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Happiness & Meaning

Why You’re (Probably) Wrong About The Meaning of Life

Lewis Vaughn asks what it’s all about.

After tragedy and heartbreak – after the war is lost, after the pandemic takes someone you love, after climate change destroys your home, after your life seems to be rendered nonsensical by illness, personal failure, or injustice – deep questions may linger like a bruise: What is the meaning of all this? Does life have any meaning or purpose at all? What is the meaning of my life?

Easy answers to such questions drop casually from the internet, books, and media. The meaning of life, we’re told, is pursuing pleasure or happiness, or giving and receiving love, or finding your passion, or doing something great, or living out your purpose, or being involved with something greater than yourself. But these commonplace answers are only partly right, and the questions are mostly wrong. So say a host of contemporary philosophers who have been studying meaning in life. They argue, contrary to the skeptics of previous generations, that human lives can indeed be meaningful, although perhaps not in the ways that many people assume.

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