INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY
Essay One.
About a passage professor gave, find the thesis, and answer questions like how should live your life?, what would counts the highest good?, the best form of life for you? 3 pages long, 12 pt font, double-spaced
specific details are on the documents attached.
HAPPINESS AND MEANING:
TWO ASPECTS OF THE GOOD LIFE
BY SUSAN WOLF
The topic of self-interest raises large and intractable philosophical
questions—most obviously, the question “In what does self-interest con-
sist?” The concept, as opposed to the content of self-interest, however,
seems clear enough. Self-interest is interest in one’s own good. To act
self-interestedly is to act on the motive of advancing one’s own good.
Whether what one does actually is in one’s self-interest depends on whether
it actually does advance, or at least, minimize the decline of, one’s own
good. Though it may be difficult to tell whether a person is motivated by
self-interest in a particular instance, and difficult also to determine whether
a given act or decision really is in one’s self-interest, the meaning of the
claims in question seems unproblematic.
My main concern in this essay is to make a point about the content of
self-interest.1 Specifically I shall put forward the view that meaningful-
ness, in a sense I shall elaborate, is an important element of a good life. It
follows, then, that it is part of an enlightened self-interest that one wants
to secure meaning in one’s life, or, at any rate, to allow and promote
meaningful activity within it. Accepting this substantial conception of
self-interest, however, carries with it a curious consequence: the concept
of self-interest which formerly seemed so clear begins to grow fuzzy.
Fortunately, it comes to seem less important as well.
I. THEORIES OF SELF-INTEREST
In Reasons and Persons,2 Derek Parfit distinguishes three sorts of theo-
ries about self-interest—hedonistic theories, preference theories, and what
he calls “objective-list theories.” Hedonistic theories hold that one’s good is
a matter of the felt quality of one’s experiences. The most popular theory
of self-interest, which identifies self-interest with happiness, and happi-
ness with pleasure and the absence of pain, is a prime example of a
hedonistic theory. Noting that some people do not care that much about
their own happiness, however—and, importantly, that they do not even
regard their own happiness as the exclusive element of their own good—
1 The view described and defended here shows the influence of and my sympathy with
the views of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill throughout. I cannot individuate my debts to
them; they are pervasive.
2 Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
© 1997 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA. 207
208 SUSAN WOLF
has led some to propose a preference theory of self-interest, which would
identify a person’s good with what the person most wants for herself.
Thus, for example, if a person cares more about being famous, even
posthumously famous, than about being happy, then a preference theory
would accord fame a proportionate weight in the identification of her
self-interest. If a person cares more about knowing the truth than about
believing what it is pleasant or comfortable to believe, then it is in her
self-interest to have the truth, unpleasant as it may be.
A person’s preferences regarding herself, however, may be self-destruc-
tive or otherwise bizarre, and it may be that some things (including plea-
sure) are good for a person whether the person prefers them or not. It is
not absurd to think that being deceived is bad for a person (and thus that
not being deceived is good for a person) whether or not the person in
question consciously values this state. Friendship and love may also seem
to be things whose goodness explains, rather than results from, people’s
preferences for them. The plausibility of these last thoughts explains the
appeal of objective-list theories, according to which a person’s good includes
at least some elements that are independent of or prior to her preferences
and to their effect on the felt quality of her experience. On this view, there
are some items, ideally specifiable on an “objective list,” whose relevance
to a fully successful life are not conditional on the subject’s choice.
The view that I shall be advancing, that meaningfulness is an ingredi-
ent of the good life, commits one to a version of this last kind of theory,
for my claim is that meaningfulness is a nonderivative aspect of a good
life—its goodness does not result from its making us happy or its satis-
fying the preferences of the person whose life it is. Thus, it follows that
any theory that takes self-interest to be a wholly subjective matter, either
in a sense that identifies self-interest with the subjective quality of a
person’s experiences or in a sense that allows the standards of self-interest
to be set by a person’s subjective preferences, must be inadequate. At the
same time, it would be a mistake to think that the objective good of a
meaningful life is one that is wholly independent of the subject’s expe-
rience or preferences, as if it could be good for a person to live a mean-
ingful life whether or not it makes her happy or satisfies her preferences.
Indeed, as we will see, the very idea that activities can make a life mean-
ingful without the subject’s endorsement is a dubious one.
II. MEANING IN LIFE
What is a meaningful life? Spelling it out will constitute the bulk of my
essay, for my hope is that once the idea is spelled out, it will be readily
agreed that it is an element of a fully successful life.
A meaningful life is, first of all, one that has within it the basis for an
affirmative answer to the needs or longings that are characteristically
described as needs for meaning. I have in mind, for example, the sort of
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 209
questions people ask on their deathbeds, or simply in contemplation of
their eventual deaths, about whether their lives have been (or are) worth
living, whether they have had any point, and the sort of questions one
asks when considering suicide and wondering whether one has any rea-
son to go on. These questions are familiar from Russian novels and ex-
istentialist philosophy, if not from personal experience. Though they arise
most poignantly in times of crisis and intense emotion, they also have
their place in moments of calm reflection, when considering important
life choices. Moreover, paradigms of what are taken to be meaningful
and meaningless lives in our culture are readily available. Lives of great
moral or intellectual accomplishment—Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Albert
Einstein—come to mind as unquestionably meaningful lives (if any are);
lives of waste and isolation—Thoreau’s “lives of quiet desperation,” typi-
cally anonymous to the rest of us, and the mythical figure of Sisyphus —
represent meaninglessness.
To what general characteristics of meaningfulness do these images lead
us and how do they provide an answer to the longings mentioned above?
Roughly, I would say that meaningful lives are lives of active engagement
in projects of worth. Of course, a good deal needs to be said in elaboration
of this statement. Let me begin by discussing the two key phrases, “active
engagement” and “projects of worth.”
A person is actively engaged by something if she is gripped, excited,
involved by it. Most obviously, we are actively engaged by the things and
people about which and whom we are passionate. Opposites of active
engagement are boredom and alienation. To be actively engaged in some-
thing is not always pleasant in the ordinary sense of the word. Activities
in which people are actively engaged frequently involve stress, danger,
exertion, or sorrow (consider, for example: writing a book, climbing a
mountain, training for a marathon, caring for an ailing friend). However,
there is something good about the feeling of engagement: one feels (typi-
cally without thinking about it) especially alive.
That a meaningful life must involve “projects of worth” will, I expect,
be more controversial, for the phrase hints of a commitment to some sort
of objective value. This is not accidental, for I believe that the idea of
meaningfulness, and the concern that our lives possess it, are conceptu-
ally linked to such a commitment.3 Indeed, it is this linkage that I want to
defend, for I have neither a philosophical theory of what objective value
is nor a substantive theory about what has this sort of value. What is clear
to me is that there can be no sense to the idea of meaningfulness without
a distinction between more and less worthwhile ways to spend one’s
time, where the test of worth is at least partly independent of a subject’s
ungrounded preferences or enjoyment.
3 This point is made by David Wiggins in his brilliant but difficult essay “Truth, Invention,
and the Meaning of Life,” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 62 (1976).
Yeney Gonzalez
210 SUSAN WOLF
Consider first the longings or concerns about meaning that people
have, their wondering whether their lives are meaningful, their vows to
add more meaning to their lives. The sense of these concerns and resolves
cannot fully be captured by an account in which what one does with one’s
life doesn’t matter, as long as one enjoys or prefers it. Sometimes people
have concerns about meaning despite their knowledge that their lives to
date have been satisfying. Indeed, their enjoyment and “active engage-
ment” with activities and values they now see as shallow seems only to
heighten the sense of meaninglessness that comes to afflict them. Their
sense that their lives so far have been meaningless cannot be a sense that
their activities have not been chosen or fun. When they look for sources
of meaning or ways to add meaning to their lives, they are searching for
projects whose justifications lie elsewhere.
Second, we need an explanation for why certain sorts of activities and
involvements come to mind as contributors to meaningfulness while oth-
ers seem intuitively inappropriate. Think about what gives meaning to
your own life and the lives of your friends and acquaintances. Among the
things that tend to come up on such lists, I have already mentioned moral
and intellectual accomplishments and the ongoing activities that lead to
them. Relationships with friends and relatives are perhaps even more
important for most of us. Aesthetic enterprises (both creative and appre-
ciative), the cultivation of personal virtues, and religious practices fre-
quently loom large. By contrast, it would be odd, if not bizarre, to think
of crossword puzzles, sitcoms, or the kind of computer games to which I
am fighting off addiction as providing meaning in our lives, though there
is no question that they afford a sort of satisfaction and that they are the
objects of choice. Some things, such as chocolate and aerobics class, I
choose even at considerable cost to myself (it is irrelevant that these
particular choices may be related), so I must find them worthwhile in a
sense. But they are not the sorts of things that make life worth living.4
“Active engagement in projects of worth,” I suggest, answers to the
needs an account of meaningfulness in life must meet. If a person is or has
been thus actively engaged, then she does have an answer to the question
of whether her life is or has been worthwhile, whether it has or has had
a point. When someone looks for ways to add meaning to her life, she is
looking (though perhaps not under this description) for worthwhile projects
about which she can get enthused. The account also explains why some
activities and projects but not others come to mind as contributors to
4 Woody Allen appears to have a different view. His list of the things that make life worth
living at the end of Manhattan includes, for example “the crabs at Sam Woo’s,” which would
seem to be on the level of chocolates. On the other hand, the crabs’ appearance on the list may
be taken to show that he regards the dish as an accomplishment meriting aesthetic appre-
ciation, where such appreciation is a worthy activity in itself; in this respect, the crabs might
be akin to other items on his list such as the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis
Armstrong’s recording of “Potatohead Blues,” and “those apples and pears of Cezanne.”
Strictly speaking, the appreciation of great chocolate might also qualify as such an activity.
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 211
meaning in life. Some projects, or at any rate, particular acts, are worth-
while but too boring or mechanical to be sources of meaning. People do
not get meaning from recycling or from writing checks to Oxfam and the
ACLU. Other acts and activities, though highly pleasurable and deeply
involving, like riding a roller coaster or meeting a movie star, do not seem
to have the right kind of value to contribute to meaning.
Bernard Williams once distinguished categorical desires from the rest.
Categorical desires give us reasons for living—they are not premised on
the assumption that we will live. The sorts of things that give meaning to
life tend to be objects of categorical desire. We desire them, at least so I
would suggest, because we think them worthwhile. They are not worth-
while simply because we desire them or simply because they make our
lives more pleasant.
Roughly, then, according to my proposal, a meaningful life must satisfy
two criteria, suitably linked. First, there must be active engagement, and
second, it must be engagement in (or with) projects of worth. A life is
meaningless if it lacks active engagement with anything. A person who is
bored or alienated from most of what she spends her life doing is one
whose life can be said to lack meaning. Note that she may in fact be
performing functions of worth. A housewife and mother, a doctor, or a
busdriver may be competently doing a socially valuable job, but because
she is not engaged by her work (or, as we are assuming, by anything else
in her life), she has no categorical desires that give her a reason to live. At
the same time, someone who is actively engaged may also live a mean-
ingless life, if the objects of her involvement are utterly worthless. It is
difficult to come up with examples of such lives that will be uncontro-
versial without being bizarre. But both bizarre and controversial ex-
amples have their place. In the bizarre category, we might consider
pathological cases: someone whose sole passion in life is collecting rubber
bands, or memorizing the dictionary, or making handwritten copies of War
and Peace. Controversial cases will include the corporate lawyer who sac-
rifices her private life and health for success along the professional ladder,
the devotee of a religious cult, or—an example offered by Wiggins5—the
pig farmer who buys more land to grow more corn to feed more pigs to
buy more land to grow more corn to feed more pigs.
We may summarize my proposal in terms of a slogan: “Meaning arises
when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” The idea is
that in a world in which some things are more worthwhile than others,
meaning arises when a subject discovers or develops an affinity for one or
typically several of the more worthwhile things and has and makes use of
the opportunity to engage with it or them in a positive way.
An advantage of the slogan is that it avoids the somewhat misleading
reference to “projects.” That term is less than ideal in its suggestion of
5 See Wiggins, “Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life,” p. 342.
212 SUSAN WOLF
well-defined and goal-oriented tasks. To be sure, many projects do add
meaning to life—mastering a field of study, building a house, turning a
swamp into a garden, curing cancer—but much of what gives meaning to
life consists in ongoing relationships and involvements—with friends,
family, the scientific community, with church or ballet or chess. These
ongoing strands of life give rise to and are partly constituted by projects—
you plan a surprise party for your spouse, coach a little league team,
review an article for a journal—but the meaning comes less from the
individuated projects than from the larger involvements of which they
are parts. The slogan, moreover, is intentionally vague, for if pretheoret-
ical judgments about meaning even approximate the truth, then not only
the objects of worth but also the sorts of interaction with them that are
capable of contributing to meaning are immensely variable. One can get
meaning from creating, promoting, protecting (worthwhile) things, from
helping people one loves and people in need, from achieving levels of
skill and excellence, from overcoming obstacles, from gaining understand-
ing, and even from just communing with or actively appreciating what is
there to be appreciated.
It is part of our job, if not our natural bent, as philosophers to be
skeptical—about the correctness of these pretheoretical judgments, about
our ability reliably to distinguish meaningful from meaningless activities,
and about the very coherence of the distinction. About the first two wor-
ries I am not very concerned. Assuming that the distinctions are coherent
and that some activities are more worthwhile than others, our culture-
bound, contemporary judgments of which activities are worthwhile are
bound to be partly erroneous. History is full of unappreciated geniuses,
of artists, inventors, explorers whose activities at their time were scorned,
as it is full of models of behavior and accomplishment that later seem to
have been overrated. Though we may improve our judgments, both par-
ticular and general, by an open-minded, concentrated, and communal
effort to examine and articulate the basis for them (a project that strikes
me as both worthwhile and intrinsically interesting), the hope or expec-
tation that such scrutiny will yield a reliable method for generally dis-
tinguishing worthwhile from worthless activities seems overly optimistic.
Why do we respect people who devote themselves to chess more than
those who become champions at pinball? Why do we admire basketball
stars more than jump-rope champions? What is more worthwhile about
writing a book on the philosophy of language than writing one on Nicole
Brown Simpson’s sex life? It is useful to ask and to answer such questions,
so far as we can, both to widen and correct our horizons and to increase
our understanding. But our inability to give complete and adequate an-
swers, or to be confident in the details of our assessments, need not be a
serious problem. The point of recognizing the distinction, after all, is not
to give rankings of meaningful lives. There is no need, in general, to pass
judgment on individuals or even on activities in which people want to
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 213
engage. The point is rather at a more general level to understand the
ingredients of our own and others’ good, and to get a better idea of the
sorts of considerations that provide reasons for living our lives one way
rather than another.
The point, which I am in the midst of developing, is that meaningful-
ness is a nonderivative part of an individual’s good, and that meaning-
fulness consists in active engagement in projects or activities of worth.
Though it seems to me that the point and most of its usefulness can stand
despite acknowledged difficulties with identifying precisely which projects
or activities these are, it would be utterly destroyed if it turned out that
there were no such things as projects or activities of worth at all—if it
turned out, in other words, as Bentham thought, that pushpin were as
good as poetry,6 not because of some heretofore undiscovered excellences
in the game of pushpin, but because the very idea of distinctions in worth
is bankrupt or incoherent. If there are no projects of worth (in contrast to
other projects), then there are no such things as what I have in mind by
more and less meaningful lives, and so it cannot be a part of one’s good
to live a more meaningful rather than a less meaningful life. If the idea of
a worthwhile project is just a fraud or a hoax, then my account of self-
interest is undone by it.
Since I have no theory of worth by which to prove the coherence of the
concept or refute all skeptical challenges, I can only acknowledge the
vulnerability of my account of self-interest in this regard. That we do,
most of us, believe that some activities and projects are more worthwhile
than others, that we regard certain activities as wastes of time (or near
wastes of time) and others as inherently valuable, seems undeniable.
These beliefs lie behind dispositions to feel proud or disgusted with
ourselves for time spent well or badly, and they account for at least some
of our efforts to steer our children and our friends toward some activities
and away from others. When I try to take up a point of view that denies
the distinction between worthwhile and worthless activity, I cannot find
it convincing. Still, it is an article of faith that these untheoretical judg-
ments, or some core of them, are philosophically defensible. It is on the
assumption that they are defensible that my views about meaningfulness
and self-interest are built.
III. Two CHALLENGES
My proposal so far has been that meaningfulness in life arises from
engagement in worthwhile activity. I have argued for the plausibility of
this account on the grounds that it fits well both with the needs that are
typically referred to as needs for meaning and with the concrete judg-
6 This remark was made famous by John Stuart Mill, who quoted it in his essay on
Bentham. See J. M. Robson, ed., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 10 (Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 1969), p. 113.
214 SUSAN WOLF
ments of meaningful and meaningless activity that are most commonly
made. Before proceeding with an examination of the relation between
meaning and self-interest, two challenges to this account of meaning
should be answered.
The first objects that, contrary to my claims, my account of meaning
fails to meet the requirements I have set up for it. It fails, more particu-
larly, to answer to the needs of at least one type of longing for meaning
that members of our species tend to have. Traditional worries about the
meaning of life, often set off by reflections on our own mortality and on
the indifference of the cosmos in which we occupy so tiny a place, are
rarely appeased by the reflection that one can actively engage in projects
of worth. At least, they are not appeased by reflection on the availability
of the kind of projects I have been talking about, like taking up the cello,
writing a novel, volunteering at a child’s day-care center or a nursing
home. Tolstoy, the publicly acclaimed author of some of the greatest
works of literature ever written, the father and spouse of what he de-
scribed (perhaps inaccurately) as a loving and successful family, could
have had no doubt that, relatively speaking, his life was spent in projects
as worthwhile as any. Yet he was plagued by the thought that it was all
for naught.7 Nothing he did seemed to save his life from meaningless-
ness. Like Tolstoy, such philosophers as Albert Camus8 and Thomas Na-
gel9 see the meaning or meaninglessness of life as an issue relating to the
human condition. The difference between a person who wastes her time
in frivolous or shallow pursuits and one who makes something of herself
and serves humanity cannot, on their views, make the difference between
a meaningful and a meaningless life.
To try to give a wholly adequate answer to this challenge would take
us too far afield from the purposes of this essay. The issue of The Meaning
of Life is too obscure and complex, and the differences among the phi-
losophers whose views seem to pose a challenge to the one I am offering
call for different responses. Some brief remarks, however, will at least
indicate what a more detailed answer might look like and will give some
reason for thinking that the challenge can be met.
Among those who think that meaning in life, or the lack of it, is pri-
marily concerned with facts about the human condition, some disagree
not with my general account of meaning but with, if you will, its appli-
cation. Their position, in other words, shares my view that meaning comes
from engagement in projects of worth, but assigns certain facts about the
human condition a crucial role in settling whether there are any such
projects. If God does not exist, they think, then nothing is any more
7 See Leo Tolstoy, “My Confession,” in E. D. Klemke, ed., The Meaning of Life (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1981).
8 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1955).
9 Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd,” in Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1979).
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 215
worthwhile than anything else. Within this group, some believe that God
is the only possible standard for judgments of nonsubjective value. If God
does not exist, they think, then neither does moral or aesthetic value or
any other sort of value that could distinguish some projects as better than
others. Others believe that though there may be a difference between
great literature and junk, and between virtue and vice, there is no point
in bothering about which you occupy yourself with. Nothing lasts for-
ever; the human race will be destroyed; the earth will crash into the sun.
Only God, and the promise of an eternal life either for ourselves or for the
universe in which our accomplishments have a place, can give a point to
our living lives one way rather than another. Only God can make mean-
ingful life so much as a possibility.
My own view about this position is that it expresses an irrational ob-
session with permanence; but it is enough for the purposes of this essay
to note that it does not really challenge the account of meaning I have
offered. I have already acknowledged that the usefulness of my account
rests on the assumption that the distinction between worthwhile and
worthless projects is defensible, and on the assumption that at least a core
of our beliefs about what is worthwhile and what is worthless is roughly
correct. Those who think that God is a necessary grounding for these
assumptions and who believe in Him may still find my account of mean-
ing acceptable. Those who think that God is a necessary grounding that
unfortunately does not exist will reject my substantive claims about mean-
ing for reasons we have already admitted.
Others, including Nagel and arguably Camus, think that there are dif-
ferences between better and worse ways to live our lives. Evidently, they
think that projects and activities can be more and less worthwhile, and
that we have some sort of reason to favor the more worthwhile. They do
not, however, see these facts as supplying a basis for meaning. Like the
group just discussed, they link meaning inextricably to facts about our
place in space-time and in the order of the cosmos. In an indifferent
universe, they think, our lives are unavoidably meaningless no matter
what we do with them. On the other hand, there may be some other point
to choosing to do something good or worthwhile. This view disagrees
explicitly with my own proposal—indeed, it appears to be in outright
contradiction to it. However, it seems to me to be largely a disagreement
in the use of words. The issue of meaning, which these philosophers tie
essentially to issues about our significance (or lack of it) in the universe,
seems to me to be really a tangle of issues with overlapping strands.
Though talk about meaning sometimes expresses a concern about our
relation to the cosmos, the use of the term and its cognates to refer to
differences among human lives and activities is no less common. I believe
that there are relations between these different uses that have not been
fully appreciated, and that philosophers like Nagel and Camus have
insufficiently recognized the degree to which anthropocentric values can
216 SUSAN WOLF
serve as a basis for addressing worries about our place in the universe.10
However, this issue is not relevant to my present purpose. My purpose
here is to advance the view that it is in our interest to live lives of a certain
sort, and to explore some of that view’s implications. Whether we should
describe these lives as more meaningful than others, or describe the desire
to live them as a desire for meaning, is relatively superficial and may in
any case be left to another day. I shall continue to use my terminology,
however, and hope that no one will be confused by it.
The second challenge to my account of meaningfulness is more directly
relevant to the issue of the nature of self-interest. It consists of an alter-
native subjective account of meaning that is forcefully suggested, al-
though not in quite the terms I shall use, by Richard Taylor’s discussion
of the meaning of life in his book Good and Evil.11 According to this
position, meaning is not a matter of one’s projects in life being worth-
while from some objective point of view. (Taylor himself seems to think
that no projects could meet this standard.) Rather, a person’s life is mean-
ingful, one might say, if it is meaningful to her, and it is meaningful to her
if she thinks or feels it is.
The suggestion that something is meaningful to someone as long as she
thinks it is can be of no help to us in developing an account of meaning-
fulness, for we cannot understand what it would be for someone to think
her life meaningful until we have an account of what meaningfulness is.
The view I want to discuss, however, is, strictly speaking, more concerned
with a feeling or, better, a sense or qualitative character that some of our
experiences have. We may use the term “fulfillment” to refer to it. It is
pleasant to be or to feel fulfilled or to find an activity or a relationship
fulfilling, but it is a pleasure of a specific sort, one that seems closely
associated with the thought that our lives or certain activities within them
are meaningful. Recognizing this, it may be suggested, gives us all the
basis we need for an account of meaning that meets my requirements. We
may understand people’s longing for meaning as a longing for this par-
ticular feeling, a longing which other sorts of pleasure cannot satisfy. We
can also explain why some activities characteristically answer the call of
meaning better than others. Some yield the feeling of fulfillment while
others do not. Chocolate is filling but not fulfilling; it gives pleasure but
not of this particular kind. When a person steps back, wondering whether
her life has had meaning, or searching for a way to give it more meaning,
she may simply be surveying her life for its quotient of fulfillment or
looking for ways to increase it.
The very close ties between meaningfulness and fulfillment on which
this account of meaning relies are important for understanding both the
concept of meaning and its value. That meaningful activity or a mean-
10 I discuss this in my “Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World,” unpublished manu-
script.
11 Richard Taylor, Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1970).
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 217
ingful life is at least partly fulfilling is, as this account suggests, a con-
ceptual truth. To identify meaningfulness with fulfillment, however, neglects
aspects of our use of the terms, and aspects of the experiences that are
described by them, that my more objective account of meaningfulness
better accommodates.
For one thing, fulfillment is not a brute feeling but one with some
cognitive content or concomitant. That certain activities tend to be ful-
filling and others not seems connected to features of the relevant activities
that make this fact intelligible. There is a fittingness between certain kinds
of activities and the potential for fulfillment. When a relationship or a job
is fulfilling, there is something about it that makes it so. One feels appre-
ciated or loved, or has the sense of doing good, or finds the challenge of
the work rewarding. It is not just that the activities in question meet our
expectations, though that is a part of it. Some things are fine but not
fulfilling—my relationship with my hairdresser, for example, or my weekly
trips to the supermarket.
These considerations suggest that we find things fulfilling only if we
can think about them in a certain way. It is difficult precisely to identify
a single belief that is always associated with the experience of fulfillment.
Still, I propose that there is some association between finding an activity
fulfilling and believing, or at least dimly, inarticulately perceiving, there
to be something independently worthwhile or good about it.
In his discussion of the meaning of life, Richard Taylor considers the
case of Sisyphus and imagines that the gods, by inserting some substance
in Sisyphus’s veins, give Sisyphus a love for stone-rolling. Sisyphus’s life
is thereby transformed from one of miserable bondage to one of ecstatic
fulfillment. Taylor himself recognizes that the thought experiment is an
odd one, and that the passion for stone-rolling will strike his readers as
bizarre. Taylor, however, seems to think that the strangeness of the ex-
ample comes simply from its being unusual. People do not characteris-
tically get passionate about mindless, futile, never-ending tasks; nor is
this the sort of disposition that drugs typically induce. To many, however,
the example is not just surprising but somewhat horrifying. The state of
being fulfilled by perpetual stone-rolling is not unreservedly enviable. Of
course, for Sisyphus, who is condemned to roll stones in any case, there
is a great benefit in being able to be happy with his lot. In general,
however, I suspect that most people would think that stone-rolling (mere
stone-rolling, that is, without any purpose or development of skill) is not
the sort of thing by which one ought to be fulfilled.12 That Sisyphus is
fulfilled by stone-rolling suggests an understanding of Sisyphus as a
victim (albeit a happy one) of a kind of drug-induced illusion. He finds
something in stone-rolling that isn’t really there.
12 See Joel Feinberg, Freedom and Fulfillment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),
ch. 13.
218 SUSAN WOLF
If we accept the idea that the feeling of fulfillment is necessarily con-
nected with beliefs about its objects—if we accept that an activity or
relationship can be fulfilling only if one believes it to be somehow inde-
pendently good—then we can distinguish two hypotheses about the re-
lationship between meaning and fulfillment. Does meaning come from
the experience of fulfillment, no matter what its cause, or is a meaningful
life one in which a subject is fulfilled by activities suitable to the experi-
ence? The subjective account suggested by Taylor opts for the former; but
the latter seems to square better with our ordinary use of the concept.13
One test case is Taylor’s version of Sisyphus itself. That Sisyphus finds
his life fulfilling is built in by assumption. But should we describe his life
as meaningful? This seems to me a misuse of the word. “It is meaningful
to him,” someone will say, and we understand what this means. It means
that he finds his life fulfilling, and, perhaps, that he thinks it is meaning-
ful (or would think it, if asked). But, for those who find the example
horrifying, that is part of the problem: he thinks his life gets meaning
from mindless, futile stone-rolling, but it does not.
We can construct a second test case by considering someone whose
judgment of an aspect of her life has changed. A woman previously
blissfully in love discovers that the man she loved has been using her. She
had found the relationship fulfilling before she learned of his deceits. She
would have said, had you asked her earlier, that the relationship contrib-
uted to the meaningfulness of her life. What would she say now, however,
and what should we say about her? No one can take away the feelings of
fulfillment she experienced during the period she was deceived; but it
seems unlikely that she would say, after the fact, that the relationship
truly had given meaning to her life. Indeed, part of what makes this sort
of event so sad is that, in addition to the pain that is caused when the
deception is discovered, it undermines the value of all the pleasure that
came before.
Less fanciful than Sisyphus are cases of addicts or inductees of religious
cults whose feelings of contentment are caused, but not justified, by the
things that bring them about. Though we should be cautious about pass-
ing judgment on the activities that others take to be worthwhile, this is no
reason to rule out the possibility that people are sometimes mistaken, that
their finding something fulfilling can be wrongly induced, either through
the establishment of false factual beliefs (such as belief in a loved one’s
fidelity or in the divine status of a charismatic leader) or by drugs or
electrodes. If, moreover, they are led by such mind-altering means to
spend their lives occupied by some equivalent of stone-rolling—watching
endless reruns of Leave It to Beaver or counting and recounting the number
of tiles on the bathroom floor—then it seems to me most in line with
13 Robert Nozick makes a similar suggestion in The Examined Life (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1989). In addition to wanting happiness, Nozick writes, “[w]e also want this
emotion of happiness to befitting” (p. 112).
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 219
ordinary language to describe them as leading meaningless lives, how-
ever fulfilled they may feel themselves to be. If, further, such people wake
up or snap out of it—if they come to occupy a point of view that devalues
their former lives—then their later descriptions would not, I think, grant
meaning to the things in which they had found contentment before.
IV. MEANINGFULNESS AND SELF-INTEREST
So far I have been occupied with spelling out a conception of what
meaningfulness in life is. My point in doing so, in the present context, is
to bring it to bear on the idea of self-interest. Meaningfulness seems to me
an important ingredient of a good life, and one that is too often either
neglected or distorted by contemporary accounts of individual well-
being.
I do not know what an argument for this claim would look like. My
hope, as I mentioned before, is that the mere spelling out of the claim will
be enough to incline most people to assent to it. Still, I think that without
attending explicitly to our interest in meaning, we tend to misunderstand
and misdescribe it, with the eventual result that the shapes our lives take
have less meaning than may be good for us.
Most people—at least most people within a certain group, bounded
perhaps by class or education as well as by culture and history—behave
in ways that suggest that they are looking for worthwhile things to do
with their lives. They actively seek projects or, more typically, happily
seize upon activities, from among those to which they are attracted, that
they believe to be worthwhile. Explicit thoughts about worth and mean-
ing often occur in connection with major life decisions, in addition to
those moments of crisis to which I referred before. Some people decide to
have children because they think it will give meaning to their lives. Oth-
ers decide not to have children because they fear that the attendant re-
sponsibilities will deprive them of the time and resources and peace of
mind that they need for other things in which they do find meaning.
Deliberations about whether to pursue a particular career, or any career,
may similarly involve concerns about whether the job is worthwhile, or
whether it would demand time and energy that would distract one from
what is worthwhile. Even many who do not talk explicitly in terms of
meaning or worth make choices that are best explained by reference to
them. In other words, our behavior, including some of our speech, seems
to reveal a preference for a meaningful life.
We are, however, more apt to explain our choices in terms of fulfillment
than meaning. A man opts for the more challenging of two possible
careers, even at the cost of stress and insecurity. A woman chooses to
work for less pay at a job she believes is morally valuable. People arrange
their lives so as to give a few hours a week to Meals on Wheels, or to
practicing piano, or to keeping up with their book group, even though it
220 SUSAN WOLF
means going with a little less sleep, less flexibility, less straightforward fun.
Why? Because, they will say, they find these things fulfilling. They choose
to live this way because they regard it as, in some sense, best for them.
To defend these choices in terms of fulfillment establishes them as
choices made out of self-interest. Talk of fulfillment may, however, sug-
gest a more hedonistic interpretation of what is going on than the one I
have offered. To choose something because it is fulfilling is, after all, to
choose it because of a qualitative character of one’s experience—and
though fulfilling activities are not always as much fun or as intensely
pleasurable as some of the alternatives, it may be that in the long run, or
the wide run (taking into account Mill’s differences in the quality as well
as the quantity of pleasure, as it were), a fulfilling life is qualitatively
better, and thus happier in the truest sense, than a life with as many or
more pleasures but no fulfillment. So at least must the people described
in the paragraph above believe, and so must we believe if we think their
choices are rational, and are rational for the reason they give.
It is no part of my aim to deny this suggestion. On the contrary, that
fulfillment is a great qualitative good, and that it deserves an important
place in an adequate theory of happiness, are important contributing
factors to my claim that meaning is a component of our good. We have
already seen that the links between meaningfulness and fulfillment are
very tight. Since a meaningful life is necessarily at least partly fulfilling,
and since fulfillment is a major component of happiness, a very important
reason for taking meaningfulness to be in our interest is that it brings
fulfillment with it. It would be misleading, however, to draw from this the
conclusion that meaningfulness is an instrumental good for us. To think
of meaning as good because it is a means to an independent good of
fulfillment would be a mistake.
It is doubtful that fulfillment is an independent good, although feeling
fulfilled is pleasant and feeling unfulfilled unpleasant. If fulfillment were
an independent good, it would follow that the feeling of fulfillment would
be desirable no matter what its cause. It would have to be better to be
Sisyphus happy (or, more precisely, Sisyphus fulfilled) than Sisyphus
unhappy (unfulfilled), even if this required that Sisyphus was perpetually
stoned out of his normal mind. Opinion, however, divides on this matter.
Many value fulfillment only on the condition that it be based on appro-
priate thoughts or perceptions. Moreover, even among those who believe
that feeling fulfilled is unconditionally better than the alternative, many
would still prefer that these feelings were suitably caused. Better to be
Sisyphus happy than Sisyphus unhappy, they may say, but better still not
to be Sisyphus at all.
A proponent of a purely hedonistic theory of self-interest may point out
that reports of such intuitions prove nothing. People’s thinking that jus-
tified or appropriate fulfillment is better than unjustified inappropriate
fulfillment doesn’t make it so. To those who have these intuitions, how-
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 221
ever, the burden of proof seems to lie with the hedonist. Unless one is
committed to a purely hedonistic account of value ahead of time, there
seems no reason to doubt that what is principally desirable is getting
fulfillment from genuinely fulfilling activities, from activities, that is, whose
accompanying feeling of fulfillment comes from the correct perception of
their value. There seems no reason to doubt, in other words, that what is
principally desirable is living a meaningful life and not living a life that
seems or feels meaningful. Insofar as we prefer a truly meaningful life to
one that merely seems or feels meaningful, a purely hedonistic theory of
self-interest will not account for it.
A preference theory of self-interest, however, would not have to ac-
count for it—preference theorists simply accept our preferences and go on
to compute our self-interest from there. This suggests an alternative ac-
count of the relation between meaning and self-interest. According to
preference theories, meaning is important to our well-being if and only if
meaning matters to us. Since many of us do want to live meaningful
lives—since we think it is better for us if we do—preference theorists will
agree that it is in our interest that our lives are meaningful. From their
point of view, there is no need to make any more objective claims than
that.
From a practical perspective, it matters little whether we accept this
theory or a more objective one, particularly if you think, as I do, that the
preference for a meaningful life is widespread and deep. If it is accepted
as a fact of human nature (even a statistical fact, and even of a culturally
created human nature) that people just do care about meaning in their
lives, then this gives us reason enough to shape our lives in ways that will
encourage not just fulfillment but meaningfulness, and it gives us reason
enough to shape our social and political institutions in ways that will
increase the opportunities for everyone to live not just happily and com-
fortably but meaningfully as well.
A preference theory does not, however, seem accurately to reflect the
status a meaningful life has for most of us. Most of us, it seems, do not
regard our preference for a meaningful life as an ungrounded preference
we just happen to have. If we did think so, then we would judge it a
matter of indifference whether anyone else had or lacked this preference,
and indeed, we would have no reason to want to keep this preference
ourselves if we were convinced that we would be better off without it. For
most people, however, at least so it seems to me, having a meaningful life
is a value and not just a preference. We do not just want our lives to be
meaningful, we think it good that we want it. Indeed, our interest and
concern for meaning is sometimes mentioned as a mark of our humanity,
as an aspect of what raises us above brutes. We think that we would be
diminished as a species if we lost the aspiration, or the interest, in living
meaningful lives and not just happy ones. Individuals who lack the desire
that their lives be meaningful we regard with regret or even pity.
222 SUSAN WOLF
Again it may be noted that our believing something is no proof of its
being true, and again I must acknowledge that I have no proof of the
value or objective desirability of meaningfulness. At the same time, the
claim that a meaningful life is preferable (and not just brutely preferred)
to a meaningless one may seem so nearly self-evident as to require no
proof. Once one is willing to apply the terms of meaningfulness and
meaninglessness at all, it may seem unstable to believe that a life that
lacks meaning is no worse than one that possesses it. Even if we can
logically distinguish the position that some lives are more meaningful
than others from the position which adds that (some) meaningfulness is
a good, this latter position seems more natural than one which denies it.
Though we may be unable to argue for caring about meaning in a way
that would convince someone who doesn’t care to begin with, the concern
or the desire for meaningful activity is, for those who have it, more
rationally coherent with other values and dispositions than its absence
would be.
In response to the question “Why care about living a meaningful life
rather than a meaningless one?” the answer that I believe best expresses
reflective common sense will begin with the connection between meaning
and happiness: Nine times out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, a meaningful life will be happier than a meaningless one. The
feelings of fulfillment one gets from interacting positively and support-
ively with things or creatures (or “realms”) whose love seems deserved
are wonderful feelings, worth more, on qualitative grounds alone, than
many other sorts of pleasure, and worth the cost of putting up with
considerable quantities of pain. Moreover, the awareness, even dim and
inarticulate, of a lack of anything that can constitute a source of pride or
a source of connection to anything valuable outside of oneself can be
awful, making one irritable, restless, and contemptuous of oneself.
Except in an academic philosophical context such as this, it is perhaps
unnatural to press further. If we do press further, however, it seems to me
that the strength and character of these feelings of pleasure and pain are
not best explained as mere quirks of our natural or culturally conditioned
psyches. Rather, that we feel so good or so bad in accordance with our
sense of connection to value outside ourselves seems to me best explained
in terms of an underlying belief that a life is better when it possesses
such connections. What precisely is better about it is difficult to say. But
perhaps it has to do with our place in the universe: since we are, each of
us, occupants in a world full of value independent of our individual
selves, living in such a way as to connect positively and supportively
with some nonsubjective value harmonizes better with our objective situ-
ation than would a life whose chief occupations can be only subjectively
defended.14
14 I explore this in “Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World.”
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 223
V. THE DECONSTRUCTION OF SELF-INTEREST
I have in this essay been concerned to defend, or rather to elaborate,
what I take to be a deeply and widely held view about individual human
good, namely, that a fully successful life is, among other things, a mean-
ingful one. Further, I have urged that this claim is distorted if it is un-
derstood as an element of either a hedonistic or a preference theory of
self-interest. Properly understood, it requires a rejection of both of these
sorts of theories.
As a substantive claim, I do not expect that the point that a good life
must be meaningful will be surprising. We are not used to thinking very
explicitly or very analytically about it, however; and in popular unreflec-
tive consciousness, a substantive interest in a meaningful life often sits
side by side with assumptions that are incompatible with it. How often
have you heard someone say, “What’s the point of doing something if it
isn’t fun, or if you don’t enjoy it?” I hear this sentiment expressed quite
frequently, despite living on the East Coast. To be fair, such expressions
tenet to be limited to contexts of self-interest. They are not intended as
rejections of the rational authority of moral or legal obligation. Moreover,
there is often a point behind such remarks that I would strongly endorse.
Against a kind of workaholism and related neurotic obsessions with some
forms of success and achievement, it can be useful to step back and reflect
in the way these remarks would invoke. Still, the suggestion that there
can be no point to things if they are neither duties nor fun is, strictly
speaking, both false and dangerous.
Much of what we do would be inexplicable, or at least indefensible, if
its justification depended either on its being a duty or, even in the long
run, on its maximally contributing to our net fun. Relationships with
friends and family, nonobligatory aspects of professional roles, and long-
term commitments to artistic, scholarly, or athletic endeavors typically
lead us to devote time and energy to things that are difficult and un-
pleasant, and to forgo opportunities for relaxation and enjoyment. It is
arguable that many of these choices advance our happiness (in the broad-
est sense, our fun) in the long run, but such arguments are at best uncer-
tain, and the thought that they are necessary for the defense of these
choices puts a regrettable kind of pressure on the commitments that give
rise to them. There is, however, a point—even a self-interested point—to
doing things that fall outside the categories both of duty and of fun. One
can find a reason, or at least a justifying explanation, for doing something
in the fact that the act or activity in question contributes to the meaning-
fulness of one’s life.
Once we have ceased to identify self-interest with happiness, however,
other assumptions are also undermined. The concept of self-interest be-
comes more difficult to work with. Specifically, a conception of self-
interest that recognizes the importance of meaning to a good life admits
224 SUSAN WOLF
of much greater indeterminacy than the more traditional conceptions.
This is partly a function of indeterminacy within the category of mean-
ingfulness itself. Though meaningfulness is not an all-or-nothing concept-
some lives are more meaningful than others, a person’s life may not have
enough meaning in it to be satisfactory—there is no well-formed system
for making comparative judgments. The meaningfulness of a life may
vary depending on how much of it is spent in meaningful activity, on how
worthwhile the activities in question are,15 or on how fully engaged (or
attracted) the individual is. In many instances, however, it seems absurd
to think there is a correct comparison to be made. Is the life of a great but
lonely philosopher more or less meaningful than that of a beloved house-
keeper? There seems to be no reason to assume that there is a fact of the
matter about this. Moreover, from a self-interested point of view, it is
unclear whether, beyond a certain point, it matters whether one’s life is
more meaningful. A meaningful life is better than a meaningless one, but
once it is meaningful enough, there may be no self-interested reason to
want, as it were, to squeeze more meaning into it. Finally, the mix between
meaning and felt happiness may have no determinate ideal. A person
often has to choose between taking a path that would strengthen or ex-
pand a part of his or her life that contributes to its meaningfulness (going
to graduate school, adopting a child, getting politically involved) and
taking an easier or more pleasant road. Once one has accepted a conception
of self-interest that recognizes meaningfulness as an independent aspect
of one’s personal good, one may have to admit that in such cases there
may be no answer to the question of what is most in one’s self-interest.
Fortunately, as the concept of self-interest becomes more difficult to
apply, it becomes less important to be able to apply it. In accepting the
value of meaningfulness as an ingredient of our own interest, we neces-
sarily also accept that meaningful activity has a value that is partly in-
dependent of our interest. We accept, in other words, the availability of a
kind of reason for doing things that can compete with self-interest, a kind
that will, at any rate, draw us away from a concern for our self-interest.
What I have in mind is the sort of reason given by the worthiness of the
meaningful activity (or its object) itself.
Meaningful activity, remember, involves engagement in projects of worth.
It occurs where subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness. To
acknowledge that an activity or a project is worthwhile, however, is to
acknowledge, among other things, that there is a reason for doing it—a
reason, at least, for doing it if you are attracted to doing it. A reason for
writing a book on free will is to stimulate thought in a fruitful direction.
A reason to plant bulbs and weed the garden is to maintain a place of
15 The relevant scale of worth, however, will itself be a matter of contention. As my
examples have probably made clear, there is no reason to identify the relevant kind of worth
here with moral worth.
HAPPINESS AND MEANING 225
natural beauty. A reason to sew a groundhog costume for an eight-year-
old girl is to make her happy.
To those who get meaning from the activities just mentioned, these
sorts of reasons will dominate. Being suitably engaged in these activities
in the way in which people who get meaning from them are engaged
involves being drawn by their specific good or value. One so engaged is
not likely to step back from the activity and ask, “Is this the best thing I
can be doing for me?”
The point here is not just the one with which we are familiar from the
paradox of hedonism. It is not just that, by not caring too much about
whether her activities will be best for her, the agent is more likely to be
living a life that is best for her. Rather, it is that she has a reason for her
activities that is not conditional on their being best for her. Accepting a
conception of self-interest that incorporates meaningfulness, then, in-
volves rejecting too dominant a place for self-interest. Yet meaningful
activity and self-interest cannot psychologically stretch too far apart. Ac-
tivity is meaningful only if one can engage with it, be attracted to it, be in
love with it or with the object around which it revolves. Such activity will
always be somewhat fulfilling, and therefore will always make one some-
what happy. And as the fulfillment and happiness will be appropriate or
deserved, that is all to one’s good.
Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University