What Isn't The Meaning of Life (Part 1)

On The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

In this first installment of a two part series, I look at that most deepest of all questions of the philosophical variety, 'what is the meaning of life'? ''What is the meaning of life?' is the very question that witty conversational partners will volley back with when they hear you are studying philosophy ... 'Hey, so what's the meaning of life?'. Despite this converational trope, actual academic philosophy blatantly defies this stereotype by almost never asking broad questions about the meaning of life. We have to meander back to the ancient Greeks to hear schools of philosophy devoted to the rigorous discussion of the topic (OK, the existentialists certainly discussed it too). In this episode, I want to clear the brush and discuss what the meaning of life isn't. The meaning of life isn't a mock-evolutionary call to selfishness of the genetic or material variety or the making of babies that have your nose and hairline. Nor is the meaning of life something that a science like physics could tell us about. And religion had its moment a while ago, but it no longer seems to sustain a viable choice in the meaning of life game. John Stuart Mill provided a very promising answer to what a meaningful life could consist in and we'll examine his ideas. Then, in the next episode, in a fit of modesty, I'lll reveal what the meaning of life is. Perhaps.

All that and more.