Is life meaningful?
Life’s meaning (or lack of meaning) is in our instincts and in our brain, but also in our mind and our many creations - those involving our many myths and our loves, hates, religions and attempts to be happy.
Religion and mytologhy are - as much as our instincts and the chemistry of our brain - a source of meaning, and a way of interfering in that chemistry.
Religion, mythology and magic bring great Guarantees and great Consolations, which minimize the very strong existential anguish of human beings, and temper their tragedies.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V
Is life meaningful?
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Meaning as a human mind creation
Life is nothing until it is lived, but it is yours to make sense of; the value of life is nothing other than the sense you choose.
Jean Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French writer and philosopher, Existentialism is a Humanism
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Henry Thoreau, 1817-1862, American essayist, Journal
Life has the meaning we give it. It has our richness, our enthusiasm, our pride. Or our cowardice.
Miguel Torga, 1907-1995, Portuguese writer, Diário
These then are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
William James, 1842-1910, American philosopher, The Will to Believe
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
Erich Fromm
Ignorant men do not know the excellence of what’s in their hands, until they've flung it away.
Sophocles, 496-406 b. C, Greek Poet, Ajax
Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count just with himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth, in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aims than those he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
Jean Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French writer and philosopher, Being and Nothingness
The instinctive element of meaning
Some authors underline the instinctive element of the meaning we attribute to life. This meaning is in our core: is instinctive and rooted in the chemistry of our minds, overcoming social and cultural elements.
Without affections and subjectivity, the meaning of life would be lost, and it will only remain laws, equations, models and forms.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V
The desire to live exists entire and undivided in each being, even in the most insignificant.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher, Parerga e Paralipomena
To live is like to love – all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler, 1835-1902, English writer, Notebooks
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
Immanuel Kant
If we weren’t interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that we would not bare it.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher, O mundo como vontade e como representação
Happiness, Myths, Religion and Meaning
The meaning of life resides in joy and the feelings of harmony connected to happiness; without happiness, life loses meaning. Happiness is at the heart of our lives and our demand for a meaning, and cannot be separated from our loves, myths, religions, dreams...
The quotes below underlines these various elements.
Isn’t precisely happiness what we all want, without exception?
When I seek you, my God, I am seeking happiness. I will seek you in order for my soul to live, because my body lives from my soul, and my soul lives from You.
Saint Augustine, 354-430, theologian and philosopher, Confessions
Friendship dances around the world inviting us all to awaken to the recognition of happiness.
Epicurus, 341-270 a. C., Greek philosopher, Vatican Sayings
Holiness and magic give to man a superior and fantastic world, which can be a source of happiness and meaning; similarly, dreams and even myth and illusion are a source of consolation, of oblivion, of surpassing grief and so, to some degree, a way of giving meaning to our lives.
Myth fortifies man, concealing the incomprehensibility of his destiny and filling up the nothingness of death.
The human being is given over to the cruelty of the world. Hence the necessity of a compromise, which is obtained by mobilizing the myth to find supernatural comforts, by mobilizing the imaginary to shelter the soul in, and by mobilizing aesthetics and poetry to fully live reality.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V
Is life meaningful?
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