When life is worth living

This short book, translated from English and whose main part comes from two conferences pronounced at Princeton University in 2007, is devoted to a question today largely neglected by philosophers, that is, that of the meaning that there can be in our lives. Susan Wolf, an American philosopher to whom we owe important contributions in philosophy of action and ethics, defends two main theses there. The first concerns the nature of the meaning that can be found in a life, while the second relates to the type of value that constitutes meaning, compared to personal interest and morality.

Feeling of achievement and objective value

What is in common between the case of a person who devotes his life to a goldfish and that of the artist who dedicates his life to his art, but who withdraws no satisfaction ? According to Wolf, none of these two lives is meaningful. If the first life seems to be lacking in meaning, it is because the activity of the one who acts out of love for a red fish seems to be devoid of value, the red fish does not really seem to us worthy of love. Or at least, the value involved would be too low to give meaning to a life. Thus, this life would have no more meaning than that of Sisyphe, condemned to painfully push again and again a huge rock at the top of a mountain, a summit from which the rock falls each time. Indeed, this activity seems eminently devoid of value. No doubt more surprisingly, the life of the frustrated artist would have, in the opinion of Wolf, no more meaning than that of Sisyphus or the one who devotes his life to a goldfish. Even if objectively, the activity of the frustrated artist has value, the latter is not able to feel a positive emotional state with regard to his activity. However, Wolf maintains that “ (…) The life of a person can only make sense if he cares deeply enough about certain things that fascinate her, fascinate her, interest him, mobilize his action. »(P. 30)

According to Wolf’s conception, the meaning that there can be in a life requires both a subjective element, constituted by what Wolf calls a “ feeling of accomplishment “(Feeling of Fulfillment), like the passion for an activity, and an objective element, the life in question to be linked to something having an objective value. One could conclude that the meaning of life depends on the conjunction of the following two conditions: a) This life provides a feeling of accomplishment and b) it contributes in one way or another to something with objective value. However, Wolf maintains that the subjective element and the objective element are not independent. They must concur, the positive feeling having to respond to the value of its object. Whoever feels a positive feeling towards an activity that turns out to have his knowledge of objective value, as in the case of the Marijuana smoker whose smoke relieves, without him realizing it, the pain of an AIDS patient, does not seem to have more sense than that of a marijuana smoker whose activity has no positive effects. In the terms of Wolf, “ (c) e which confers its value, it is that the life of a person is actively (and out of love) engaged in projects which give birth to this feeling, when these projects have an objective value. “(P. 50) More specifically, we can formulate Wolf’s conception as follows: a life will be equipped with the extent that a) it implies activities which arouse a feeling of accomplishment, b) These activities have, or contribute to something having, an objective value, and c) The feeling of accomplishment responds to the objective value in question. As the feeling of accomplishment with regard to an activity having an objective value can be appropriate, Wolf will speak of a conception of “ appropriate fulfillment. »»

In defense of his approach, Wolf stresses that it allows to account for two largely shared intuitions. According to the first intuition, what matters to make a life make sense is that you have to engage in an activity that you love. The main thing would be to find what we are passionate about. The second intuition affirms that a life having meaning must aim for something greater than oneself, which exceeds us. There are different ways to understand this idea, but Wolf proposes to interpret it as meaning that the value in question must be objective.

Questions to know what an objective value is and how one could be aware of it, Wolf replied that it offers neither a theory of objective value, nor an infallible procedure to determine what things have this kind of value. It considers that the question of the nature of objective value is an unresolved philosophical problem. What matters, for Wolf is that the objective value is “ self -independent and has its source out self. (P. 41) Thus, the source of value is not in us, as would be the case with an activity having value simply because it gives us pleasure or that it is advantageous. An activity with objective value must be able to be considered good from a impartial point of view. This explains why Wolf maintains that in an attempt to determine whether an activity has objective value, we must not only take into account our own experiences, intuitions and reflections, but also those of others. It is by trying to justify our evaluative judgments, being exposed to other points of view and to different lifestyles that we can hope to have a better idea of ​​what has objective value.

Meaning, happiness and morality

On the basis of this conception of meaning that can be found in our lives, Wolf maintains that the value that constitutes the meaning in a life is distinct from both that which we attribute, from a selfish perspective, to happiness and that which we attribute to morality. Thus, a person who has a life with meaning will not necessarily be happy. Indeed, engaging in a cause, for example, can provide us with more sorrows than joys. In the same way, which gives meaning to a life will not necessarily coincide with what morality requires. Wolf gives as an example the case of a mother who must lie out of love for her daughter, whose life is in danger.

According to Wolf, recognizing that meaning constitutes a distinct value has both implications with regard to the concepts of personal interest and morality. She maintains that as long as we admit that meaning is an ingredient of a good life, it must be recognized that personal interest cannot be reduced to happiness. What is good for us would therefore not be reduced to what contributes to our happiness. What must be understood here is that the term “ happiness “Refer to what is sometimes called” psychological happiness », Either to what is made up of a positive balance of psychological states. In other words, once we admit that a life that makes sense is one of the things that are good for us, we must reject the conceptions of personal interest which reduce it to psychological happiness. An interesting involvement of this thesis is that the one who acts out of personal interest will not necessarily act selfish in the narrow sense of the term. Indeed, if what gives meaning to the life of a person is to devote their life to disabled children, it will be in the interest of this person to act for the good of these children, even if their psychological happiness is reduced, the feeling of accomplishment not compensating for its negative affective states.

The most controversial point, no doubt, relates to the implications concerning morality. Inspired by Bernard Williams, Wolf maintains that once we have recognized the importance that meaning has for us, we must admit that moral reasons cannot always prevail over the reasons related to the meaning. The reason for this comes from the link between meaning and having a reason to live. In Wolf’s words: “ (c) e which gives meaning to our life gives us reasons to live. (P. 84). Thus, in cases where morality asks us to sacrifice what gives meaning to our life, it would be legitimate to refuse such a sacrifice. Indeed, this would deprive it of any interest in the world and therefore of any reason to want to be moral.

Meaning beyond feeling

What to think of the conception of appropriate fulfillment ? The volume includes four detailed comments as well as a response from Wolf, all also translates English. In their comments, the philosopher and poet John Koethe and the philosopher Robert M. Adams are in the whole favorable to the conception defended by Wolf, while the philosopher Nomi Araly and the psychologist Jonathan Haidt oppose it. The latter criticize the idea that a life only makes sense to contain activities with objective value. In what follows, I would rather raise a difficulty concerning the subjective condition. As Adams maintains in his commentary, a person’s life seems to be able to have a meaning even if, ultimately, it leads to a failure which, far from aroused a feeling of accomplishment, leads to sadness. He quotes the case of Claus von Stauffenberg, whose plan to save Germany from Nazism ends with the attempted assassination failed by Adolf Hitler. The failure of the project does not seem to have meaning from his life, any more than the absence of a feeling of accomplishment. Thus, the feeling of accomplishment does not seem necessary for a life to be provided with meaning. Adams, however, says that another kind of subjective element is necessary: ​​“ On the subjective level, the alone Condition of meaning is love and acting in a coherent way for reasons related to love. (P. 104)

In fact, the difficulty surrounding the subjective condition is undoubtedly deeper. Indeed, it seems difficult to coherent, in the perspective of Wolf, to maintain that the feeling of accomplishment is necessary for a life to be provided with meaning. The reason for this is that Wolf admits that we can be mistaken as to the objective value of our life. Thus, she claims that if Sisyphe came to experience a feeling of accomplishment with regard to her task, it should be said that he is wrong. Symmetrically, an artist is mistaken if he does not feel a feeling of accomplishment with regard to his artistic activity, however objectively good. From there, one wonders if the objectively good character of a life is not able to give it a meaning independently of any feeling of accomplishment.

As Wolf says herself, we can be unable to recognize the value of an activity which nevertheless gives meaning to our life. The case she has in mind is that of a person who wrongly judges that activity has no value. What I would like to add is that we can also be incapable not only judgebut also to feel that our life makes sense when obviously it has. Wolf gives the example of Tolstoy, who would have been unable to see the value of his literary activity for a time. She tells us that he “ was unable to realize that he had accomplished many things that gave meaning to his life. (P. 71). What I suggest is that Tolstoy’s life made sense even if it was unfortunately not able to feel it. A life having meaning would be a life worthy of aroused such a feeling, without necessarily arouse it.

An objectivist conception about meaning in our lives is not without difficulty, of course, but as long as we admit the existence of objective values, it seems difficult to oppose it. Anyway, the merit of Susan Wolf’s words is to make us think about the right questions about a theme as neglected as it is important. Written in an eminently clear and accessible style, this excellent work deserves to be read by anyone who cares about living well, but also to philosophize.