Philosophy
Religion and Meaning
It is easy to live our lives without thinking too carefully about why we are doing what we do. It is also easy to simply do the things that seem immediately pleasant without a bigger life-plan in mind. This is totally natural, of course, since thinking about how to live our lives can be quite annoying and deciding to be more intentional about what we do can be truly exhausting. But while Socrates was clearly exaggerating when he said that “the unexamined life is not worth living” (of course it is!), he was certainly right in suspecting that unexamined lives often lead their subjects to the late and regrettable conclusion that their living was not worth their lives. So the truth is that simply going-through-the-motions of your life is a recipe for existential disaster down the road. It would be great if we could all avoid that.
In this short paper, then, I want you to examine your life so far and your life goals moving forward, in light of our discussions of Religion and Meaning in this unit. More exactly, I want you to do three things. (A) I want you to begin by analyzing your own life until now. I want you to make a self-assessment of how meaningful it has been. This is once again an opportunity for self-improvement; an opportunity to turn a constructively critical eye to yourself. (B) I then want you to discuss the connection between Religion and Meaning in general, based on our readings, and also the connection between Religion and the meaningfulness of your life, so far, in particular. Here I want you to engage with at least one author from this unit. (C) Finally, I want you to discuss what steps you can take to improve the meaningfulness of your life going forward.
Some general instructions:
1. Work on this assignment individually—no collaboration.
- The assignment should be somewhere between 3 and 5 pages long, but it is typically okay if the assignment is a bit shorter or a bit longer. You should use Times New Roman or Calibri font, size 11 or 12, and you should double space the text.
- Therearenootherformattingrequirements.Don’taskmeaboutbibliography,citationstyle,etc.