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Tallis in Wonderland

On The Meaning(s) Of Life

Raymond Tallis searches for meaning, and finds several.

T.S. Eliot once reported a conversation with a taxi driver about celebrities he had had in his cab: “Only the other evening I picked up Bertrand Russell, and I said to him: ‘Well, Lord Russell, what’s it all about?’ And you know, he couldn’t tell me!” The shock of the man-in-the-street discovering that one of last century’s greatest philosophers could not deliver on what has often been seen as a central preoccupation of philosophy is manifest. Even if philosophers cannot solve their self-inflicted problems (see my ‘The ‘P’ Word: Does it Matter if Philosophy Does Not Make Progress?’, in Issue 113), surely they should be able to help us to make sense of things? High time, then, that this column should turn to the biggest of the Big Questions: ‘What’s it all about?’ More specifically, ‘What’s the meaning of life?’

What’s The Meaning Of ‘Meaning’?

Cue at once a characteristic disappointment. Instead of immediately answering the question, the philosopher’s first instinct is to question the question.

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