...Existentialism The purpose of this essay is to summarize the main views of Nagel and Taylor and to determine if they are too pessimistic in nature, or if in fact, Wolf’s standards for how to live are indeed too low. I will begin by discussing Thomas Nagel’s views on why life is fundamentally absurd given the criteria taken from Nagel’s article, “The Absurd.” Secondly, I will discuss Richard Taylor’s theory, which states that as humans, most people do not live meaningful lives, and demonstrate how that statement relates to the story of Sisyphus, and expand upon Taylor’s belief that it is essentially impossible for the majority of people to live a truly meaningful life. Thirdly, I will introduce Susan Wolf and her views on what features are needed in order to live a meaningful life in contrast to the views of Taylor and Nagel, and determine whether or not her criticism of Taylor and Nagel is indeed, accurate. I will conclude with a brief summery detailing the main points of this essay. In the essay “The Absurd”, Nagel touches on the idea that most people have an inexplicable awareness to the absurdity of life. Many feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some even go so far as to deal with this conviction in their daily lives. Rationale has been applied to explain this naturalistic sensitivity of the absurd, however Nagel claims that the reasoning put forth is patently inadequate. The first argument for absurdity begins with the concept that nothing we do will matter in the...
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...1) In everyday life, work is still at the center of things; along with love, it is the most important element of a satisfying and happy life. In ordinary life, the ideal of “meaningful work,” or work that has sufficient scope for self-direction, complexity, and consequential effects to support pride and a sense of purpose, is more relevant than ever. Few still believe that a different economic and political order can bring a fundamental improvement to the human condition. Good purposes and fulfilling activities are hard to specify impersonally in any case and any attempt to do so would insult individuals’ freedom to define such things for themselves. In this view, no single ideal of meaningful work could cover the variety of individual tastes and inclinations, nor accommodate the remarkable ability of people to invest their work with meaning even when the work has little to offer in the way of variety, authority, complexity, or social standing. 2) 1) In everyday life, work is still at the center of things; along with love, it is the most important element of a satisfying and happy life. In ordinary life, the ideal of “meaningful work,” or work that has sufficient scope for self-direction, complexity, and consequential effects to support pride and a sense of purpose, is more relevant than ever. Few still believe that a different economic and political order can bring a fundamental improvement to the human condition. Good purposes and fulfilling activities...
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...Introductory Article A Good Living Versus A Good Life: Meaning, Purpose, and HRD Neal Chalofsky1 and Liz Cavallaro1 Advances in Developing Human Resources 15(4) 331–340 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1523422313498560 adhr.sagepub.com Abstract The Problem. The expectation for meaningful work and work–life integration is firmly entrenched in the minds of the GenerationY/Millennial generations in the workplace. Yet, in updating the literature and rethinking the impact on Chalofsky’s (2003) construct for meaningful work, the question arose as to whether meaningful work can and should exist in a vacuum or should it be viewed as part of a meaningful life. If so, what are the implications for the construct and for human resource development (HRD). How far can and should HRD go to help ensure a meaningful and purposeful life for present and future generations in the workplace? The Solution. This article provides a sketch of the current research and thinking about meaningful work and a basis for the rest of the articles in this issue. The tightness of the “fit” between self and work can determine how meaningful one’s work is perceived. How work fits within a meaningful life, and how one’s life fits within the context of the organization, the community, the society, and the planet can shape a meaningful existence. The Stakeholders. The intended audience for this article includes HRD scholars, scholar-practitioners...
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...things like meaning, value, and a sense of right and wrong without appealing to God. Do you believe that's possible, or does one need religion to live a good and meaningful life? Defend your view. I do not believe one needs religion to live a good and meaningful life, nor do they need to appeal to God to seek meaning, value or a sense of right and wrong. I do believe that appealing to religion can make for a guiding path towards a meaningful life, but is not the only way. Whether one follows a path guided by a particular religion or follows a path set by themselves toward a righteous and moral life, these two paths are very similar. Living a good and meaningful life requires one to be virtuous and ethical. Many religions are based around their members living by these standards and attempts to show them how to live by such standards. There are certainly many who live virtuous, ethical lives while not appealing to religion as well. Moreover, just having religion in one’s life does not guarantee one will live a good and meaningful life. It comes down to the individual. It is the individual’s choice to follow the guide of their religion toward a good life. Therefore, I believe anyone who is attempting to live a meaningful life by way of religion is still following their own personal set of morals. Thus, it is not necessary to follow religion, as long as one’s own morals lead them towards a righteous life. Furthermore, there are many religious beings who do not live meaningful lives...
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...detailed reasons to justify your evaluation. For purposes of evaluation, assume that the speaker is a contemporary Canadian philosopher and the audience is a group of students in Introduction to Philosophy. The Meaning of Life Zoltan Zut What is the meaning of life? To answer this question, it is necessary to understand what it is asking. Words have meanings, but obviously “What is the meaning of life?” is not asking the meaning of the word „life‟. If you want to know the meaning of life, you will not get an answer to your question if you learn that life is, say, a self-organising process in which a system of production modules makes things that perpetuate the modules‟ own existence. How are we to understand the expression “the meaning of life” if not in this over-literal way? One possibility is that the phrase means something equivalent to “the purpose of life.” The words „meaning‟ and „purpose‟ are often substitutable in this way. For instance, if I find your behaviour puzzling, I can equally ask what the meaning of your behaviour is and what the purpose of your behaviour is. For life to have a purpose in this sense would be for some individual(s) to have created all human life, or the universe as a whole, and to have had a purpose in doing so. The meaning of life would then be the purpose this individual (these individuals) had in creating things as they were created. One...
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...The Meaning of Life There is a certain point in our lives, regardless of the time, when we begin to ask ourselves a set of questions that challenge our existence on this earth. Was the human race created to wonder this world aimlessly? Or do we have a true purpose that we are destined to harness and attain? Why am I here? Like the rest of us, Thomas Nagel, Robert Taylor, and Raymond Martin have each made their own attempts to answer the question of the meaning of life and while doing so, each of the philosophers rendered their own solution to these universal doubts. Thomas Nagel explains that “to convey the absurdity of our lives often has to do with space or time: we are tiny specks in the infinite vastness of the universe; our lives are mere instants even on a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one; we will all be dead any minute” (Nagel, 768-769). Nagel then defines absurd as “a situation that includes a conspicuous discrepancy between pretension or aspiration and reality (Nagel, 769). Translated, Nagel says that absurd is a situation in which life seems irrational and meaningless. Throughout his entire argument, Nagel hardly leaves room for a rebuttal to yield the answer to the true meaning of our lives. He suggests that we as humans have a special capacity to take a step backwards and observe the lives that we are “committed” to and call them into question. But, as he pointed out; while taking that backwards step we realize that the life that we are so “committed”...
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...The Good Life as a Meaningful Life Life… An everyday task in which each and every human being participates. We interact, procreate, strive to better our standards of living and look for the answers to questions, which in our society, have not yet been answered. This task which demands our outmost attention and participation is a task in which everyone takes part. Yet we do not know much about it. We do not know the aim of life, how it should be lived, we do not even have a clear definition for the phenomena in which we all participate. There are many attempts to give a definition to life and explain what a good or meaningful life is or should be. Each one of these outlooks which can be described as theories have their own pros and cons. If all the pros of the theories are chained together, will that give the ultimate meaning to life? Are broad theories like that of Aristotle pointing in the direction of the good or meaningful life? Or is life and the meaning there of just as broad or narrow as an individual chooses to make it for himself? One of the popular approaches to the meaning of life is the teleological approach. This approach suggests that life is a process in which you are working towards an ultimate goal. The theory does not state that the final end is a point at which you can stop trying, but rather that you are continually adding to the meaningfulness of your life by participating in the process of reaching your goal from one situation to the next. This theory...
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...philosophers with regards to whether or not the ways in which we speak about religion are meaningful. This issue of religious language is concerned with the methods by which man talks about God in conjunction with theist or atheist ideologies. For some, religious language is meaningful and full of purpose while others see it to being incomprehensible and pointless. If we are to take the logical positivist approach then we would view all religious language as meaningless. For logical positivists the entire discipline of philosophy was centred on one task, which was to clarify the meaning of concepts and ideas. In turn, this led them to look at statements and inquire just what the “meaning” of them was, and what sort of statements really did have any “meaning.” A group of philosophers that known as the Vienna circle took a univocal approach to language, that is to say, that we mean the same thing when we talk about God and man. The logical positivists formulated the verification principle which saw assertions which are only verifiable through observation or experience, can be deemed meaningful. In this case, other assertions are either analytic or meaningless utterances. This approach was built on the work of both John Locke and David Hume, who argued that all philosophical matters must be approached with a strict empirical system. Thus, according to the verification principle, meaningful assertions fall into three categories. The first category is analytic statements. These are...
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...M. Washington OMM 612: Managing in Social Change Experiencing Work as a Meaningful Activity Dr. L. Flegle December 2, 2012 Experiencing Work as a Meaningful Activity Why do people work? A person may work for various reasons. For some work is fun and full of meaning. For others there may be instances where work is viewed as a burden or an end to a means. When there is a lack of satisfaction, work will not be fun, fulfilling or meaningful. As stated by Harper and Leicht (2011), work is never experienced as a neutral activity. However, according to Budd ((2011), work can be viewed as intrinsically rewarding and not just as a source of income. When individuals have the tools to seek and achieve work as a personal fulfillment, we can better understand how people view and experience work as a rich and meaningful activity. There are no people in my immediate circle of friends and co-workers who view work as a meaningful activity. The most common reason people work is to support a lifestyle. A person works in order to provide for themselves as well as their family with the basic essentials (shelter, clothing, and food). According to Harper and Leicht (2011), a question that often gets asked is whether or not the American economy can make jobs available that allow employees to afford a middle-class lifestyle and the consumer components of the American dream. The recent recession that the American economy has faced adds to the doubt. More people are being laid off...
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...language is non-cognitive it is thought as conveying feelings or expressing desires or guiding ways of behaving. Religious language is realist if it is thought of as conveying testable facts that actually pertain in reality. Religious language is non-realist it is thought of as conveying guiding ideals but with no basis in factual reality. Religious language offers a correspondence theory of truth if it is thought of as being able to point to the reality that it is trying to convey. Religious language offers a coherence theory of truth if it is thought of as conveying making sense within a network of other beliefs which people hold to be true. 2. What Religious Language is: Religious language is an outlet for emotion in special times of life. Religious language is the language of worship. It is performative, ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’, and it is prescriptive (law making – i.e. honour your father and mother). However, none these uses of religious language is our focus. Our focus is how religious language might make truth claims about the reality of God and whether it can succeed in doing this. Philosophers have suggested many different ways in which this might be done. These include: |Via Negativa |Analogy |Symbol |Myth | Philosophers have made a distinction between cataphatic God-talk which involves reflection...
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...You can say nothing meaningful about God. Discuss (35) Ayer believed that ‘No sentence which describes the nature of a transcendent God can possess any literal significance’ therefore according to Ayer we cannot say anything meaningful about God. Through the verification principle, he demonstrates that all religious statements are meaningless, because for any statement to be meaningful it must be empirically verifiable for example the statement “Jesus is the light of the world”; is meaningless as there is no way to verify this. Ayer used the strong verification principle to reject any talk of ethics, metaphysics, historical and even scientific claims as they work in probability rather than certainty. The strong verification principle only regarded statements to have meaning if they could be tested in the past, present and future using sense or empirical measures to find the conclusion. Therefore statements such as “Jesus resurrected on the third day” would be seen as meaningless as we cannot test this claim in the here and now. Once again this stresses the fact that we cannot say anything meaningful about God using the strong verification principle as we cannot physically see him in our present time. This principle criticised itself because it not only meant that we could say nothing meaningful about God but also past historical events since we are unable to verify their certainty. However the weak verification principle allows statements to have meaning if the means to which...
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...ARTICLE REPRINT Design Management Journal Toward meaningful brand experiences David W. Norton, PhD, Vice President, Experience Strategy and Research, Yamamoto Moss Reprint #03141NOR19 This article was first published in Design Management Journal Vol. 14, No. 1 Brand Frontiers: Designing More Than Experiences Copyright © Winter 2003 by the Design Management Institute . All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission. To place an order or receive photocopy permission, contact DMI via phone at (617) 338-6380, Fax (617) 338-6570, or E-mail: dmistaff@dmi.org. The Design Management Institute, DMI, and the design mark are service marks of the Design Management Institute. SM www.dmi.org EXECUTIVE PERSPECTIVE Toward meaningful brand experiences By David W. Norton, PhD Millennial '90s '80s Meaningful experiences Brand truth Brand experience Brand image Successful brand strategies Meaningful brand experiences Experiential customer encounters Products & services with personality Design solutions Experiences Products & services Evolution in consumer demand R eflecting on the past 20 years, David Norton discovers a fascinating evolution. In the ’80s, increased consumption paralleled the focus on brands and branding. We were what we bought. The cost, however, was a decline in cultural wealth. In the ’90s, brands became experiences rather than objects. Today, seeking to renew cultural capital, the challenge...
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...Discuss, illustrate and reflect on three main concepts of Existential psychotherapy and their application to practice. To illustrate my discussions and reflections I must use a case from a helping relationship in everyday life. * Existential therapy is based on philosophy (Deurzen, 2012). The techniques used in this type of therapy is not specific, it is based on our existence in life. The conflicts that are experienced in life are based on the givens of existence. The therapeutic relationship is between the client and the therapist and most importantly it highlights the client’s personal freedom in deciding their own direction. 0 Some of the key figures regarding existential psychotherapy are Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Viktor Frankl, Jean-Paul Sartre (Van Deurzen, 2012, May, 1969, Cox, 2012) 0 Some of the basic concepts of extentialism are freedom and responsibility, isolation, meaninglessness, nothingness, uncertainty, death, anxiety, just to name a few (Cox, 2012). In this essay three of these concepts will be discussed and illustrated followed by a case study to illustrate how these concepts relate to existence. 0 Freedom and Responsibility 0 The fact that we are responsible for ourselves mean that we have to make choices and to take responsibilities for our actions. In this respect we have to make decisions where we have...
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...Reflections on Man’s Search For Meaning INT 101 Dr. Walker December 4 2013 Thomas Jefferson wrote – “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”1 The pursuit of happiness seems to be the end game for life, but is it? Viktor Frankl is a concentration camp survivor and goes one level deeper in his book Man’s Search For Meaning. Finding the true meaning in life is the key to self-actualization. Frankl quotes the words of Fredrich Nietzsche – “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”2 Frankl reveals what life was like in the concentration camps. He also discusses Logotherapy, which he created. Frankl was subjected to four different Nazi camps and was dehumanized to a mere number: 119,104. Moreover, Nazis murdered his wife, mother, father, and unborn child, yet Frankl was able to find a purpose for living in all his sufferings. Frankl goes into detail on the concentration camps. Life was hell on earth. What appeared to him was the mind’s power to protect. The longer the stay, the more numbing all human emotion became. There are some behaviors I would like to highlight. They are strong and appear based on Frankl’s experiences in the camps. Hope People died daily in the camps. The guards played a finger game. They would randomly point, and if you were picked, you died. The simple act of pointing delivered your fate. Prisoners who focused on the WHY to live had a better chance at survival. Frankl determined that a youthful face and eagerness to work increased...
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...Can life have meaning even if there is no afterlife? Why or why not? Before I can answer this question I must confess that I have no religious beliefs nor do I have any belief in heaven or hell, ghosts or immortality. Now it is purely my opinion that life is as we make it from the time we are born. Can life have a meaning? Life expectancy of a human can last 80+ years depending on where you live in the world. I think that the meaning of life is defined by the individual person. In my heart I believe that my life is meaningful and I know some people that believe there life also has a meaning. However, like I mentioned earlier it is up to the individual to make their life have a meaning. So far in my 36 years of life I have experienced both bad and good situations. My life has taken a path from which I chose to take. Life can be stress free or stressful depending on how you choose to live your life as an individual. For me, I know there is a birth, a life and then a death in store for me. I have no illusions of immortality or reincarnation or remaining in limbo until I find peace. Until the day comes where there is proof of an afterlife then all that I have just mentioned is all I have to work with. Back to the meaning of life, it is all on how we make our lives meaningful. Destiny has nothing to do with it and neither does some “divine intervention”. Once our mind has developed to the stage where we can make conscious decisions for ourselves then that is where I believe...
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