What Matters: a Philosophical Inquiry - Essay Example

What Matters: A Philosophical Inquiry Submitted by: Submitted by: In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements in [Name of Subject] Date Submitted Introduction Humans tend to come face to face with an old age question of what matters in life bringing them to analyze the meaning associated with his existence. What is the meaning of my life? Why do exist? What is important to me? Different people have come to different conclusions while some still continue to search for the elusive answer. Many philosophers have also been captivated of the subject and have produced interesting results. The aim of this paper is to present these philosophical thoughts and synthesize them to provide a depiction of what truly matters. The Absurdities of Life According to the philosophy of Absurdism, humanity’s quest for meaning in the universe will ultimately fail because there is no such thing. Hence, to try to find meaning in a meaningless universe is absurd. The philosophy was born from the thoughts and ideas of French Algerian philosopher and writer Albert Camus in his manuscript, The Myth of Sisyphus. Albert Camus considered absurdity as a conflict or a divorce between two ideals. Human beings and the world is not absurd by themselves but for humans to be in the world is absurd. This absurdity arises precisely because humans try to find meaning and clarity on a confusing, hostile and indifferent universe. While humans yearn for order and significance, the world offers only death and suffering. The absurdity also lies in the fact that humans have the tendency to fixate vehemently on future plans when it is a well known fact that all life will end in the future. Camus claims that human beings are alienated from the world and that there are three ways of resolving this dilemma: suicide, leap of faith and recognition. Suicide, as the term would imply, involves termination of life to escape the absurdity of existence in a meaningless world. Leap of faith involves humans embracing a transcendent realm or being that they think provide meaning and sense to the world. Camus regarded this resolution as ‘philosophical suicide’ as people blindly believe in an intangible being. Recognition involves acceptance of the absurdity of human existence in the indifferent world and choosing to live through it just the same. Camus rejects suicide and leap of faith as appropriate resolution as it only states that life is meaningless and there is no point in using the mind to make sense of the world. Only through recognition and acceptance of the absurdity of human conditions and finding of purely human solutions to their plight can humans find meaning not from the world but from their selves. In The Myth of Sisyphus, the Greek mythical hero Sisyphus was able to find happiness in rolling a heavy rock up a hill forever because he had come to terms with the limits of human reason and life (Camus, 1991). If we are to follow Camus line of thought, what matters in life is not being able to find inherent meaning in the world but the opportunity to create one’s own meaning and purpose by having the freedom to reason and decide for one’s own self. In recognizing that it is absurd to seek any meaning in the universe but still keep striving to create meaning from the search alone can lead to happiness. Essentially, it is what we decide to do with our life in spite of everything around us that matters. What Matters is our Values In reading the work of Camus, a young student under the care of Richard Hare formed the notion that nothing really matters for as Camus had put it, the world is silent and cold. Concerned about the sudden change in attitude of the boy, Hare embarked on a philosophical inquiry that no person could ever state that nothing really matters. For Camus, what mattered was the continued struggle in a universe that has been already been recognized as meaningless. Hare stated that ‘when we say something matters or is important what we are doing, in saying this, is expressing concern about that something’ (in Benatar, p. 43). Every people is concerned about something especially the things that they value for we are all ‘creatures who feel concern for things’ (in Benatar, p. 45). No one can ‘annihilate values – not values as a whole’. Even in times of perplexity, values are not thrown away all together. Rather, we enter a stage where we ‘scrutinize more closely values to which we have given habitual allegiance, and decide whether we really prize them’. While Hare stops short of specifying what we should be concerned with, it can be deducted that something will always be of concern to us, that something will always be important and that the statement ‘nothing matters’ is the result of a flood of depressive emotions resulting from a multitude of concerns that we seek to address all at the same time. In their ‘Is Life Absurd?’, Westphal and Cherry asserted that there is at least one kind of pretension which is immune to the value doubt such as devotion and being innately gifted. In such cases, all external perspectives and scepticism are disregarded and considered as absurd. It is only the devotion and the innate talent that matters, nothing else. Valuing Not Only Ourselves but Others As Well Hare’s discussion of values seems to concentrate on personal values. This recognition brings to mind Leo Tolstoy’s discussion of the right perspective regarding values and meaning. According to the celebrated Russian philosopher and novelist, the tendency for a man is to value himself alone and seek his own happiness. What matters for the person is his own welfare, a desire to fulfill one’s dreams and ambitions. The happiness of other people matters only when it ‘augments the happiness of his own life’ (Tolstoy, p. 300). Nonetheless, in the course of his life, man would come to a conclusion that each and every being in the world only seeks his own happiness and is willing to deprive of others of this so long as it augments his. Thus, he claims as much happiness as he can for himself. Tolstoy argues that the search for individual happiness can only lead men in engaging themselves in annihilation and ‘real life cannot be like that’ (Tolstoy, p. 302). What should matter for men is to live a life that is bound by reason, love towards God and neighbors, peace and humility. What matters not is the selfish happiness that we had acquired during our lifetime because all of these will soon pass. Rather, it is the legacy of our relationship to God and to others that is very important for it brings happiness that is ‘indestructible by death and suffering’ (Tolstoy, p. 305) Play and Values Moritz Schlick, writing on the meaning of life, argued that man can become too engaged in pursuing what is important to him. No matter whether it is for individual happiness or for everybody, man has become too engrossed in such activity that he is making a ‘mere living, pure existence as such’ which is ‘certainly valueless’. For life to have meaning, ‘it must also have a content’ preventing us from ‘moving in a circle’ (Schlick et al, p. 114). Schlick introduces the importance of play or the ‘activities which carry their own purpose and value within them independent of extraneous goals’ (Schlick et al, p. 115). Essentially, Schlick wanted us to realize that oftentimes we are so engrossed in pursuing our own goals that we have forgotten what it was like to play and to be creative. To obtain meaning in life and to know what truly matters, one must seek those that inspire him to be creative. One can always feel a higher degree of happiness achieve through creative and playful tinkering of ideas rather than following a stringent and stratified set of rules. Synthesis The experience of people through the ages has shown that no matter what achievements one has accrued in life, only death awaits. All of these achievements will fade past memory. This leads us to question the meaning of life. What is the purpose in living knowing that it will ultimately lead to nothingness? Different philosophers have constructed different views but a synthesis of their ideas can be interesting. Realizing that death is inevitable and the universe is uncaring, man should construct for himself what is important to him. He can identify values that he deems to make him happy. However, Tolstoy argues that what is important is not to limit the search for happiness to one’s self alone but to share it with others as well. Schlick provides us a ‘play’ framework wherein we can find meaning in the search for value recognition and happiness. What matters then in life is the way we make our journey through life’s up and downs. References: Benatar, David (und.) Life, Death and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions. Retrieved April 2, 2010 from http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=BtS3pNmkwWQC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=Richard+Hare+Nothing+Matters&source=bl&ots=wUGON0Nw0W&sig=BuK3mHcDW31Z5sjYOwZCooe4YQY&hl=en&ei=mAK3S_PRFcqprAfxkMDDCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Richard%20Hare%20Nothing%20Matters&f=false Camus, Albert (1991). Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Vintage Books. Schlick, M., Mulder, H. and Van de Velde-Schlick, B. (und.). Philosophical Papers: 1925- 1936. Retrieved April 2, 2010 from http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=mo09L1w3KJIC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=Moritz+Schlick+On+the+Meaning+of+Life&source=bl&ots=_P5Po6xscm&sig=01pkMhq6dHYvENgxqM3yIZlAgZU&hl=en&ei=aAO3S5TtCYu0rAeGnvDDCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCcQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false Tolstoy, Leo (und.) What is to be done? and Life. Retrieved April 2, 2010 from http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=QdIaEpsxbMUC&pg=PA300&lpg=PA300&dq=Tolstoy+The+Fundamental+Contradiction+of+Human+Life&source=bl&ots=SRvnWr5t_z&sig=Yx0yHQeyNEDeXe_8z4nfiPbe-bc&hl=en&ei=AgO3S-9ghLGsB8HPiMQK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false Read More