by Ed Craig
What is the meaning of life? ….
It feels pretentious to begin an essay with that question. The meaning of life may be the most fundamental philosophical and theological question. It was the subject of concern for Socrates, St. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Nietzsche, all those existentialists, Woody Allen, Ricky Gervais, and countless others. What’s it all about, Alfie? It is almost a cliché. The very thought of discussing it brings to mind an image of intellectuals sitting at a table in an outdoor Parisian café, smoking their pipes, drinking wine, and conversing about life’s meaning and purpose, if any. Ah, the philosophic life, the best possible life. Pretentious of not, I am going to take the plunge. William James has something to add to the conversation.
What is the meaning of the moral life is a better way to ask the same question. What is ‘the moral life’ and should I want to live it? Is so, why? Imagine it is 1895, and William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, his brother Henry the author, Albert Camus, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway are at their regular table at Les Deux Margot in Paris, enjoying that summer’s refreshing rosé, discussing these questions. They focus on the question of whether there is an objectively true moral order; a proper hierarchy of moral principles. James the philosopher surprises his companions by saying that if there is, it cannot be provided by philosophers and their ethical reasoning. The principles of morality and their order are made by human experience, not by divine command or the product of abstract thinking. Making a moral world is an on-going human project, with no end in sight. We cannot know how it turns out until we no longer have humans experiencing and reacting to life. What a conversation that would be... (continues)
It feels pretentious to begin an essay with that question. The meaning of life may be the most fundamental philosophical and theological question. It was the subject of concern for Socrates, St. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Nietzsche, all those existentialists, Woody Allen, Ricky Gervais, and countless others. What’s it all about, Alfie? It is almost a cliché. The very thought of discussing it brings to mind an image of intellectuals sitting at a table in an outdoor Parisian café, smoking their pipes, drinking wine, and conversing about life’s meaning and purpose, if any. Ah, the philosophic life, the best possible life. Pretentious of not, I am going to take the plunge. William James has something to add to the conversation.
What is the meaning of the moral life is a better way to ask the same question. What is ‘the moral life’ and should I want to live it? Is so, why? Imagine it is 1895, and William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, his brother Henry the author, Albert Camus, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway are at their regular table at Les Deux Margot in Paris, enjoying that summer’s refreshing rosé, discussing these questions. They focus on the question of whether there is an objectively true moral order; a proper hierarchy of moral principles. James the philosopher surprises his companions by saying that if there is, it cannot be provided by philosophers and their ethical reasoning. The principles of morality and their order are made by human experience, not by divine command or the product of abstract thinking. Making a moral world is an on-going human project, with no end in sight. We cannot know how it turns out until we no longer have humans experiencing and reacting to life. What a conversation that would be... (continues)
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