What Matters - Essay Example

WHAT MATTERS It is a question that has troubled billions of people since the dawn of time: how should a person lead a meaningful life? There are as many theories as there are grains of sand on the beach, but some ideas over the years have been more popular than others. Some people are born into religions where these questions are largely answered for them. They know from an early age what their god tells them is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing. Others question their faith and try to revise their morality, bringing in parts of other religions or philosophies. Still others have no real faith and try to build a meaningful foundation out of their personal experience adding rules and content to it as the years go by. In this essay I will look at some of the most popular schemas and then describe my own view on this vast and important subject. A life must have content is it is to have meaning. As Moritz Schlick writes it is not enough to seek meaning in the activities that simply maintain our lives. We need something more. One popular idea very much present these days is that to lead a meaningful life you must be open to all points of view and not judge anyone. This position is called by some ethical relativism. What is ethical relativism? This is a position believes that no universal standard exists to assess the truth of the world around us. Relativists often see morals as applying only within certain cultures. These people would say that female genital mutilation is okay because it is a cultural practice and an important to a particular culture. They believe there is no standard on which to base your opinion and they live their life under the precept: To each his own. This is obviously pretty useless for politicians who are supposed to lead and find a basic consensus between people so that everyone can work together. If we just let everyone do what they want our civilization would collapse pretty quickly. Some relativists plainly believe that there is no such thing as truth and that almost anything is permitted by anyone anywhere. In moral relativism there are no absolute, concrete rights and wrongs—there are just things people do and a whole bunch of different opinions about ethics. It is pretty easy to win arguments against ethical relativists by talking about things like the Holocaust—since no one believes this was anything but a terrible event. However, a relativist might just say that the event was bad or immoral in relation to their own moral framework, and not claim objectively wrongness. This is obviously a complicated issue that a person can’t really resolve in one day. You can spend hours arguing with relativists and being made crazy by their opinions, but it usually isn’t worth it. Like the philosopher Alistair McIntyre I don’t really think many ethical arguments can be resolved. When it comes to subjects like abortion, there will probably be no social consensus. People approach the argument with unassailable moral assumptions that debate usually does not approach. Plus the emotion of such arguments clears the rational aspect. It is true that people should keep an open mind and consider the experiences of other people, but if your mind is too open your brain will just fall out. There is another important point to make about relativism and morality. Since relativists usually are agnostic or atheists, they might well also call themselves existentialists. This is a very depressing worldview which can mean exactly the same thing as nihilism. There is no meaning to the world. Since God does not exist everything is permitted by everyone. Many relativists might not go this far, but some do. They take as there starting point the idea that humans live in a world devoid of meaning; and they take this as their starting point because they cannot prove to themselves beyond any doubt (not just a reasonable doubt) that there are foundational truths. But as Richard Hare, for example, notes: for everyone there there is something that means something. Not one cares about nothing. Some people confuse feeling insignificant—which may well be true—with the idea that there is absolutely nothing in the world that means anything. In the 1950s and 1960s, philosophers like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre were famous for their thinking on this subject. Part of this thinking suggested that their lack of belief, or exclusive self-belief, a.k.a egoism, inspired the notion that they were free and that they had the will to choose how to live, another part suggested that their lives are circumscribed by things beyond their control. In Camus’ essay about Sisyphus, Sisyphus is a plaything of the gods. Although he has again and again attempts to assert his independence and embrace the passions of the world, the gods consistently foil him. Camus writes, “Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of the earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, led him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.” His freedom is really an illusion. This is not to say there are any deistic powers. The gods in this version of the story could simply stand in for the natural limitations of life. He enjoyed many years living by the sea before he died, before he was forced to leave this world. In existential thought, the absence of a god or gods does not in any way connote true freedom. One can choose to do anything, but there are no real consequences to these choices. It is similar to flipping a coin. Freedom is only freedom of being in the world, and this being is sharply circumscribed by reality, which places significant restrictions on what people can do. Indeed, these restrictions are often not even knowable in advance—they come and go and sometimes hide from sight. There are many illusions and we are judged in part on how we deal with them. So we can see that even existentialism which seems to offer the idea that anyone can do anything offers no real freedom either. Camus, more than Sartre, however, offered up a possible approach to this problem. If one chooses to believe the world is empty of meaning, that the values of religion have no grounding in reality, and all we have is our physical existence, how can we stand the tedium and repetition of so much of life? It is indeed difficult. In his books, Camus tries to provide a kind of instruction on how to live. As the critic Lev Braun wrote: The subject of the Myth of Sisyphus is suicide—especially philosophical suicide . . . Having rejected all belief in God or in any superior principle, Camus casts a desperate glance at the inexplicable universe around us, at the meaningless routine of social life, at our mortal fate. Then, reflecting on the impotence of our reason, entangled in its own contradictions, Camus wonders why the most lucid among us do not simply finish it all by suicide. Yet, the wish for happiness and meaning is so strong as to sustain a proud and vital man against his fate . . . Attitude is all, according to Camus. Being conscious, a person is free—not to do anything—but to choose how to respond to the humiliations of life of which there may be many. With this world view, the key is to be a rebel: to strike out on an attitude of defiance, even if the rock again begins to slip from your grasp. This type of existentialism does appeal to me because it is not so mopey—it actually affirms something and is a lot less emo than many other philosophies out there that I could name. Read More