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nghia's review
2.0
May sets out to provide an answer (not the answer) to the question of the meaning of life, a topic he notes is surprisingly little written about in philosophy.
I found this pretty unsatisfying, with May engaging in many of what I've come to think of "typical philosopher pitfalls". He spends a ton of time pointlessly telling us what old, dead philosophers thought. (They were wrong. Who cares? When teaching someone calculus we don't go over all the dead mathematicians who were wrong before Leibniz and Newton.) He has little interest in (or even awareness of) what science -- biology, psychology, evolution -- might say on the subject.
Beyond that, he -- curiously -- leaves the most important chapter to the very end, forcing you to wade through the entire book going "what about? what about? what about?" with the core question unanswered the entire book.
May quickly sets the stage: neither the universe nor god can provide meaning in life. This part is brief but, it seems to me, that this is unsurprising ground, well covered by decades of philosophers, so I appreciated he didn't belabor these points. But then he spends a fair chunk of the book, nearly one-fifth of it, telling us what Aristotle thought (he was wrong), Bentham thought (he was wrong), and J.S. Mill thought (he was wrong).
Finally, one-third of the way into the book he gets to the main point: Susan Wolf's 2010 book [b:Meaning in Life and Why It Matters|7634213|Meaning in Life and Why It Matters|Susan R. Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348318528l/7634213._SY75_.jpg|10146985], which he takes as a starting point for his own exploration. Everything up to here is pointless fluff; this is where the book really starts. It is a shame he took so long to get to it.
Wolf introduces a new way of thinking about meaningfulness (which, you'll note, is slightly different from "the meaning of life"):
Unfortunately, I never felt like May really convinced me of Wolf's point that this is the key to meaningfulness. I'll have to read her book. Anyway, what does it mean? It is pretty simple. Meaningfulness is two-sided. Something is only meaningful is you like it (subjective attraction) and if other people also like it. May's thesis is this other-people part is "narrative values".
But isn't this...unsatisfying? That's not really "objective attractiveness". Instead it is "something that society has decided, for now, in our current historical contingency, is a good thing". Society could be wrong! What does it even mean to say "well, she didn't lead a meaningful life according to his contemporaries; but people in a different century/different continent think she did lead a meaningful life"?
May points out that "meaningfulness" and "good" are different concepts in this framework. One could lead a meaningful life that isn't good. And one could lead a good life that isn't meaningful. But I felt he didn't handle this very well. He has an unconvincing argument that a really bad life can reduce meaningfulness. I didn't buy it. But then his framework can lead to things like:
A devout Nazi who ran a concentration camp can lead a meaningful life, since he was steadfast (e.g. a narrative value) in his racism towards Jews; which was clearly an "objectively attractive" thing in his era.
What does "lead a meaningful life" even mean now?
Even May seems to realize that, ultimately, he has put together a fairly feeble thesis. He was never able to convince me what the point of this "meaningful life" (i.e. one led with narrative values) was. On the one hand he has lofty passages implying that living a life of meaningfulness is
And that it will
A life that isn't meaningful is one where...
And if we lead a meaningful life...
But it is never clear to why leading a life with the narrative value of, say, steadfastness would "redeem the arc of my life", or "add to the world", or "address the haunting fear that there is nothing to our days", or "avoid looking back at my life with a sense of desolation".
In the end, it feels like even May acknowledges his definition of "meaningfulness" doesn't seem to...do anything.
So a meaningful life isn't necessary. A person who doesn't lead a meaningful life haven't failed a duty to themselves or others.
He has no argument why someone should care about leading a meaningful life.
Despite all of that...I do feel like there's the nugget of something in what May writes. At one point he writes
And that seems certainly true. Maybe my hangup is just that he tries so hard to load the word "meaning" up to do something. What does it mean for a dog to lead a meaningful life? For a chimp? How about Neanderthals? At what point in our evolutionary development did "meaningfulness" go from something that was absurd to expect to something we did expect? Did it just switch on one day? If so...isn't that just saying a craving for "meaningfulness" is something biologically-oriented in the same way many crave children? Would a species that isn't genetically dispositioned to be tribally-oriented think that "objective attractiveness" (i.e. the opinion of the tribe) is part of the definition of meaningfulness?
I found this pretty unsatisfying, with May engaging in many of what I've come to think of "typical philosopher pitfalls". He spends a ton of time pointlessly telling us what old, dead philosophers thought. (They were wrong. Who cares? When teaching someone calculus we don't go over all the dead mathematicians who were wrong before Leibniz and Newton.) He has little interest in (or even awareness of) what science -- biology, psychology, evolution -- might say on the subject.
Beyond that, he -- curiously -- leaves the most important chapter to the very end, forcing you to wade through the entire book going "what about? what about? what about?" with the core question unanswered the entire book.
May quickly sets the stage: neither the universe nor god can provide meaning in life. This part is brief but, it seems to me, that this is unsurprising ground, well covered by decades of philosophers, so I appreciated he didn't belabor these points. But then he spends a fair chunk of the book, nearly one-fifth of it, telling us what Aristotle thought (he was wrong), Bentham thought (he was wrong), and J.S. Mill thought (he was wrong).
Finally, one-third of the way into the book he gets to the main point: Susan Wolf's 2010 book [b:Meaning in Life and Why It Matters|7634213|Meaning in Life and Why It Matters|Susan R. Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348318528l/7634213._SY75_.jpg|10146985], which he takes as a starting point for his own exploration. Everything up to here is pointless fluff; this is where the book really starts. It is a shame he took so long to get to it.
Wolf introduces a new way of thinking about meaningfulness (which, you'll note, is slightly different from "the meaning of life"):
Meaning arises when subjective attraction meet objective attractiveness.
Unfortunately, I never felt like May really convinced me of Wolf's point that this is the key to meaningfulness. I'll have to read her book. Anyway, what does it mean? It is pretty simple. Meaningfulness is two-sided. Something is only meaningful is you like it (subjective attraction) and if other people also like it. May's thesis is this other-people part is "narrative values".
But isn't this...unsatisfying? That's not really "objective attractiveness". Instead it is "something that society has decided, for now, in our current historical contingency, is a good thing". Society could be wrong! What does it even mean to say "well, she didn't lead a meaningful life according to his contemporaries; but people in a different century/different continent think she did lead a meaningful life"?
May points out that "meaningfulness" and "good" are different concepts in this framework. One could lead a meaningful life that isn't good. And one could lead a good life that isn't meaningful. But I felt he didn't handle this very well. He has an unconvincing argument that a really bad life can reduce meaningfulness. I didn't buy it. But then his framework can lead to things like:
A devout Nazi who ran a concentration camp can lead a meaningful life, since he was steadfast (e.g. a narrative value) in his racism towards Jews; which was clearly an "objectively attractive" thing in his era.
What does "lead a meaningful life" even mean now?
Even May seems to realize that, ultimately, he has put together a fairly feeble thesis. He was never able to convince me what the point of this "meaningful life" (i.e. one led with narrative values) was. On the one hand he has lofty passages implying that living a life of meaningfulness is
...something that will give heft to our projects, [...] something that will redeem the arc of our lives.
And that it will
[...] address the haunting fear that there is nothing more to our days than being born, dying, and the land increasing.
A life that isn't meaningful is one where...
[t]heir activities don’t add much to the world.
And if we lead a meaningful life...
...perhaps we might avoid the fate of looking back upon our lives with a sense of desolation.
But it is never clear to why leading a life with the narrative value of, say, steadfastness would "redeem the arc of my life", or "add to the world", or "address the haunting fear that there is nothing to our days", or "avoid looking back at my life with a sense of desolation".
In the end, it feels like even May acknowledges his definition of "meaningfulness" doesn't seem to...do anything.
If it is not necessary for one to be successful in order for one’s life to be meaningful, is it necessary for a life to be meaningful at all? Is there some obligation to live a meaningful life? Have people whose lives are not meaningful (or, more accurately, not very meaningful) according to the criteria I have described failed in some duty to themselves or to others? They have not.
So a meaningful life isn't necessary. A person who doesn't lead a meaningful life haven't failed a duty to themselves or others.
If someone were to say, in the face of what I have described here as the character of a meaningful life, “Not interested,” I would have no complaint against him. I would have no argument to put forward as to why he should, even if not interested, feel obliged to express some narrative value or another.
He has no argument why someone should care about leading a meaningful life.
Despite all of that...I do feel like there's the nugget of something in what May writes. At one point he writes
We find our meaning not beneath or beyond our lives, but within them.
And that seems certainly true. Maybe my hangup is just that he tries so hard to load the word "meaning" up to do something. What does it mean for a dog to lead a meaningful life? For a chimp? How about Neanderthals? At what point in our evolutionary development did "meaningfulness" go from something that was absurd to expect to something we did expect? Did it just switch on one day? If so...isn't that just saying a craving for "meaningfulness" is something biologically-oriented in the same way many crave children? Would a species that isn't genetically dispositioned to be tribally-oriented think that "objective attractiveness" (i.e. the opinion of the tribe) is part of the definition of meaningfulness?
soavezefiretto's review
3.0
Again, this should probably be a four stars, because it *is* a great book with great insights, but somehow I wasn't as enthusiastic about it all the time as I felt it should be. Maybe it was because of the (surely necessary) bouts of theory, this very slow approximation to the core of things which is, of course, the very nature of philosophy. Maybe that's why I don't read so much philosophy. This patient deconstruction of every argument and counter-argument, when the original proposition already seemed intuitively *right* was unnerving. But again, this is just me, and my ratings are just that, my own personal ratings. If you often ask yourself "does my life have meaning? does human life have meaning? how can I know?", you should definitely read this.
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