been to appeal to the value of perfection (Metz 2013, ch. 7). Perhaps the Tolstoian reason why one must live forever in order to make the relevant permanent difference is an agent-relative need for one to honor an infinite value, something qualitatively higher than the worth of, say, pleasure. And maybe the reason why immortality is required in order to mete out just deserts is that rewarding the virtuous requires satisfying their highest free and informed desires, one of which would be for eternal flourishing of some kind (Goetz 2012). While far from obviously sound, these arguments at least provide some reason for thinking that immortality is necessary to satisfy the major premise about what is required for meaning.

However, both arguments are still plagued by a problem facing the original versions; even if they show that meaning depends on immortality, they do not yet show that it depends on having a soul . By definition, if one has a soul, then one is immortal, but it is not clearly true that if one is immortal, then one has a soul. Perhaps being able to upload one's consciousness into an infinite succession of different bodies in an everlasting universe would count as an instance of immortality without a soul. Such a possibility would not require an individual to have an immortal spiritual substance (imagine that when in between bodies, the information constitutive of one's consciousness were temporarily stored in a computer). What reason is there to think that one must have a soul in particular for life to be significant?

The most promising reason seems to be one that takes us beyond the simple version of soul-centered theory to the more complex view that both God and a soul constitute meaning. The best justification for thinking that one must have a soul in order for one's life to be significant seems to be that significance comes from uniting with God in a spiritual realm such as Heaven, a view espoused by Thomas Aquinas, Leo Tolstoy (1884), and contemporary religious thinkers (e.g., Craig 1994). Another possibility is that meaning comes from honoring what is divine within oneself, i.e., a soul (Swenson 1949).

As with God-based views, naturalist critics offer counterexamples to the claim that a soul or immortality of any kind is necessary for meaning. Great works, whether they be moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, would seem to confer meaning on one's life regardless of whether one will live forever. Critics maintain that soul-centered theorists are seeking too high a standard for appraising the meaning of people's lives (Baier 1957, 124–29; Baier 1997, chs. 4–5; Trisel 2002; Trisel 2004). Appeals to a soul require perfection, whether it be, as above, a perfect object to honor, a perfectly just reward to enjoy, or a perfect being with which to commune. However, if indeed soul-centered theory ultimately relies on claims about meaning turning on perfection, such a view is attractive at least for being simple, and rival views have yet to specify in a principled and thoroughly defended way where to draw the line at less than perfection (perhaps a start is Metz 2013, ch. 8). What less than ideal amount of value is sufficient for a life to count as meaningful?

Critics of soul-based views maintain not merely that immortality is not necessary for meaning in life, but also that it is sufficient for a meaningless life. One influential argument is that an immortal life, whether spiritual or physical, could not avoid becoming boring, rendering life pointless (Williams 1973; Ellin 1995, 311–12; Belshaw 2005, 82–91; Smuts 2011). The most common reply is that immortality need not get boring (Fischer 1994; Wisnewski 2005; Bortolotti and Nagasawa 2009; Chappell 2009; Quigley and Harris 2009, 75–78). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom is truly sufficient for meaninglessness. Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be bored; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make.

Another argument that being immortal would be sufficient to make our lives insignificant is that persons who cannot die could not exhibit certain virtues (Nussbaum 1989; Kass 2001). For instance, they could not promote justice of any important sort, be benevolent to any significant degree, or exhibit courage of any kind that matters, since life and death issues would not be at stake. Critics reply that even if these virtues would not be possible, there are other virtues that could be. And of course it is not obvious that meaning-conferring justice, benevolence and courage would not be possible if we were immortal, perhaps if we were not always aware that we could not die or if our indestructible souls could still be harmed by virtue of intense pain, frustrated ends, and repetitive lives.

There are other, related arguments maintaining that awareness of immortality would have the effect of removing meaning from life, say, because our lives would lack a sense of preciousness and urgency (Lenman 1995; Kass 2001; James 2009) or because external rather than internal factors would then dictate their course (Wollheim 1984, 266). Note that the target here is belief in an eternal afterlife, and not immortality itself, and so I merely mention these rationales (for additional, revealing criticism, see Bortolotti 2010).

3. Naturalism

I now address views that even if there is no spiritual realm, meaning in life is possible, at least for many people. Among those who believe that a significant existence can be had in a purely physical world as known by science, there is debate about two things: the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings.

Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i.e., depends on an individual's pro-attitudes such as desires, ends, and choices. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she believes it to be or seeks it out. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards for meaning because meaning is (at least partly) mind-independent, i.e., is a real property that exists regardless of being the object of anyone's mental states. Here, something is meaningful (to some degree) in virtue of its intrinsic nature, independent of whether it is believed to be meaningful or sought.

There is logical space for an intersubjective theory according to which there are invariant standards of meaning for human beings that are constituted by what they would all agree upon from a certain communal standpoint (Darwall 1983, chs. 11–12). However, this orthogonal approach is not much of a player in the field and so I set it aside in what follows.

According to this view, meaning in life varies from person to person, depending on each one's variable mental states. Common instances are views that one's life is more meaningful, the more one gets what one happens to want strongly, the more one achieves one's highly ranked goals, or the more one does what one believes to be really important (Trisel 2002; Hooker 2008; Alexis 2011). Lately, one influential subjectivist has maintained that the relevant mental state is caring or loving, so that life is meaningful just to the extent that one cares about or loves something (Frankfurt 1982, 2002, 2004).

Subjectivism was dominant for much of the 20 th century when pragmatism, positivism, existentialism, noncognitivism, and Humeanism were quite influential (James 1900; Ayer 1947; Sartre 1948; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Hare 1972; Williams 1976; Klemke 1981). However, in the last quarter of the 20 th century, “reflective equilibrium” became a widely accepted argumentative procedure, whereby more controversial normative claims are justified by virtue of entailing and explaining less controversial normative claims that do not command universal acceptance. Such a method has been used to defend the existence of objective value, and, as a result, subjectivism about meaning has lost its dominance.

Those who continue to hold subjectivism often are suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Frankfurt 2002, 250; Trisel 2002, 73, 79, 2004, 378–79). Theorists are primarily moved to accept subjectivism because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are sure that value in general and meaning in particular exists, but do not see how it could be grounded in something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural, the non-natural, or the supernatural. In contrast to these possibilities, it appears straightforward to account for what is meaningful in terms of what people find meaningful or what people want out of life. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There are two other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism. One is that subjectivism is plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one (Frankfurt 1982). If a person's life is significant insofar as she is true to herself or her deepest nature, then we have some reason to believe that meaning simply is a function of satisfying certain desires held by the individual or realizing certain ends of hers. Another argument is that meaning intuitively comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in an activity or experience (Frankfurt 1982). Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective element involved, that is, because of the concentration and engrossment.

However, critics maintain that both of these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value both in realizing oneself and in losing oneself (Taylor 1992, esp. ch. 4). One is not really being true to oneself if one intentionally harms others (Dahl 1987, 12), successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one's head (Taylor 1992, 36), or, well, eats one's own excrement (Wielenberg 2005, 22), and one is also not losing oneself in a meaning-conferring way if one is consumed by these activities. There seem to be certain actions, relationships, states, and experiences that one ought to concentrate on or be engrossed in, if meaning is to accrue.

So says the objectivist, but many subjectivists also feel the pull of the point. Paralleling replies in the literature on well-being, subjectivists often respond by contending that no or very few individuals would desire to do such intuitively trivial things, at least after a certain idealized process of reflection (e.g., Griffin 1981). More promising, perhaps, is the attempt to ground value not in the responses of an individual valuer, but in those of a particular group (Brogaard and Smith 2005; Wong 2008). Would such an intersubjective move avoid the counterexamples? If so, would it do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning is constituted (at least in part) by something physical independent of the mind about which we can have correct or incorrect beliefs. Obtaining the object of some variable pro-attitude is not sufficient for meaning, on this view. Instead, there are certain inherently worthwhile or finally valuable conditions that confer meaning for anyone, neither merely because they are wanted, chosen, or believed to be meaningful, nor because they somehow are grounded in God.

Morality and creativity are widely held instances of actions that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow (and the other counterexamples to subjectivism above) are not. Objectivism is thought to be the best explanation for these respective kinds of judgments: the former are actions that are meaningful regardless of whether any arbitrary agent (whether it be an individual,her society, or even God) judges them to be meaningful or seeks to engage in them, while the latter actions simply lack significance and cannot obtain it if someone believes them to have it or engages in them. To obtain meaning in one's life, one ought to pursue the former actions and avoid the latter ones. Of course, meta-ethical debates about the nature of value are again relevant here.

A “pure” objectivist thinks that being the object of a person's mental states plays no role in making that person's life meaningful. Relatively few objectivists are pure, so construed. That is, a large majority of them believe that a life is more meaningful not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of subjective ones such as cognition, affection, and emotion. Most commonly held is the hybrid view captured by Susan Wolf's pithy slogan: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf 1997a, 211; see also Hepburn 1965; Kekes 1986, 2000; Wiggins 1988; Wolf 1997b, 2002, 2010; Dworkin 2000, ch. 6; Raz 2001, ch. 1; Schmidtz 2001; Starkey 2006; Mintoff 2008). This theory implies that no meaning accrues to one's life if one believes in, is satisfied by, or cares about a project that is not worthwhile, or if one takes up a worthwhile project but fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, care about it or otherwise identify with it. Different versions of this theory will have different accounts of the appropriate mental states and of worthwhileness.

Pure objectivists deny that subjective attraction plays any constitutive role in conferring meaning on life. For instance, utilitarians with respect to meaning (as opposed to morality) are pure objectivists, for they claim that certain actions confer meaning on life regardless of the agent's reactions to them. On this view, the more one benefits others, the more meaningful one's life, regardless of whether one enjoys benefiting them, believes they should be aided, etc. (Singer 1993, ch. 12, 1995, chs. 10–11; Singer 1996, ch. 4). Midway between pure objectivism and the hybrid theory is the view that having certain propositional attitudes toward finally good activities would enhance the meaning of life without being necessary for it (Audi 2005, 344). For instance, might a Mother Teresa who is bored by her substantial charity work have a significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she were excited by it?

There have been several attempts to theoretically capture what all objectively attractive, inherently worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they bear on meaning. Some believe that they can all be captured as actions that are creative (Taylor 1987), while others maintain that they are exhibit rightness or virtue and perhaps also involve reward proportionate to morality (Kant 1791, pt. 2; cf. Pogge 1997). Most objectivists, however, deem these respective aesthetic and ethical theories to be too narrow, even if living a moral life is necessary for a meaningful one (Landau 2011). It seems to most in the field not only that creativity and morality are independent sources of meaning, but also that there are sources in addition to these two. For just a few examples, consider making an intellectual discovery, rearing children with love, playing music, and developing superior athletic ability.

So, in the literature one finds a variety of principles that aim to capture all these and other (apparent) objective grounds of meaning. One can read the perfectionist tradition as proffering objective theories of what a significant existence is, even if their proponents do not frequently use contemporary terminology to express this. Consider Aristotle's account of the good life for a human being as one that fulfills its natural purpose qua rational, Marx's vision of a distinctly human history characterized by less alienation and more autonomy, culture, and community, and Nietzsche's ideal of a being with a superlative degree of power, creativity, and complexity.

More recently, some have maintained that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that involve: transcending the limits of the self to connect with organic unity (Nozick 1981, ch. 6, 1989, chs. 15–16); realizing human excellence in oneself (Bond 1983, chs. 6, 8); maximally promoting non-hedonist goods such as friendship, beauty, and knowledge (Railton 1984); exercising or promoting rational nature in exceptional ways (Hurka 1993; Smith 1997, 179–221; Gewirth 1998, ch. 5); substantially improving the quality of life of people and animals (Singer 1993, ch. 12, 1995, chs. 10–11; Singer 1996, ch. 4); overcoming challenges that one recognizes to be important at one's stage of history (Dworkin 2000, ch. 6); constituting rewarding experiences in the life of the agent or the lives of others the agent affects (Audi 2005); making progress toward ends that in principle can never be completely realized because one's knowledge of them changes as one approaches them (Levy 2005); realizing goals that are transcendent for being long-lasting in duration and broad in scope (Mintoff 2008); or contouring intelligence toward fundamental conditions of human life (Metz 2013).

One major test of these theories is whether they capture all experiences, states, relationships, and actions that intuitively make life meaningful. The more counterexamples of apparently meaningful conditions that a principle entails lack meaning, the less justified the principle. There is as yet no convergence in the field on any one principle or even cluster as accounting for commonsensical judgments about meaning to an adequate, convincing degree. Indeed, some believe the search for such a principle to be pointless (Wolf 1997b, 12–13; Kekes 2000; Schmidtz 2001). Are these pluralists correct, or does the field have a good chance of discovering a single, basic property that grounds all the particular ways to acquire meaning in life?

Another important way to criticize these theories is more comprehensive: for all that has been said so far, the objective theories are aggregative or additive, objectionably reducing life to a “container” of meaningful conditions (Brännmark 2003, 330). As with the growth of “organic unity” views in the context of debates about intrinsic value, it is becoming common to think that life as a whole (or at least long stretches of it) can substantially affect its meaning apart from the amount of meaning in its parts.

For instance, a life that has lots of beneficent and otherwise intuitively meaning-conferring conditions but that is also extremely repetitive (à la the movie Groundhog Day ) is less than maximally meaningful (Taylor 1987). Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2003, 210–14). And a life in which its meaningless parts cause its meaningful parts to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue of this causal pattern or being a “good life-story” (Velleman 1991; Fischer 2005).

Extreme versions of holism are also present in the literature. For example, some maintain that the only bearer of final value is life as a whole, which entails that there are strictly speaking no parts or segments of a life that can be meaningful in themselves (Tabensky 2003; Levinson 2004). For another example, some accept that both parts of a life and a life as a whole can be independent bearers of meaning, but maintain that the latter has something like a lexical priority over the former when it comes to what to pursue or otherwise to prize (Blumenfeld 2009).

What are the ultimate bearers of meaning? What are all the fundamentally different ways (if any) that holism can affect meaning? Are they all a function of narrativity, life-stories, and artistic self-expression (as per Kauppinen 2012), or are there holistic facets of life's meaning that are not a matter of such literary concepts? How much importance should they be accorded by an agent seeking meaning in her life?

So far, I have addressed theoretical accounts that have been naturally understood to be about what confers meaning on life, which obviously assumes that some lives are in fact meaningful. However, there are nihilistic perspectives that question this assumption. According to nihilism (or pessimism), what would make a life meaningful either cannot obtain or as a matter of fact simply never does.

One straightforward rationale for nihilism is the combination of supernaturalism about what makes life meaningful and atheism about whether God exists. If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither exists, then you are a nihilist, someone who denies that life has meaning. Albert Camus is famous for expressing this kind of perspective, suggesting that the lack of an afterlife and of a rational, divinely ordered universe undercuts the possibility of meaning (Camus 1955; cf. Ecclesiastes ).

Interestingly, the most common rationales for nihilism these days do not appeal to supernaturalism. The idea shared among many contemporary nihilists is that there is something inherent to the human condition that prevents meaning from arising, even granting that God exists. For instance, some nihilists make the Schopenhauerian claim that our lives lack meaning because we are invariably dissatisfied; either we have not yet obtained what we seek, or we have obtained it and are bored (Martin 1993). Critics tend to reply that at least a number of human lives do have the requisite amount of satisfaction required for meaning, supposing that some is (Blackburn 2001, 74–77).

Other nihilists claim that life would be meaningless if there were no invariant moral rules that could be fully justified—the world would be nonsensical if, in (allegedly) Dostoyevskian terms, “everything were permitted”—and that such rules cannot exist for persons who can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, ch. 1). While a number of philosophers agree that a universally binding and warranted morality is necessary for meaning in life (Kant 1791; Tännsjö 1988; Jacquette 2001, ch. 1; Cottingham 2003, 2005, ch. 3), some do not (Margolis 1990; Ellin 1995, 325–27). Furthermore, contemporary rationalist and realist work in meta-ethics has led many to believe that such a moral system exists.

In the past 10 years, some interesting new defences of nihilism have arisen that merit careful consideration. According to one rationale, for our lives to matter, we must in a position to add value to the world, which we are not since the value of the world is already infinite (Smith 2003). The key premises for this view are that every bit of space-time (or at least the stars in the physical universe) have some positive value, that these values can be added up, and that space is infinite. If the physical world at present contains an infinite degree of value, nothing we do can make a difference in terms of meaning, for infinity plus any amount of value must be infinity.

One way to question this argument is to suggest that even if one cannot add to the value of the universe, meaning plausibly obtains merely by being the source of value. Consider that one does not merely want one's child to be reared with love, but wants to be the one who rears one's child with love. And this desire remains even knowing that others would have reared one's child with love in one's absence, so that one's actions are not increasing the goodness of the state of the universe relative to what it would have had without them. Similar remarks might apply to cases of meaning more generally (for additional, and technical, discussion of whether an infinite universe entails nihilism, see Almeida 2010; Vohánka and Vohánková n.d.).

Another fresh argument for nihilism is forthcoming from certain defenses of anti-natalism, the view that it is immoral to bring new people into existence because doing so would be a harm to them. There are now a variety of rationales for anti-natalism, but most relevant to debates about whether life is meaningful is probably the following argument from David Benatar (2006, 18–59). According to him, the bads of existing (e.g., pains) are real disadvantages relative to not existing, while the goods of existing (pleasures) are not real advantages relative to not existing, since there is in the latter state no one to be deprived of them. If indeed the state of not existing is no worse than that of experiencing the benefits of existence, then, since existing invariably brings harm in its wake, existing is always a net harm compared to not existing. Although this argument is about goods such as pleasures in the first instance, it seems generalizable to non-experiential goods, including that of meaning in life.

The criticisms of Benatar that promise to cut most deep are those that question his rationale for the above judgments of good and bad. He maintains that these appraisals best explain, e.g., why it would be wrong for one to create someone whom one knows would suffer a torturous existence, and why it would not be wrong for one not to create someone whom one knows would enjoy a wonderful existence. The former would be wrong and the latter would not be wrong, for Benatar, because no pain in non-existence is better than pain in existence, and because no pleasure in non-existence is no worse than pleasure in existence. Critics usually grant the judgments of wrongness, but provide explanations of them that do not invoke Benatar's judgments of good and bad that apparently lead to anti-natalism (e.g., Boonin 2012; Weinberg 2012).

This survey closes by discussing the most well-known rationale for nihilism, namely, Thomas Nagel's (1986) invocation of the external standpoint that purportedly reveals our lives to be unimportant (see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Benatar 2006, 60–92; cf. Dworkin 2000, ch. 6). According to Nagel, we are capable of comprehending the world from a variety of standpoints that are either internal or external. The most internal perspective would be a particular human being's desire at a given instant, with a somewhat less internal perspective being one's interests over a life-time, and an even less internal perspective being the interests of one's family or community. In contrast, the most external perspective, an encompassing standpoint utterly independent of one's particularity, would be, to use Henry Sidgwick's phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is, the standpoint that considers the interests of all sentient beings at all times and in all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one's finite—and even downright puny—impact on the world, little of one's life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth over an approximately 75 years just does not amount to much, when considering the billions of years and likely trillions of beings that are a part of space-time.

Very few accept the authority of the (most) external standpoint (Ellin 1995, 316–17; Blackburn 2001, 79–80; Schmidtz 2001) or the implications that Nagel believes it has for the meaning of our lives (Quinn 2000, 65–66; Singer 1993, 333–34; Wolf 1997b, 19–21). However, the field could use much more discussion of this rationale, given its persistence in human thought. It is plausible to think, with Nagel, that part of what it is to be a person is to be able to take up an external standpoint. However, what precisely is a standpoint? Must we invariably adopt one standpoint or the other, or is it possible not to take one up at all? Is there a reliable way to ascertain which standpoint is normatively more authoritative than others? These and the other questions posed in this survey still lack conclusive answers, another respect in which the field of life's meaning is tantalizingly open for substantial contributions.

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1.1 What Is Philosophy?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify sages (early philosophers) across historical traditions.
Explain the connection between ancient philosophy and the origin of the sciences.
Describe philosophy as a discipline that makes coherent sense of a whole.
Summarize the broad and diverse origins of philosophy.

It is difficult to define philosophy. In fact, to do so is itself a philosophical activity, since philosophers are attempting to gain the broadest and most fundamental conception of the world as it exists. The world includes nature, consciousness, morality, beauty, and social organizations. So the content available for philosophy is both broad and deep. Because of its very nature, philosophy considers a range of subjects, and philosophers cannot automatically rule anything out. Whereas other disciplines allow for basic assumptions, philosophers cannot be bound by such assumptions. This open-endedness makes philosophy a somewhat awkward and confusing subject for students. There are no easy answers to the questions of what philosophy studies or how one does philosophy. Nevertheless, in this chapter, we can make some progress on these questions by (1) looking at past examples of philosophers, (2) considering one compelling definition of philosophy, and (3) looking at the way academic philosophers today actually practice philosophy.

Historical Origins of Philosophy

One way to begin to understand philosophy is to look at its history. The historical origins of philosophical thinking and exploration vary around the globe. The word philosophy derives from ancient Greek, in which the philosopher is a lover or pursuer ( philia ) of wisdom ( sophia ). But the earliest Greek philosophers were not known as philosophers; they were simply known as sages . The sage tradition provides an early glimpse of philosophical thought in action. Sages are sometimes associated with mathematical and scientific discoveries and at other times with their political impact. What unites these figures is that they demonstrate a willingness to be skeptical of traditions, a curiosity about the natural world and our place in it, and a commitment to applying reason to understand nature, human nature, and society better. The overview of the sage tradition that follows will give you a taste of philosophy’s broad ambitions as well as its focus on complex relations between different areas of human knowledge. There are some examples of women who made contributions to philosophy and the sage tradition in Greece, India, and China, but these were patriarchal societies that did not provide many opportunities for women to participate in philosophical and political discussions.

The Sages of India, China, Africa, and Greece

In classical Indian philosophy and religion, sages play a central role in both religious mythology and in the practice of passing down teaching and instruction through generations. The Seven Sages, or Saptarishi (seven rishis in the Sanskrit language), play an important role in sanatana dharma , the eternal duties that have come to be identified with Hinduism but that predate the establishment of the religion. The Seven Sages are partially considered wise men and are said to be the authors of the ancient Indian texts known as the Vedas . But they are partly mythic figures as well, who are said to have descended from the gods and whose reincarnation marks the passing of each age of Manu (age of man or epoch of humanity). The rishis tended to live monastic lives, and together they are thought of as the spiritual and practical forerunners of Indian gurus or teachers, even up to today. They derive their wisdom, in part, from spiritual forces, but also from tapas , or the meditative, ascetic, and spiritual practices they perform to gain control over their bodies and minds. The stories of the rishis are part of the teachings that constitute spiritual and philosophical practice in contemporary Hinduism.

Figure 1.2 depicts a scene from the Matsya Purana, where Manu, the first man whose succession marks the prehistorical ages of Earth, sits with the Seven Sages in a boat to protect them from a mythic flood that is said to have submerged the world. The king of serpents guides the boat, which is said to have also contained seeds, plants, and animals saved by Manu from the flood.

Despite the fact that classical Indian culture is patriarchal, women figures play an important role in the earliest writings of the Vedic tradition (the classical Indian religious and philosophical tradition). These women figures are partly connected to the Indian conception of the fundamental forces of nature—energy, ability, strength, effort, and power—as feminine. This aspect of God was thought to be present at the creation of the world. The Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic writings, contains hymns that tell the story of Ghosha, a daughter of Rishi Kakshivan, who had a debilitating skin condition (probably leprosy) but devoted herself to spiritual practices to learn how to heal herself and eventually marry. Another woman, Maitreyi, is said to have married the Rishi Yajnavalkya (himself a god who was cast into mortality by a rival) for the purpose of continuing her spiritual training. She was a devoted ascetic and is said to have composed 10 of the hymns in the Rig Veda. Additionally, there is a famous dialogue between Maitreyi and Yajnavalkya in the Upanishads (another early, foundational collection of texts in the Vedic tradition) about attachment to material possessions, which cannot give a person happiness, and the achievement of ultimate bliss through knowledge of the Absolute (God).

Another woman sage named Gargi also participates in a celebrated dialogue with Yajnavalkya on natural philosophy and the fundamental elements and forces of the universe. Gargi is characterized as one of the most knowledgeable sages on the topic, though she ultimately concedes that Yajnavalkya has greater knowledge. In these brief episodes, these ancient Indian texts record instances of key women who attained a level of enlightenment and learning similar to their male counterparts. Unfortunately, this early equality between the sexes did not last. Over time Indian culture became more patriarchal, confining women to a dependent and subservient role. Perhaps the most dramatic and cruel example of the effects of Indian patriarchy was the ritual practice of sati , in which a widow would sometimes immolate herself, partly in recognition of the “fact” that following the death of her husband, her current life on Earth served no further purpose (Rout 2016). Neither a widow’s in-laws nor society recognized her value.

In similar fashion to the Indian tradition, the sage ( sheng ) tradition is important for Chinese philosophy . Confucius , one of the greatest Chinese writers, often refers to ancient sages, emphasizing their importance for their discovery of technical skills essential to human civilization, for their role as rulers and wise leaders, and for their wisdom. This emphasis is in alignment with the Confucian appeal to a well-ordered state under the guidance of a “ philosopher-king .” This point of view can be seen in early sage figures identified by one of the greatest classical authors in the Chinese tradition, as the “Nest Builder” and “Fire Maker” or, in another case, the “Flood Controller.” These names identify wise individuals with early technological discoveries. The Book of Changes , a classical Chinese text, identifies the Five (mythic) Emperors as sages, including Yao and Shun, who are said to have built canoes and oars, attached carts to oxen, built double gates for defense, and fashioned bows and arrows (Cheng 1983). Emperor Shun is also said to have ruled during the time of a great flood, when all of China was submerged. Yü is credited with having saved civilization by building canals and dams.

These figures are praised not only for their political wisdom and long rule, but also for their filial piety and devotion to work. For instance, Mencius, a Confucian philosopher, relates a story of Shun’s care for his blind father and wicked stepmother, while Yü is praised for his selfless devotion to work. In these ways, the Chinese philosophical traditions, such as Confucianism and Mohism, associate key values of their philosophical enterprises with the great sages of their history. Whether the sages were, in fact, actual people or, as many scholars have concluded, mythical forebearers, they possessed the essential human virtue of listening and responding to divine voices. This attribute can be inferred from the Chinese script for sheng , which bears the symbol of an ear as a prominent feature. So the sage is one who listens to insight from the heavens and then is capable of sharing that wisdom or acting upon it to the benefit of his society (Cheng 1983). This idea is similar to one found in the Indian tradition, where the most important texts, the Vedas, are known as shruti , or works that were heard through divine revelation and only later written down.

Although Confucianism is a venerable world philosophy, it is also highly patriarchal and resulted in the widespread subordination of women. The position of women in China began to change only after the Communist Revolution (1945–1952). While some accounts of Confucianism characterize men and women as emblematic of two opposing forces in the natural world, the Yin and Yang, this view of the sexes developed over time and was not consistently applied. Chinese women did see a measure of independence and freedom with the influence of Buddhism and Daoism, each of which had a more liberal view of the role of women (Adler 2006).

A detailed and important study of the sage tradition in Africa is provided by Henry Odera Oruka (1990), who makes the case that prominent folk sages in African tribal history developed complex philosophical ideas. Oruka interviewed tribal Africans identified by their communities as sages, and he recorded their sayings and ideas, confining himself to those sayings that demonstrated “a rational method of inquiry into the real nature of things” (Oruka 1990, 150). He recognized a tension in what made these sages philosophically interesting: they articulated the received wisdom of their tradition and culture while at the same time maintaining a critical distance from that culture, seeking a rational justification for the beliefs held by the culture.

Connections

The chapter on the early history of philosophy covers this topic in greater detail.

Among the ancient Greeks, it is common to identify seven sages. The best-known account is provided by Diogenes Laërtius, whose text Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a canonical resource on early Greek philosophy. The first and most important sage is Thales of Miletus . Thales traveled to Egypt to study with the Egyptian priests, where he became one of the first Greeks to learn astronomy. He is known for bringing back to Greece knowledge of the calendar, dividing the year into 365 days, tracking the progress of the sun from solstice to solstice, and—somewhat dramatically—predicting a solar eclipse in 585 BCE. The eclipse occurred on the day of a battle between the Medes and Lydians. It is possible that Thales used knowledge of Babylonian astronomical records to guess the year and location of the eclipse. This mathematical and astronomical feat is one of Thales’s several claims to sagacity. In addition, he is said to have calculated the height of the pyramids using the basic geometry of similar triangles and measuring shadows at a certain time of day. He is also reported to have predicted a particularly good year for olives: he bought up all the olive presses and then made a fortune selling those presses to farmers wanting to turn their olives into oil. Together, these scientific and technical achievements suggest that at least part of Thales’s wisdom can be attributed to a very practical, scientific, and mathematical knowledge of the natural world. If that were all Thales was known for, he might be called the first scientist or engineer. But he also made more basic claims about the nature and composition of the universe; for instance, he claimed that all matter was fundamentally made of up water. He also argued that everything that moved on its own possessed a soul and that the soul itself was immortal. These claims demonstrate a concern about the fundamental nature of reality.

Another of the seven sages was Solon , a famed political leader. He introduced the “Law of Release” to Athens, which cancelled all personal debts and freed indentured servants, or “debt-slaves” who had been consigned to service based on a personal debt they were unable to repay. In addition, he established a constitutional government in Athens with a representative body, a procedure for taxation, and a series of economic reforms. He was widely admired as a political leader but voluntarily stepped down so that he would not become a tyrant. He was finally forced to flee Athens when he was unable to persuade the members of the Assembly (the ruling body) to resist the rising tyranny of one of his relatives, Pisistratus. When he arrived in exile, he was reportedly asked whom he considered to be happy, to which he replied, “One ought to count no man happy until he is dead.” Aristotle interpreted this statement to mean that happiness was not a momentary experience, but a quality reflective of someone’s entire life.

Beginnings of Natural Philosophy

The sage tradition is a largely prehistoric tradition that provides a narrative about how intellect, wisdom, piety, and virtue led to the innovations central to flourishing of ancient civilizations. Particularly in Greece, the sage tradition blends into a period of natural philosophy, where ancient scientists or philosophers try to explain nature using rational methods. Several of the early Greek schools of philosophy were centered on their respective views of nature. Followers of Thales, known as the Milesians , were particularly interested in the underlying causes of natural change. Why does water turn to ice? What happens when winter passes into spring? Why does it seem like the stars and planets orbit Earth in predictable patterns? From Aristotle we know that Thales thought there was a difference between material elements that participate in change and elements that contain their own source of motion. This early use of the term element did not have the same meaning as the scientific meaning of the word today in a field like chemistry. But Thales thought material elements bear some fundamental connection to water in that they have the capacity to move and alter their state. By contrast, other elements had their own internal source of motion, of which he cites the magnet and amber (which exhibits forces of static electricity when rubbed against other materials). He said that these elements have “soul.” This notion of soul, as a principle of internal motion, was influential across ancient and medieval natural philosophy. In fact, the English language words animal and animation are derived from the Latin word for soul ( anima ).

Similarly, early thinkers like Xenophanes began to formulate explanations for natural phenomena. For instance, he explained rainbows, the sun, the moon, and St. Elmo’s fire (luminous, electrical discharges) as apparitions of the clouds. This form of explanation, describing some apparent phenomenon as the result of an underlying mechanism, is paradigmatic of scientific explanation even today. Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, used logic to conclude that whatever fundamentally exists must be unchanging because if it ever did change, then at least some aspect of it would cease to exist. But that would imply that what exists could not exist—which seems to defy logic. Parmenides is not saying that there is no change, but that the changes we observe are a kind of illusion. Indeed, this point of view was highly influential, not only for Plato and Aristotle, but also for the early atomists, like Democritus , who held that all perceived qualities are merely human conventions. Underlying all these appearances, Democritus reasoned, are only atomic, unchanging bits of matter flowing through a void. While this ancient Greek view of atoms is quite different from the modern model of atoms, the very idea that every observable phenomenon has a basis in underlying pieces of matter in various configurations clearly connects modern science to the earliest Greek philosophers.

Along these lines, the Pythagoreans provide a very interesting example of a community of philosophers engaged in understanding the natural world and how best to live in it. You may be familiar with Pythagoras from his Pythagorean theorem, a key principle in geometry establishing a relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle. Specifically, the square formed by the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the two squares formed by the remaining two sides. In the figure below, the area of the square formed by c is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares formed by a and b. The figure represents how Pythagoras would have conceptualized the theorem.

The Pythagoreans were excellent mathematicians, but they were more interested in how mathematics explained the natural world. In particular, Pythagoras recognized relationships between line segments and shapes, such as the Pythagorean theorem describes, but also between numbers and sounds, by virtue of harmonics and the intervals between notes. Similar regularities can be found in astronomy. As a result, Pythagoras reasoned that all of nature is generated according to mathematical regularities. This view led the Pythagoreans to believe that there was a unified, rational structure to the universe, that the planets and stars exhibit harmonic properties and may even produce music, that musical tones and harmonies could have healing powers, that the soul is immortal and continuously reincarnated, and that animals possess souls that ought to be respected and valued. As a result, the Pythagorean community was defined by serious scholarship as well as strict rules about diet, clothing, and behavior.

Additionally, in the early Pythagorean communities, it was possible for women to participate and contribute to philosophical thought and discovery. Pythagoras himself was said to have been inspired to study philosophy by the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. His wife Theano is credited with contributing to important discoveries in the realms of numbers and optics. She is said to have written a treatise, On Piety , which further applies Pythagorean philosophy to various aspects of practical life (Waithe 1987). Myia, the daughter of this illustrious couple, was also an active and productive part of the community. At least one of her letters has survived in which she discusses the application of Pythagorean philosophy to motherhood. The Pythagorean school is an example of how early philosophical and scientific thinking combines with religious, cultural, and ethical beliefs and practices to embrace many different aspects of life.

How It All Hangs Together

Closer to the present day, in 1962, Wilfrid Sellars , a highly influential 20th-century American philosopher, wrote a chapter called “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy . He opens the essay with a dramatic and concise description of philosophy: “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” If we spend some time trying to understand what Sellars means by this definition, we will be in a better position to understand the academic discipline of philosophy. First, Sellars emphasizes that philosophy’s goal is to understand a very wide range of topics—in fact, the widest possible range. That is to say, philosophers are committed to understanding everything insofar as it can be understood. This is important because it means that, on principle, philosophers cannot rule out any topic of study. However, for a philosopher not every topic of study deserves equal attention. Some things, like conspiracy theories or paranoid delusions, are not worth studying because they are not real. It may be worth understanding why some people are prone to paranoid delusions or conspiratorial thinking, but the content of these ideas is not worth investigating. Other things may be factually true, such as the daily change in number of the grains of sand on a particular stretch of beach, but they are not worth studying because knowing that information will not teach us about how things hang together. So a philosopher chooses to study things that are informative and interesting—things that provide a better understanding of the world and our place in it.

To make judgments about which areas are interesting or worthy of study, philosophers need to cultivate a special skill. Sellars describes this philosophical skill as a kind of know-how (a practical, engaged type of knowledge, similar to riding a bike or learning to swim). Philosophical know-how, Sellars says, has to do with knowing your way around the world of concepts and being able to understand and think about how concepts connect, link up, support, and rely upon one another—in short, how things hang together. Knowing one’s way around the world of concepts also involves knowing where to look to find interesting discoveries and which places to avoid, much like a good fisherman knows where to cast his line. Sellars acknowledges that other academics and scientists know their way around the concepts in their field of study much like philosophers do. The difference is that these other inquirers confine themselves to a specific field of study or a particular subject matter, while philosophers want to understand the whole. Sellars thinks that this philosophical skill is most clearly demonstrated when we try to understand the connection between the natural world as we experience it directly (the “manifest image”) and the natural world as science explains it (the “scientific image”). He suggests that we gain an understanding of the nature of philosophy by trying to reconcile these two pictures of the world that most people understand independently.

Read Like a Philosopher

“philosophy and the scientific image of man”.

This essay, “ Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man ” by Wilfrid Sellars, has been republished several times and can be found online. Read through the essay with particular focus on the first section. Consider the following study questions:

What is the difference between knowing how and knowing that? Are these concepts always distinct? What does it mean for philosophical knowledge to be a kind of know-how?
What do you think Sellars means when he says that philosophers “have turned other special subject-matters to non-philosophers over the past 2500 years”?
Sellars describes philosophy as “bringing a picture into focus,” but he is also careful to recognize challenges with this metaphor as it relates to the body of human knowledge. What are those challenges? Why is it difficult to imagine all of human knowledge as a picture or image?
What is the scientific image of man in the world? What is the manifest image of man in the world? How are they different? And why are these two images the primary images that need to be brought into focus so that philosophy may have an eye on the whole?

Unlike other subjects that have clearly defined subject matter boundaries and relatively clear methods of exploration and analysis, philosophy intentionally lacks clear boundaries or methods. For instance, your biology textbook will tell you that biology is the “science of life.” The boundaries of biology are fairly clear: it is an experimental science that studies living things and the associated material necessary for life. Similarly, biology has relatively well-defined methods. Biologists, like other experimental scientists, broadly follow something called the “scientific method.” This is a bit of a misnomer, unfortunately, because there is no single method that all the experimental sciences follow. Nevertheless, biologists have a range of methods and practices, including observation, experimentation, and theory comparison and analysis, that are fairly well established and well known among practitioners. Philosophy doesn’t have such easy prescriptions—and for good reason. Philosophers are interested in gaining the broadest possible understanding of things, whether that be nature, what is possible, morals, aesthetics, political organizations, or any other field or concept.

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My Personal Philosophy of Life, Essay Example

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I am the third of five children: I have two older sisters and two younger brothers. My big family helped me to realize the importance of family relations and it has been a basis of my future convictions. Person is an indivisible part of the family. Another thing about my childhood is that I have been involved in the nursing field from the time I could work. I started my nursing practice as a nurse aid at the age of sixteen. Strange as it may seem, I never seriously thought about being a nurse until many years later and many failed attempts at other careers. My transcript speaks for itself. I went a long way to nursing: I did not become a nurse until I was thirty one and pregnant at the time with twins. My professional choice is thoughtful and I do know what I want to get from the course.

I am not a light-minded girl and I have my own life principle, and I always try to adhere to it. My philosophy of life is “life is not always easy and you have to work hard for what you want.” Though for someone it may sound like a commonplace, in fact it is not. Such philosophy came as a result of my life, of my experience, and I believe that it helps me to withstand difficult situations.

As English proverb claims, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and I totally agree with it. Usually, tangible achievements come as a result of long and hard work. I perceive difficult tasks just like challenges and I understand that they are beneficial to my skills and my experience. Nursing school was not easy, studying in Framingham state college is not easy, but I know that I will reap the benefits in the end. It takes some doing to achieve good results, but I know it is the way it always happens. And everyone has to work hard for what they have ‘everyone’. Nursing is not an easy profession but I do believe that it is a way to help people understand that they should work for their wellness too, they should cooperate with nurses and then any results are achievable.

My Professional Philosophy of Nursing

When I think back now as to why I went into nursing school, I cannot come up with any clear reason. May be, it was a moment of inspiration, because then I had no strong intention of being a nurse. However, now I know that this is what I was destined to do with my life. All careers I have tried failed to provide that certainty.

I have my own perception of nursing practice, and it is my own professional philosophy. I am here to help people live a healthier, happier, and longer life. I am not striving for lofty aims; neither do I resort to common knowledge. I just feel that it is the very thing that nurses should do. Though I have come up with this idea, it is difficult to adhere to it. I feel that frequently I fail to promote this philosophy and focus on the immediate task. And that is why I study more and hone my skills.

I work as an emergency room nurse now. Actually, it is rather hard to stand back and look at the patient as a whole when you are trying to fix him or her. When they are broken, say, their blood pressure is 70/40 and you need to focus on the I.V., fluids, and blood products, it is hardly impossible to concentrate on their integrity and reasons of their illness. Current and urgent actions outweigh philosophical questions and perceptual issues.

Now I realize that helping people to recover their health does not come to just fixing their blood pressure or their broken arm. While having them in the emergency room it is teaching that I perform to help them cope with their illness or limitations. In order to better serve the patient and the family I need to consider the person as a physiological, psychological, sociocultural, and developmental being. This concept is difficult in itself, but to make people think that they are able to recover, to communicate with their relatives, to provide help and support I should embody this concept.

Just corresponding to my nursing career my philosophy of nursing is always changing and evolving. New circumstances and new cases help me to concentrate on important psychological aspects of nursing, to realize needs of ill people and make necessary decisions. They make my understanding of human needs more profound, and this enables me to help them to live healthy, happy and long lives.

My Personal and Professional Philosophy Integrated With the Framingham State

Conceptual Framework

The Framingham state college philosophy states that we need to focus “on the person as a physiological, psychological, sociocultural, and developmental being who progresses through the life cycle as a unified whole within the environment.” I do believe that we need to look at the person and the family as a whole. According to the Framingham State College Philosophy “the faculty believes that the goal of nursing is to promote the person’s movement along the wellness-illness continuum toward high-level wellness.” The way we promote the movement along the wellness-illness continuum is through education of out patients. We as nurses do not necessarily need to change the patient or family environment. To say the least, it is a difficult task. But what we can do is help them to cope with the environment that they live in to promote wellness. But we must inform our patients about what the way to wellness looks like. We do need to let patient know that it is not always easy. There is no one pill that cures everything.

Here my own life philosophy coincides with the Framingham state college idea. I think that there are no easy ways to deal with serious illness or limitation. So in order to evaluate some compromise way to recover that would be easy to follow I explore the patient as a whole: his or her lifestyle, habits, environment, etc. I usually try to persuade people that in order to get better or prevent their illness they should change something: say, their behavior, habits, diet, or lifestyles.

As prevention is better that cure, the college emphasizes the importance of prevention. Whether prevention means reduction of risk of being ill or general promotion of wellness or it means in-time detection and prevention of further worsening, or even prevention of consequences of the existing illness, it is achieved through promotion of wellness. The philosophy of college claims that promotion of wellness is an important part of the cure, and my personal philosophy also supports this idea. Everyone has an ability to withstand the illness being provided with a professional and timely help. And then it is necessary to understand that nurses are able to provide that kind of help, but not everything can be done by nurses. Something is always left for the patient’s work.

The Framingham college course underlines the importance of nurses in preventive health care. Nurses can influence people and make decisions concerning their health conditions. It is not a part of usual nursing course, and it is important to integrate these principles of preventive health care into usual working practice. As I have mentioned, it is not that easy but in the long run worth doing. It requires new skills and knowledge of behavioral and natural sciences and change of attitude to the patient sometimes.

What is really important for the college philosophy is not just taking care of health, but providing education, assistance and advocacy to people. Nurses should not be just medical profession, they should communicate with their patients and involve them into decision making if necessary. But the role of nurse must be leading as nurses are responsible for all decisions. Also, nurses should hone their skills constantly in communities, within collectives, and strive for betterment of their nursing practice. Actually, promoting wellness is a complex mission and it requires certain skills and approaches.

I think that in general my personal philosophy does comply with the philosophy of the college. College philosophy requires nurses to learn constantly and to improve their skills, to change the professional attitude to patients from the medical to more humanistic, socioeconomic, etc. I understand that it is necessary and in the long run it will improve my nursing skills noticeably. Professional nurses should be able to help patients to withstand their illnesses, and not only by means of pills and injections. Promoting wellness is a part of prevention of future diseases. For me, this idea is really great and it is the very thing I need to study and promote. It corresponds to my idea of providing wellness through nursing, and to my philosophy of life.

Life is not easy, work is not easy, but we as nurses can ease lives of our patients and help them to recover. We are able to make the patient’s life healthier and better on the other level. All we need is improvement of nursing skills with social and humanities studies. Then patients face the reality and come up with idea that nothing comes without efforts. They realize that they are provided with extraordinary help but their wellness depends on their own efforts, too. So the philosophy of college, my personal professional philosophy and my philosophy of life are interwoven; though college idea of nursing is stable, my own convictions change as I learn more and improve my experience.

We as nurses are always working towards the highest level of wellness, either in our family, in our careers, or in our self. And we need to do the same for our patients, as we possess knowledge that is unavailable to our patients. We as nurses have an extraordinary influence on our patients and the public. We need to promote education and have the ability to promote compliance. We need to look at the patient or family as a whole and remember that at some point in time we will have someone in the health care system and could only wish the same care we would give.

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My Personal Philosophy of Life

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Free Sample Essay On Introduction About Life

Table of Contents

An essay is any form of literary composition typically considered to have a viewpoint. It may be expressed in prose, poetry, theoretical argument, or a mixture of both.

Although modern essays are often edited for clarity and length, the form is generally regarded as one of the most versatile literary genres. It has been described as “the most important writing in the western canon.”

An essay about life looks at the subject with a reflective intention, whether on a philosophical or psychological level. Let’s delve in with a sample to understand the genre’s requirements better.

Sample: Essay Introduction About Life

Wordsworth observed that our lives are a reflection of paradise. Even if some people might think that’s unrealistic, the bottom line is that life is precious.

If it weren’t the case, nobody would try to hold onto it for as long as they could. Existence is a necessary component of life because life cannot exist without it.

Comparison of Life: Different strokes for different folks

However, sometimes life is complicated. Many people do not have the good fortune to have a good education and some lack access to food and shelter. For them, life is hard, and existence is challenging.

However, hope is another essential component of life which is equally as significant as existence. People cling to hope when they feel like darkness is consuming their life. Hope is what makes it possible to survive. Everyone should evaluate how vital survival and hope are in life and living.

Philosophy of life

The most challenging thing in today’s world is to survive, because competition thrives and can be choking. Hope is the only means of survival for people whose very existence is difficult. This is one way to put life into words.

However, the truth is that we cannot express life in words. Words cannot adequately express any person’s sense of meaning and purpose. Some use their lives to make something or build something. Others try to learn something, or choose to have fun in life.

It is impossible to say which of these outlooks is better or worse than the others. It demonstrates how people consider their own lives and how they understand their assignment on earth.

Life’s perspective

But finding meaning and purpose can be challenging. Life comprises mainly of experiences. In actuality, it directs a person from birth to death. Every occasion has a lesson for the person who has it.

While some people want to grow from their mistakes, others tend to dismiss them. Finding the meaning and purpose of one’s life might be challenging due to experiences.

Every new event has an impact on how that person views life. As a result, there cannot be just one perspective on life. Because of this, there is no singular meaning or goal that anyone can attach to their existence.

Some of us try to compare our hardships to those who have endured similar or worse. We frequently turn to autobiographies and biographies while doing this.

While the other is written by someone who records such feelings, the former is written by the individual who feels them. But they both depict life in very different ways.

It demonstrates how life continues even after death, following the same path as the ancient Egyptians, who held the same belief. But even after death, life and the impact it leaves behind endure. Therefore, to put it another way, life is limitless and lasts forever.

Wrapping Up

One of the most difficult things in life is bridging the gap between the realities of life and a dream world. To do so is not an easy endeavor.

It is often easier to focus on the negative than to realize the good in one’s life. Many individuals have spent most of their lives struggling with this discrepancy in their reality.

Some have even become stuck in a cycle of living in the same mundane ways and never being able to break out of it. This essay addresses the point that life is limitless, so we should not allow the past to overtake the present.

Free Sample Essay On Introduction About Life

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Philosophy in Life Essay
Philosophy of life is an overall vision of or attitude toward life and the purpose of life (Merriam Webster). This point in my life I have taken a few values that I hold in high regards. These values include family, friendship, moral, love, education, optimist, happiness, and purpose. I will be describing in this essay my philosophy and why I ...
My Personal Philosophy of Life: [Essay Example], 495 words
Get original essay. One of the fundamental pillars of my personal philosophy is the power of positivity. I firmly believe that adopting an optimistic outlook can greatly enhance our overall well-being and contribute to a fulfilling life. By maintaining a positive mindset, we can overcome obstacles, remain resilient in the face of adversity, and ...
Free Sample Essay On Introduction About Life
Sample: Essay Introduction About Life. Wordsworth observed that our lives are a reflection of paradise. Even if some people might think that's unrealistic, the bottom line is that life is precious. ... Philosophy of life. The most challenging thing in today's world is to survive, because competition thrives and can be choking. ...
Final Philosophy Essay
professor caroline mobley final philosophy 101 essay life argument begins with the assertion that life is good for its subject. he goes on to present several. Skip to document. University; High School. ... Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 101 ) 19 Documents. Students shared 19 documents in this course. University The University of Tennessee ...
The Meaning of Life: What's the Point?
The meaning of life might be the true story of life's origins and significance.[7] In this sense, life cannot be meaningless, but its meaning might be pleasing or disappointing to us. When people like Tolstoy regard life as meaningless, they seem to be thinking that the truth about life is bad news.[8] 2.
Nursing Philosophy Statement
Nursing Philosophy Statement. 1453 Words6 Pages. Introduction For myself, I have always looked at nursing as more than just a career choice. It is a lifestyle dedicated to helping those in need at their lowest moments in life. Over the last four years, I have learned the necessary skills by expanding my knowledge through hard work and ...
Philosophy as a Way of Life
Word Count: 998. If you have ever learned a philosophical idea and tried to incorporate it into your daily living, you may be interested in an approach called philosophy as a way of life (PWOL). Instead of analyzing concepts or arguments, or constructing a theory of the world, PWOL's approach emphasizes the practice of living philosophically.
The Leadership Philosophy Of GMS Joseph Jones
Leadership Philosophy - GMCS Joseph Jones. Introduction: Leadership is the ability to build a cohesive team, effectively train that team, and provide direction towards a common goal. Every person within an organization is essential. It is imperative to set a standard for everyone to support each other. Leaders should lay the foundation for a ...