From a scientific and philosophical point of view, the definition and concept of the meaning of life imply the presence of certain goals of existence, individual and general purpose of a person.
The meaning of being is the basis of a worldview that determines the entire path of development of the moral character of people.
In philosophy
In most cases, the meaning of life is perceived and positioned as a philosophical problem. Philosophers of antiquity wrote that the secret of human existence lies in himself, and, trying to know himself, he recognizes the surrounding space. There are several historically recognized points of view on the problem of meaning:
- The followers and receivers of Socrates said: “It is a shame to die without realizing your spiritual and physical strength.” Epicurus, exploring the topic of human death, urged not to be afraid of it, because the fear of death is inherently irrational: when death occurs, a person no longer exists. However, oddly enough, the attitude towards death significantly influences and determines the attitude towards life.
- The problem of the meaning of life was also actively discussed in Kant's philosophy. In his opinion, a person in himself is the goal and the highest value, he is an individual and the only creature on the planet capable of independently managing his life, pursuing any goals and achieving them. The great philosopher said that the meaning of a person’s life is not outside, but within himself: at the same time, the determining factor is the idea expressed through moral laws and duties. Kant also tried to describe what “meaning” is. In his opinion, meaning cannot exist independently, as a certain object of reality, it is in the minds of people and it also determines their behavior, forcing them to voluntarily obey the laws of morality and thereby placing a person a step above other living beings on the planet. That is, from Kant’s point of view, a person’s destiny is expressed in the presence of a certain worldview, or religion. At the same time, Kant denies religion as an explanation for the emergence of our world - its significance lies precisely in the fact that it is the basis for the development of human morality.
- Kant's philosophy was further developed by other German classics. According to Fichte, the search for the meaning of human life on earth is the main task of any philosophical teaching. Comprehension of meaning is the complete agreement of the individual with himself, which is expressed in human freedom, rational activity, and development. Developing and becoming a free and reasonable person, a person changes and improves the surrounding reality.
Throughout the history of philosophy and religion, attempts have been made to find a universal, suitable for everyone, meaning of human existence.
Religion calls on a person to prepare himself for “life after death,” because it is outside the “biological” existence that real life begins. From the position of virtue, the answer to the question: “why do we live?” obvious: to do good deeds and serve the truth. In addition to religious ideas, there is a widespread point of view that sees the purpose and meaning of human life in obtaining physical and moral pleasures and the opposite, which presents suffering and death as the purpose of birth.
In psychology
Psychology also has not ignored the eternally pressing dilemma - why does a person live on earth. At least two directions in psychology are actively searching for a solution to the problem “what is the meaning of human life”:
- The well-known psychologist and philosopher Viktor Frankl worked for a long time to create his own school, focused on the study of a person searching for something worth living for. According to Frankl, goals to achieve true purpose ennoble a person, make him more conscious, intelligent and morally healthy. As a result of his research, the psychologist wrote a book: “Man in Search of the Meaning of Life.” This work contains answers to the most common questions about the search for meaning, covers this topic in detail and offers three ways to achieve it. The first path is aimed at comprehending the purpose of existence through work and bringing it to the ideal; the second way is the experience of feelings and emotions, which in themselves are meaning; the basis of the third is to gain experience through suffering, pain, anxiety and the struggle with earthly adversities along the path of life.
- Psychology has also been and is actively engaged in the study of the meaning of human life in the existential direction or logotherapy. This direction calls a person a being who does not know why and for what he came into this world and his goal is to find this knowledge. Therefore, the center of logotherapy is the psychological aspect of this process. And people have only two ways - either, despite possible failures and disappointments, look for their calling, be responsible for their actions, try, experiment; or - give up at the very beginning of his path and his life will pass without touching awareness.
Forms
The goals and meaning of human existence are rarely universal throughout life or consist of the same thing. Most often, they change with age, internal personality changes; or under the influence of external circumstances. For example, in adolescence and adolescence, the solution to the problem - what is the meaning of life - will be: obtaining an education and the necessary skills to start working; after 25 years, the most common answers are starting a family, building a career, improving material living conditions. Closer to retirement age, when life becomes more meaningful, people become puzzled by issues of spiritual development and religion. For some people, the problem of meaning is solved through a hobby in which a person is realized in parallel with the goals listed above. In the latter case, the lives of such people are more fulfilling and bright, because at the same time they achieve several goals and are not heavily dependent on one, which means they experience possible disappointments and obstacles more easily, are able to comprehend them and move on.
Having and raising children is one of the most common types of life goals and meaning in life.
The birth of a child leads to the fact that most of the parents' attention is focused on him: they earn money to provide their child with the best, try to provide a good education, help in difficult periods, and instill the right lifestyle. Most mothers and fathers try to raise their children properly, to instill in them the desire to live according to the principles of justice and high morality. And if this succeeds, the parents believe that the path of life was not passed in vain, it made sense to leave its worthy continuation on earth.
Leaving a mark on the earth is a rarer option for finding meaning. Most often, people with some rare talent are capable of this. These are great scientists, artists, representatives of royal, noble and other families, famous managers, etc. However, not everything is so sad.
A person who does not have a very bright talent, but is hardworking, persistent and purposeful, who lives, understanding and imagining what the meaning of his life can be, can leave his mark on earth.
For example, this is a teacher who puts his soul into his charges, or a doctor who has healed many people, a carpenter who improves people’s lives through his work, an athlete who may not have great abilities, but achieves better results every day, etc.
The problem of achieving meaning in a high-tech society
In the modern world, humanity lives at an accelerated pace and spends a lot of emotional and physical resources to maintain its standard of living. We rarely manage to stop and think about the meaning of human life. Society and progress require compliance with fashion, certain norms, and the format of relationships between people. A person is like a squirrel in a wheel, making thousands of monotonous movements brought to the point of automatism; he does not have time to think about what he himself wants and what he lives for.
Modernity is characterized by the daily pursuit of illusion, false ideals. The consumer culture does not allow for spiritual development; the moral side of modern man becomes less developed, down-to-earth and primitive; the miracle of life turns into ordinary existence.
Naturally, people have become more susceptible to diseases of the nervous system, depression, hysteria and chronic fatigue. The number of suicides has increased several times over the past decades. Human meaning has become an expensive luxury.
However, for people who are strong in spirit, persistent and resistant to social influence, and capable of thinking, progress opens up new opportunities for self-development and improvement of the world. Now it is much easier to obtain knowledge that contributes to the search for goals and meaning; it’s easier to promote your own ideas: they won’t be led to the gallows or burned at the stake for them; technological capabilities allow you to create and build new objects and objects. We live in a relatively calm period and the desire to maintain peaceful relationships, take care of nature, find compromises and grow spiritually is the goal and meaning of human life.
The Cyrenacians were supporters of one of the branches of the teachings of Socrates. This group was founded around 400 BC in North Africa and was led by Aristippus, one of Socrates' students. Their teaching contained the proposition that the experience and knowledge available to an individual are always subjective. Therefore, no one person will be able to see the world the way another sees it. They also believed that we do not know anything definite about the world, and the only knowledge available is sensory experience.
They taught that the only purpose of life is to experience pleasure in the present, instead of making plans for the future. Physical pleasures are paramount and a person should take all measures to maximize their quantity. Overall, this was a very selfish point of view, placing the pleasure of the individual above the well-being of the community, city or country.
The Cyrenaics ignored not only foreign philosophy, but also traditional social norms. Thus, Aristippus taught that there is nothing wrong with incest - in his opinion, only social convention led to the taboo of consanguineous marriages.
Mohism
Mohism was developed by Chinese philosophers around the same time that the Cyrenaics appeared in the Hellenistic world. This teaching was created by Mo Di, who was one of the first in China to raise the question of the meaning of life. He outlined 10 principles that people should follow in everyday life, the central one of which was impartiality.
According to this teaching, the meaning of life will be achieved when each person pays equal attention to everyone else, without putting any person above others. This meant, of course, a renunciation of luxury, wealth and pleasure. The Mohists saw equality as the ideal of human relationships and believed that they would be rewarded for this with the same equality in the afterlife.
Cynics
The Cynics were another group close to Socrates. They found the meaning of life in living in obedience to the natural order of things rather than to ethics and traditions. Cynics believed that social conventions such as wealth or hypocrisy prevented people from achieving virtue.
They did not abandon public institutions entirely, but believed that each person develops his own personal ideas about good and evil and has the right to go against society by following his own guidelines. This is where the principle of “paresia” arose - the principle of telling the truth.
Another important principle of cynicism was self-sufficiency. Cynics believed that a person can maintain freedom only if he is ready at any moment to refuse communication with other people and the benefits of civilization.
Albert Einstein
Einstein was one of the most outstanding representatives of humanity. In 1951, a young woman asked him in a letter what the meaning of life was. The answer was short: “To create satisfaction for yourself and for others.”
In a letter to his son Eduard, Einstein was more specific. He wrote to him that he believed in “a higher stage of consciousness as the highest ideal,” and that the human ability to create new things out of nothing was more than we might think. It is the act of creation that allows us to experience happiness. He also reminded that you need to create not out of a desire to be remembered, but out of love for the thing you create.
Darwinism
Charles Darwin had a complex relationship with religion and the religious meaning of life. Initially he adhered to Christian beliefs, but later his views noticeably wavered.
Some of his heirs began to practically deify evolution - after all, it was it that ensured the emergence of man. They see in this the highest meaning of evolution and believe that it inevitably had to lead to modern people. Some, on the contrary, emphasize that evolution is a combination of a chain of chance and the ability to survive. But both agree that the meaning of life is to pass on part of your DNA to future generations.
Nihilism
Most often, the word “nihilism” is associated with the predecessors of the Russian revolutionaries of the early 20th century, but this term is much more complex. Nihilism—from the Latin hihil (“nothing”)—believes that such things as “value” or “meaning” do not exist in nature, and therefore human existence has no meaning.
Nietzsche believed that the spread of nihilistic beliefs would eventually lead to people ceasing to do anything at all. This, as we see, did not happen, but nihilism as indifference to what is happening still remains popular.
Tibetan philosophy
These teachings are common in Tibet and other parts of the Himalayas. Very similar to classical Buddhism, Tibetan philosophy believes that the meaning of life is the end of earthly suffering. The first step to this is understanding the world. By understanding the world, you can come to the knowledge necessary to end suffering.
Philosophy provides the opportunity to choose the “Path of Small Opportunities,” on which a person is primarily concerned with his own salvation from the world, or the “Path of Greater Opportunities,” on which a person helps others. The true meaning of life is found in practice. Tibetan philosophy is also memorable because it offers its followers precise instructions on behavior.
Epicureans
Epicurean philosophy is often oversimplified. According to Epicurus, everything consists of tiny particles, including the human body, which is made up of particles of the soul. Without soul particles, the body is dead, and without the body, the soul is unable to perceive the outside world. Thus, after death, neither the soul nor the body can continue to exist. After death there is no punishment, no reward - nothing. This means that a person needs to focus on earthly affairs.
Particles of the soul are capable of experiencing both pleasure and pain. Therefore, you need to avoid pain and enjoy. What we can't control (unexpected death) we just have to accept.
This doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. Even if robbing a bank brings some pleasant experiences, a true epicure remembers that feelings of guilt and anxiety can lead to greater discomfort later. Epicureans are also committed to friendship, the most pleasant, safe and reliable feeling that can be available to a person.
Aztec philosophy
The highest meaning of life for the Aztecs was to live in harmony with nature. Such a life allows one to continue energy and form new generations. This energy was called "teotl" and was not a deity, but something like the Jedi Force. Teotl fills the world, all our knowledge and extends beyond knowledge.
In teotl there are polar opposites that fight each other and thereby maintain balance in the universe. Neither life nor death is bad - they are just part of a cycle. The Aztecs believed that it was best to stay in the middle, not striving for wealth and using what you already had wisely. This was a guarantee that the children would receive the world in the same condition as their fathers.
Stephen Fry and the humanists
Stephen Fry, one of the brightest representatives of modern humanism, poses the question of the meaning of life so that it concerns everyone, regardless of gender, beliefs, race or age. In humanism there is no specific meaning of life. Each person finds his own meaning in life. Instead of looking for it outside, a person should find it within himself by thinking about what makes him happy.
Because the meaning of life will truly be different for each of us. Some people want to create a masterpiece, others want to create a charity foundation. Or plant a garden, adopt a child, pick up an animal from the street... There is no single correct answer to the question about the meaning of life - everyone develops this answer on their own. And it seems that it is this theory that allows the greatest number of people to be happy.
The question of the meaning of life is the question of whether life is worth living? And if it’s still worth it, then what is there to live for? Awareness of the meaning of life as its main value is historical in nature. Each era, to one degree or another, influenced the understanding of the meaning of human life.
There are various approaches to solving the problem of meaning in life, of which the following can be distinguished:
■ the meaning of life is in its spiritual foundations, in life itself;
■ the meaning of life is brought by the person himself into his life.
■ the meaning of life is taken beyond the boundaries of life itself;
■ there is no meaning to life.
Within the first approach, there is a religious version. The meaning of human life was given by God already at the moment of human creation. Having created man in his image, God gave man a resemblance to himself, at the same time endowing him with free will. And the meaning of a person’s life is to achieve a given similarity with God. And therefore, the meaning of human life is to improve the world by improving oneself. The meaning of human life is to preserve and purify one’s immortal soul.
Philosophy considers the moral meaning of human life in the process of improving its spiritual foundations and its social essence on the principles of good. “The meaning of life is in acquiring goodness” (V.S. Solovyov), in improving oneself and society (I.G. Fichte).
The meaning is contained in life itself, but, unlike the religious point of view, it is argued here that a person finds the meaning of life in it himself. The philosopher and psychologist V. Frankl, for example, argues that everything has meaning, but it must be found. Conscience will help a person with this. The meaning of life consists of situational, specific meanings that are individual, just as life itself is individual. Based on situational meaning, a person outlines and solves situational problems of every day or even hour. There is also the meaning of history and the super-meaning of the existence of the Universe.
The third approach takes the meaning of life beyond the specific life of a person; there is an extrapolation of the meaning of human existence to the progress of mankind, for the good and happiness of future generations, in the name of the bright ideals of goodness and justice. As a result, every human generation and every living person now acts as a means to achieve these great goals of progress. Many people live for the sake of their own future, as V.G. notes. Belinsky: “Many people live without living, but only intending to live.” And from the depths of centuries L. Seneca “answers” him: “while we postpone life, it passes.”
From the mouth of a modern young man you can hear that the meaning of his life lies in pleasure, joy, and happiness. But pleasure is only a consequence of our aspirations, and not its goal. Kant also argued that pleasure does not act as the goal of moral action, but is the consequence to which it leads. And if people were guided only by the principle of pleasure, then this would lead to a complete devaluation of moral actions, since the actions of two people, one of whom spent money on gluttony, and the other on charity, would be equivalent, since the consequence of both is pleasure.
As for joy as the meaning of life, joy, “being a directed emotion” (Scheler), itself must have meaning. Even a child directs his joy outward, to the object or action that causes it. Joy, therefore, is also not an end in itself, but a consequence of an achieved goal. As Kierkegaard aptly noted, “the door to happiness opens outward,” and whoever wants to open it from there, from the side of happiness itself, closes it even more tightly.
The denial of the meaning of life has repeatedly manifested itself in the history of philosophical thought: even in ancient times, King Solomon’s aphorism “All is vanity” emphasized the meaninglessness of existence; in modern philosophy, representatives of existentialism argue that the world is chaotic and absurd, and human existence is absurd and meaningless.
But still, attempts to find the meaning of human life have prevailed in the history of human thought:
■ the meaning of life is in love, in the pursuit of the good of what is outside of man, in the desire for harmony and unity of people (L.N. Tolstoy);
■ the meaning of life is to achieve a certain human ideal;
■ the meaning of life is to maximize assistance in solving the problems of social development and all-round development of the individual (Marxism);
■ meaning - in struggle (V. Belinsky, P. Beaumarchais);
■ in action, in motion (J.-J. Rousseau);
■ in improving oneself and society (I. G. Fichte);
■ in serving society (N.S. Leskov);
■ in enriching humanity with knowledge (D. Diderot);
■ the meaning of life is in its aesthetic side, in achieving what is majestic, beautiful and strong in it, in achieving superhuman greatness (Nietzsche).
Philosophers about death
Since the X-V centuries. BC e. In ancient Greek society, an idea was formed about the value of the life of each individual individual, the finiteness of his life in time. As A. Schopenhauer wrote, people might not even begin to philosophize if there were no death. Death, therefore, acts as the “inspiration” of philosophy. Only the fact of death raises the question of the meaning of life. Life in this world has meaning precisely because there is death. Plato taught that philosophy is nothing more than preparation for death. But the only trouble is that philosophy itself does not know how to die and how to defeat death. Concepts arise that try to explain the meaning of death and overcome the fear of death:
1 - reincarnation (relocation of the soul after death);
2 - complete separation of life from death, which “do not meet,” for “while a person lives, there is no death, and when death comes, the person no longer exists” (Epicurus). The first concept (Socrates-Plato) was aimed at softening the tragedy of death, the second (Stoics and Epicurus) was aimed at eliminating the fear of death.
The tradition of helping a person to avoid the fear of death was inherited by religions. Christianity and Islam consider death as a prelude to eternal life, and it depends only on the earthly merits of the deceased whether he will remain in eternal bliss in heaven or doomed to eternal torment in the underworld. From the point of view of the religion of Buddhism, death is, firstly, in a positive sense, a moment in the “wheel of samsara” (“wheel of rebirth”), along which a person goes to nirvana - a world of eternal bliss, where there will be no suffering, and, secondly, in a negative sense, deserved suffering, retribution for unworthy actions and various desires.
There are two most common polar points of view on death:
1. Death is the negation of the future; therefore, neither the past nor the future has meaning. Hence the conclusion is drawn: take from the present everything you can take.
2. Death as a transition from the past to eternity. To live, according to Frankl, means to create for eternity. Realizing this, a person must make the most of all his abilities and time in order to make his feasible contribution to history, thereby enriching the future. Therefore, death, like life, has meaning.
The philosophical meaning of death is that it is a moment of renewal, first of all, of the organic world, and then of the whole world. Death is a completely natural phenomenon; it has played a useful and necessary role in the course of long biological evolution. Indeed, without death, which made the progress of organic species possible, man would never have appeared at all. If there were no death, a person would not think about eternity, would not “measure” himself with it, hoping for his own immortality. If there were no death, there would be no immortality, which owes its existence to it. And at the same time, eternity is achieved only by passing through death, and death is the fate of everything living in this world, and the more complex life is, the higher the level of life, the more death awaits it. It is the living, not the dead, who suffer when death has done its work. The dead can no longer suffer. There may come a moment in every man's life when death will be more effective for his main purposes than life; when what he stands for by his death becomes clearer and more convincing than if he had acted in any other way.
The Chinese philosopher Yang Zhu (c. 440-360 BC) said that death makes everyone equal: “During life, there are differences - these are the differences between smart and stupid, noble and low. There is identity in death - this is the identity of stench and decay, disappearance and destruction... Both the ten-year-old and the hundred-year-old die; both the virtuous and the wise die; Both the evil and the stupid die.” But Yang Zhu is decisively against the premature suppression of life: “Since a person is already living, he must accept life easily, leaving it to its natural course and fulfill its requirements to the end in order to calmly await the arrival of death. When death comes, then you should take it lightly, leaving it to its natural course, and accept to the end what it brings, in order to leave freedom to disappear. Why hesitate or hurry in fear in this interval between birth and death? And death ennobles the last of mortals and puts him on the same level as the very first.”
The social meaning of death also has its positive sides. The universality of death reminds us of the essential brotherhood of man that exists despite all the violent divisions and conflicts recorded by history, as well as in contemporary affairs.
Death also has a moral and philosophical meaning. Awareness of the frailty of one’s life forces a person to find or give it meaning. A person’s doom to death can become an incentive to do good to people in order to leave a bright memory for posterity, to “spur” a person to finish the work he has started, especially if it is a manifestation of artistic or philosophical creativity, which means that no one else can realize the author’s plan except him himself.
Philosophy about immortality
Immortality is a purely human phenomenon, because animals do not know about the finitude of their existence, therefore they do not think about immortality, they live only for today. Since ancient times, the idea of immortality arose in religion and philosophy, but immortality was understood differently.
In Greek religion to achieve immortality means to become God. Immortality is a manifestation of the divine principle in man, and only it is immortal. Only heroes, demigods, and not ordinary people are immortal. Ancient Greek philosophers looked at the problem of death and immortality in a unique way. Thus, Heraclitus understood death as an element of the dialectics of the world process: “From the death of the earth, water is born. From the death of water air is born, from the death of air fire is born, and vice versa.” In this cycle he includes the soul, which seems to him material, one of the transitional states of fire. He viewed death and immortality as a unity of opposites. The soul of man is fire. There is God in man. There is no individual immortality, there is only universal fire. Immortal is the general, not the individual.
The philosopher Plato defended the possibility of immortality on the grounds that the soul is of divine origin, existing in the divine world before the birth and after the death of a particular person. The belief in the immortality of the soul came from the cult of Dionysus. Therefore, the idea of the immortality of the soul is of Greek origin.
The Jews, unlike the Greeks, came to believe in resurrection with the body, rather than in the immortality of the soul.
In Christianity immortality is understood as eternal life through the resurrection of man as an integral personality. The guarantee of the possibility of such a resurrection is the resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ. Earthly life is a person’s preparation for eternal life. In the other world there live countless souls, good and evil, awaiting their fate. Immortality is possible because there is a divine principle in man. The suffering God, by his death and resurrection, gives man immortality. Christianity speaks not so much about natural immortality, which does not imply any struggle, but rather about resurrection, which involves the struggle of spiritual, grace-filled forces with deadly forces. Only Christianity looks death directly in the eyes, recognizes both the tragedy of death and the meaning of death, and at the same time does not reconcile itself with death and defeats it.
Muslims recognize the existence of immortality also through resurrection, after which they will appear before Allah and who will accomplish the highest court. Allah will make a judgment to send the righteous and the sinners respectively to heaven and hell based on the “record” of everyone's thoughts and deeds presented to him. Priorities at this trial will be set in favor of the triumph of the laws of morality and reason.
Thus, many types of religious and philosophical teachings were built about victory over the horror of death and the achievement of real or illusory immortality: the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; the doctrine of reincarnation of souls; the doctrine of merging with the Divine; idealistic doctrine of the immortality of ideas and values; Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the whole person. The spiritualistic doctrine of the immortality of the soul promises immortality only to a part of a person, and not to the whole person. The doctrine of reincarnation gives even less immortality to the whole person; it presupposes his decomposition into individual elements and plunging a person into the cosmic cycle, leaving him at the mercy of time. A person can pass into a non-human species of existence, reincarnate into animals. In the most ancient world religion Buddhism Immortality is not a blessing, but numerous rebirths for new lives (dharmas), bringing suffering, from which a person cannot be saved even at the cost of suicide. It is meaningless, because after death a suicide will be born again and life with its suffering will continue. You can get away from suffering only by leaving the “circle of existence” and achieving nirvana. Buddhism shows the path to liberation from the torment of reincarnation. Immortality in Buddhism is not only the denial of death, but also the denial of life. And yet, going to Nirvana, which is a state of eternal peace, tranquility and bliss, in a certain respect is immortality.
The doctrine of merging with the deity does not mean the immortality of the individual, and the idealistic teaching also does not mean the immortality of the individual, but only the immortality of impersonal ideas and values. Only the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the whole person answers the question posed, but many difficulties are associated with it.
There are various concepts of immortality: biological, gerontological, psychological, religious, philosophical, etc. Let's look at some of them.
Many understand immortality gerontologically, as the extension of life. However, immortality is determined not by the number of years lived, not by the extensiveness of life, but by its quality, intensity, and significance for a person and society.
Biologically, genetically, immortality is understood as inheritance in the genes of offspring: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. This type of immortality is characteristic of most people; France said about it, “Life is short, but a person experiences it again in his children.” Along with the transmission of anatomical and physiological characteristics, people pass on their abilities to their descendants in the form of inclinations, which develop into abilities under favorable conditions.
The third type of immortality is the cosmization of the body and soul of the deceased, their entry into the so-called cosmic “body,” their disintegration into individual particles included in the eternal cycle of matter. People who believe in this hope that someday these disparate particles will combine in the same way as they were in his body, which will lead to his real bodily rebirth.
The fourth path to immortality is associated with the results of human creativity in life. The creation of an outstanding work of literature or art, scientific discoveries, manifestations of military leadership in a military battle that determined victory in the war, the statesmanship of a politician, an unsurpassed sports record, and extraordinary performing arts remain forever in the people's memory, socially inherited in successive generations.
Let us express the moral paradox of life and death in the ethical imperative: treat the living as if you were dying, treat the dead as if you were alive, that is, always remember death as the mystery of life, and in both life and death always affirm eternal life .
A person is immortal and eternal as a spiritual being only when he feels like a spiritual being, when the spirit and spirituality that control his natural, bodily elements prevail in him. Immortality is won by the individual and is a struggle for the individual.
Categories of dialectics- the most general concepts that philosophy operates to reveal the essence of dialectical problems. The categories of dialectics reflect universal and essential connections, aspects of objective reality. Categories are products of the cognitive and practical activity of mankind. The main categories of dialectics include:
Individual, special, universal;
Cause and investigation;
Necessity and chance;
Possibility and reality;
Essence and phenomenon;
Structure, form and content.
Category "special" performs a distinguishing function in relation to different classes of objects: when comparing different classes of objects, a person notices that what is common to one class is not the same for another class.
Categories "cause and investigation" reflect the universal conditionality of phenomena. A cause is something that causes or generates another phenomenon (effect), preceding it. It is important to distinguish between cause and conditions: although conditions influence the effect, they, unlike the cause, do not give rise to the effect. An effect is the cause of another phenomenon, resulting in complex cause-and-effect chains. The same cause can lead to different consequences, and vice versa, the same effect can be caused by different reasons (for example, a fire can be the result of a lightning strike, friction of a match, short circuit of electrical wiring).
Category "accident" reflects that something that has the cause of its existence in another phenomenon, in a combination of external circumstances, is accidental. An emerging necessity can initially be expressed in the form of random manifestations, making its way through a mass of accidents as a tendency, since processes in nature are probabilistic in nature. Chance is a form of manifestation and addition of necessity. An accident can become a necessity over time, and vice versa, a necessity in the process of development can become an accident.
The categories “possibility” and “reality” characterize the development process. Opportunity- this is a potentially realizable, but not yet realized (although largely foreseeable by man) existence, which is realized under certain conditions. Reality is a realized possibility, a really existing being.
A person’s achievement of the level of knowledge of the necessary properties and connections, as well as possible subsequent changes, is a higher level of knowledge of the world than the knowledge of causal relationships. Here they already penetrate into the essence of an object, a phenomenon.
Content- the totality of all elements and processes of an object or phenomenon. The content is the leading side in relation to the form of the object. Content represents the more mobile side, whereas form (method, type, nature of the relationships of elements) more stable, conservative. Within certain limits, the form can “withstand” partial, local changes in content. And only when changes in content go beyond local ones, then they collectively lead to a change in form, i.e. way of organizing content. This reveals both the leading role of content and the activity of form. The same content can appear in different forms, and the form can lag behind the content in its development or be ahead of it.
Category "phenomenon" means the external manifestation of the essence of an object in certain external circumstances, in relationships with environmental conditions. Therefore, the phenomenon is richer than the essence. But the essence is deeper than the appearance. Phenomenon and essence are interconnected, but do not coincide. Therefore, human cognition moves from appearance to cognition of essence.
Principles of dialectics
The main principles of dialectics are:
The principle of universal connection;
Development principle;
Systematic principle;
The principle of causality;
The principle of historicism.
Universal connection means the integrity of the surrounding world, its internal unity, interconnectedness, interdependence of all its components, objects, phenomena, processes. Connections can be:
External and internal;
Direct and indirect;
Genetic and functional;
Spatial and temporal;
Random and natural.
The most common type of communication is external and internal. Example: internal connections of the human body as a biological system, external connections of a person as an element of a social system.
Essential connections are stable, deep connections that determine the specifics of a given phenomenon. Regular connections - laws characterize the necessary connection of phenomena, the course of their development.
Universality of the development principle is the fundamental basis of dialectics. Development is presented not as a purely quantitative change, but as the self-development of matter, and the reason for development lies in the interaction of internal opposites inherent in any thing, object, phenomenon. Development as a movement from old to new includes both progress (movement from lower to higher, more perfect) and elements of regression. Not all Western researchers accept dialectics in philosophy. Some, following the Hegelian tradition of objective idealism, which reduced development to movement in the sphere of concepts, deny objective dialectics, the dialectics of the external world (Marcuse), others argue that the laws and categories of dialectics are valid only in relation to nature, but not to society (Mercier, Brzezinski and etc.)
Systematicity means that numerous connections in the surrounding world do not exist chaotically, but are ordered. These connections form an integral system in which they are arranged in a hierarchical order. Thanks to this, the surrounding world has internal expediency.
Causality- the presence of such connections where one gives rise to another. Objects, phenomena, processes of the surrounding world are caused by something, that is, they have either an external or internal cause. The cause, in turn, gives rise to the effect, and the relationships in general are called cause-and-effect.
Historicism implies two aspects of the surrounding world:
Eternity, indestructibility of history, the world;
Its existence and development over time.
Only in the system of their interrelations can categories, principles and laws of dialectics approximately adequately reflect the most general and essential aspects of multifaceted reality in its endless development.
Introduction
1. Buddhism and Brahmanism about the meaning of life
2. Z. Freud on the meaning of human life
3. Existentialist philosophers on the meaning of human life
4. Russian philosophers about the meaning of life
Bibliography
Introduction
What is a person? What is human nature? What is the drama of human relationships and human existence? What does the meaning of human life depend on? These kinds of questions have interested people for a long time. Man is a unique creation of the Universe. Neither modern science, nor philosophy, nor religion can fully reveal the mystery of man. Philosophers come to the conclusion that human nature manifests itself in various qualities (reasonableness, humanity, kindness, ability to love, etc.), but one of them is the main one. To identify this trait means to comprehend the essence and task of his life. Is there any meaning in human life at all? Philosophers answer these questions in different ways. Much depends on the general ideological attitude of a particular era, that is, on what a given philosophical or religious movement puts forward as the highest value.
When thinking about a person, people are limited by the level of natural scientific knowledge of their time, and by the conditions of the historical or everyday situation, and by their views on the world.
The problem of man has always been at the center of philosophical research; no matter what problems philosophy deals with, man has always been the most important problem for it.
The purpose of writing an essay is to consider the problem of the meaning of human life, based on the views of thinkers of different eras and directions.
1. Buddhism and Brahmanism about the meaning of life
The creators of the Upanishads, one of the greatest literary achievements of mankind, raise many questions about the Universe, about man. Where did he come from and where is he going? Is there any meaning in this life or not? How is a person connected with Eternity? After all, only through this connection does a person join true life.
The Brahmin sages answered this question simply: our death is in ignorance. Man only needs to realize how deeply rooted he is in the Immortal. Blessed is he who discovers the universal Spirit within himself. Only through his “I” can a person approach the world “Atman”. Earthly desires were an obstacle to true knowledge. Only those who renounced everything that connected him with life and the world around him could become immortal.
But not all people who were looking for the meaning of life were ready to become ascetics, and it is natural that the Brahmanical teaching did not go beyond the monasteries.
A characteristic feature of Buddhism is its ethical and practical orientation. From the very beginning, Buddhism opposed not only the significance of external forms of religious life and, above all, ritualism, but also against abstract dogmatic quests, which were hostile, in particular, to the Brahmanic-Vedic tradition. The problem of the existence of the individual was put forward as a central problem in Buddhism. The core of Buddhism is the Buddha's preaching of the Four Noble Truths. All the constructions of Buddhism are devoted to the explanation and development of these provisions and, in particular, to the idea of personal autonomy contained in them.
Suffering and liberation are presented in Buddhism as different states of a single being: suffering is the state of being of the manifested, liberation is the state of the unmanifested.
Buddhism imagines liberation primarily as the destruction of desires, or more precisely, the extinguishing of their passion. The Buddhist principle of the so-called middle (middle) path recommends avoiding extremes - both the attraction to sensual pleasure and the complete suppression of this attraction. In the moral and emotional sphere, the dominant concept in Buddhism is tolerance, relativity, from the standpoint of which moral precepts are not mandatory and can be violated.
2. Freud on the meaning of human life
In the twentieth century, the development of philosophical and philosophical-sociological problems of man acquired new intensity and developed in many directions: existentialism, Freudianism, neo-Freudianism, philosophical anthropology.
Having discovered the important role of the unconscious in the life of both an individual and the whole society, Freudianism made it possible to present a comprehensive picture of human social life on many levels.
S. Freud wrote: “The question of the meaning of human life has been raised countless times; this question has never been answered satisfactorily, and it is possible that such a question has never been commanded. Some of the questioners added: if it turned out that life had no meaning, then it would lose all value for them, but these threats do not change anything. They don’t talk about the meaning of life for animals, except in connection with their purpose to serve people. But this interpretation is not valid, since man does not know what to do with many animals, except for the fact that he describes, classifies and studies them, and even then many species of animals have escaped such use, since they lived and became extinct before man saw them. And again, only religion undertakes to answer the question about the purpose of life.
What is the meaning and purpose of people's lives, if judged on the basis of their own behavior: what do people demand from life and what do they strive to achieve in it?
It is difficult to make a mistake when answering this question: people strive for happiness, they want to become and remain happy. This desire has two sides, positive and negative goals: the absence of pain and displeasure, on the one hand, the experience of strong feelings of pleasure, on the other. In the narrow sense of the word, “happiness” means only the latter. In accordance with this dual goal, human activity proceeds in two directions, depending on which of the goals - primarily or even exclusively - it seeks to realize.
Thus, as we see, it is simply determined by the program of the pleasure principle. This principle dominates the activity of the mental apparatus from the very beginning; its purposefulness is beyond any doubt, and at the same time its program puts man in a hostile relationship with the whole world, both with the microcosm and the macrocosm. ….Reflection tells us that to solve this problem we can try to follow a variety of paths; all these paths were recommended by various schools of worldly wisdom and were traveled by people.
Religion complicates this problem of choice and adaptation because it imposes on everyone the same path to happiness and to protection from suffering. Its technique consists in belittling the value of life and in a chimerical distortion of the picture of the real world, which presupposes preliminary intimidation of the intellect. At this price, through the forcible consolidation of mental infantilism and inclusion in the system of mass madness, religion manages to save many people from individual neurosis. But hardly more; as already said, many paths available to a person lead to happiness, although none of them leads to the goal for sure. Religion cannot fulfill its promises either. When the believer is finally forced to refer to the “mysterious ways of the Lord,” he only acknowledges that in his suffering, as the last consolation and source of pleasure, only unconditional submission remains to him. But if he is already ready for this, then he could probably bypass the roundabout paths.”
3. Existentialist philosophers on the meaning of human life
The philosophy of existence, or existential philosophy, refers to a philosophical movement that arose primarily around 1930 in Germany and has since continued to develop in various forms and then spread beyond Germany. The unity of this, in turn, internally very diverse, movement consisted in a return to the great Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who only in these years was truly discovered and gained significant influence. The concept of existential existence formed by him denotes the general starting point of the existential philosophy that then received its name.
This philosophical movement is best understood as a radicalization of the original emergence of the philosophy of life, as it was embodied at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, most notably by Nietzsche. The task posed by the philosophy of life - to understand human life, excluding all external attitudes, directly from it itself - in turn, is an expression of a completely definite conflict and a fundamentally new beginning in philosophy. The philosophy of life turns against any universal systematics and against any soaring metaphysical speculation that believes in the possibility of liberation from connection with the particular location of the philosophizer, and discovers human life as that ultimate connecting point where all philosophical knowledge is rooted, as well as in general all human achievements, points , to which they must always be inversely related. In other words, this philosophy denies the kingdom of the spirit that rests within itself, its own essence and the purpose in itself of the great spheres of culture: art, science, etc., and tries to understand them based on life, where they came from and where they must embody a completely definite result.
Perceiving the world around him as hostile, Camus understood that the meaning of human life is not destruction, but maintaining peace: “Every generation is sure that it is they who are called upon to remake the world. Mine, however. already knows. that he cannot change this world. But his task may actually be even greater. It is to prevent the world from perishing.”
Viktor Frankl tried to solve the problem of existential vacuum from the point of view of classical psychology:
“Meaning must be found, but cannot be created. You can create either subjective meaning, a simple feeling of meaning, or nonsense. Thus, it is also clear that a person who is no longer able to find meaning in his life, as well as invent it, running away from the feeling of loss of meaning, creates either nonsense or subjective meaning...”
Meaning not only must, but can also be found, and in the search for meaning a person is guided by his conscience. In a word, conscience is an organ of meaning. It can be defined as the ability to discover the unique and unique meaning that lies in any situation.
Conscience is one of the specifically human manifestations, and even more than specifically human, for it is an integral part of the conditions of human existence, and its work is subordinated to the main distinctive characteristic of human existence - its finitude. Conscience, however, can also disorient a person. Moreover, until the last moment, until the last breath, a person does not know whether he has really realized the meaning of his life or only believes that this meaning has been realized. After Peter Wust, uncertainty and risk merged in our minds. Even if conscience keeps a person in uncertainty as to whether he has comprehended the meaning of his life, such uncertainty does not free him from the risk of obeying his conscience or at least listening to its voice.
By realizing meaning, a person realizes himself. By realizing the meaning contained in suffering, we realize the most human in a person. We gain maturity, we grow, we outgrow ourselves. It is where we are helpless and hopeless, unable to change the situation, that is where we are called, where we feel the need to change ourselves.”
4.Russian philosophers about the meaning of life
One of the characteristic features of Russian philosophy of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries is also attention to man and anthropocentrism. Two directions are clearly distinguished here: materialistic and idealistic, secular and religious. The materialist direction is represented by revolutionary democrats and, above all, V.G. Belinsky and N.G. Chernyshevsky, the idealist direction is associated with the names of V. Solovyov, N.A. Berdyaev and a number of other thinkers.
V.S. Solovyov in his work “The moral meaning of life in its preliminary concept” examines another aspect of this eternal question - the moral one. He's writing:
“Does our life have any meaning at all? If so, does it have a moral character, is it rooted in the moral realm? And if so, what does it consist of, what is its true and complete definition? It is impossible to avoid these issues regarding which there is no agreement in modern consciousness. Some deny any meaning to life, others believe that the meaning of life has nothing to do with morality, that it does not at all depend on our proper or good relationships towards God, towards people and towards the whole world; others, finally, recognizing the importance of moral norms for life, give them very different definitions, entering into a dispute among themselves that requires analysis and resolution.
The moral meaning of life is initially and finally determined by the good itself, accessible to us internally through our conscience and reason, since these internal forms of good are liberated by moral achievement from slavery to passions and from the limitations of personal and collective self-love.”
Vladimir Solovyov’s closest friend and follower, Prince E.N. Trubetskoy, also warned about the enormous danger of lack of spirituality and proposed creating the eternal:
“...The second coming of Christ, as an act of the final unification of two natures in all of humanity and in the entire cosmos, is not only a Divine action and not only the greatest miracle of God, but at the same time a manifestation of the highest energy of human nature.
Christ will not come until humanity is ripe to receive Him. And to mature for humanity precisely means to discover the highest rise of energy in the search for God and in the desire for Him. This is not some external, extraneous act of divine magic, but a two-sided and at the same time final self-determination of the creativity of the Divine and human freedom.
It is obvious that such an end of the world can be prepared not by passive expectation on the part of man, but by the highest tension of his active love for God, and therefore by the extreme tension of human struggle against the dark forces of Satan.”
Russian philosopher S.L. Frank continued his fundamental research into ideological problems in already established Russian philosophy. Frank was a philosopher who tried to explain the nature of the human soul and human knowledge.
Frank's philosophical teaching was highly religious. He was one of those philosophers of the 20th century who, in the process of searching for a worldview of the highest spirituality, came to the conclusion that this is Christianity, expressing universal spiritual values and the true essence of spirituality. Frank himself said: “I am not a theologian, I am a philosopher.”
Frank called his concept: “metaphysical (philosophical) realism.” His philosophy is a realistic philosophy of spirituality, raising the problem of man high and aiming at achieving the spiritual unity of all mankind.
Does life have meaning at all, and if so, what kind of meaning? What is a sense of life? Or is life simply nonsense, a meaningless, worthless process of the natural birth, flowering, maturation, withering and death of a person, like any other organic being?
These are the questions Frank asked in his book The Meaning of Human Life.
“These, as they usually say, “damned” questions, or rather, this single question “about the meaning of life” excites and torments in the depths of the soul of every person. This question is not a “theoretical question”, not a subject of idle mental games; this question is a question of life itself, it is just as terrible, and, in fact, even much more terrible than, in dire need, the question of a piece of bread to satisfy hunger. Truly, this is a question of bread that would nourish us and water that would quench our thirst. Chekhov describes a man who, all his life living with everyday interests in a provincial town, like all other people, lied and pretended, “played a role” in “society,” was busy with “affairs,” immersed in petty intrigues and worries - and suddenly, unexpectedly , one night, wakes up with a heavy heartbeat and in a cold sweat. What's happened? Something terrible happened - life has passed and there was no life, because there was and is no meaning in it! „
Frank first of all tried to think about what it means to find the meaning of life, what meaning do people put into this concept and under what conditions would they consider it realized?
By “meaning” the philosopher means approximately the same thing as “reasonableness”. “Reasonable” means everything that is expedient, everything that correctly leads to a goal or helps to achieve it. Reasonable behavior is that which is consistent with the set goal and leads to its implementation; reasonable or meaningful use of the means that helps us achieve the goal. But all this is only relatively reasonable - precisely on the condition that the goal itself is undeniably reasonable or meaningful, the author clarifies, what does “reasonable goal” mean? the philosopher asks. A means is reasonable when it leads to an end. But the goal must be genuine. But what does this mean and how is it possible? The goal or life as a whole no longer has any purpose outside of itself - life is given for the sake of life, or it must be admitted that the very statement about the meaning of life is illegal, that this question is one of those that cannot find a solution simply because of its own internal absurdity . The question of the “meaning” of something always has a relative meaning; it presupposes the “meaning” for something, the expediency of achieving a certain goal. Life as a whole has no purpose, and therefore the question of “meaning” cannot be raised, the philosopher decides.
Further, Frank writes: “...that our life, being in the world and being aware of this fact, is not at all an “end in itself” for us. It cannot be an end in itself, firstly, because, in general, suffering and burdens prevail in it over joys and pleasures and, despite all the strength of the animal instinct of self-preservation, we often wonder why we should pull this heavy burden. But regardless of this, it cannot be an end in itself because life, in its very essence, is not motionless abiding in oneself, self-sufficient peace, but doing something or striving for something; We experience the moment in which we are free from any activity or aspiration as a painfully melancholy state of emptiness and dissatisfaction. We cannot live for life; we always - whether we want it or not - live for something. But only in most cases this “something”, being the goal towards which we strive, in its content is in turn a means, and, moreover, a means for preserving life. This results in that painful vicious circle, which most acutely makes us feel the meaninglessness of life and gives rise to longing for its comprehension: we live in order to work on something, strive for something, and we work, care and strive in order to live . And, exhausted by this circling in the squirrel wheel, we are looking for the “meaning of life” - we are looking for aspirations and deeds that would not be aimed at simply preserving life, and life that would not be spent on the hard work of preserving it. "
So what is its content, and, above all, under what conditions can a person recognize the final goal as “reasonable”?
….“To be meaningful, our life - contrary to the assurances of fans of “life for the sake of life” and in accordance with the clear demand of our soul - must be serving the highest and absolute good." And at the same time, a person must also continuously be rationally aware of all this relationship to the highest good. According to Frank, the sought-after “meaning of life” lies in this unity of life and Truth.
“So life becomes meaningful because it freely and consciously serves the absolute and highest good, which is the eternal life, life-giving human life, as its eternal basis and true completion, is at the same time the absolute truth, the light of reason, penetrating and illuminating human life. Our life is meaningful because it is a reasonable path to a goal, or a path to a reasonable, higher goal, otherwise it is a meaningless wandering. But such a true path for our life can only be that which at the same time is both life and Truth.
And now we can briefly summarize our thoughts. For life to have meaning, two conditions are necessary: existence of God and our own participation in Him, achievability for us life in God, or divine life. It is necessary, first of all, that, despite all the meaninglessness of world life, there should be a general condition for its meaningfulness, so that its final, highest and absolute basis should not be a blind chance, not muddy, throwing everything out for a moment and absorbing everything again in the chaotic flow of time, not the darkness of ignorance, and God is like an eternal stronghold, eternal life, absolute good and all-encompassing light of reason. And it is necessary, secondly, that we ourselves, despite all our powerlessness, despite the blindness and destructiveness of our passions, the randomness and short-term nature of our lives, should be not only “creations” of God, not only earthenware that a potter sculpts according to his will , and not even only “slaves” of God, fulfilling His will involuntarily and only for Him, but also free participants and participants in the divine life itself, so that while serving Him, we in this service do not extinguish and exhaust our own life, but, on the contrary, it was affirmed, enriched and enlightened. This service must be the true daily bread and the true water that quenches us. Moreover: only in this case we for ourselves we find the meaning of life if, by serving Him, we, as sons and heirs of the householder, serve in our own business, if His life, light, eternity and bliss can become ours, if our life can become divine, and we ourselves can become " gods", "to deify"
Ludwig Semenovich sees a practical path in comprehending meaning in religious, internal work, prayer, ascetic struggle with oneself, and this is precisely the main work of human life, inconspicuous for him, “the only true productive human work with the help of which we effectively realize the meaning of life and in through the power of which something significant actually happens in the world, namely the revival of its innermost fabric, the dispersal of the forces of evil and the filling of the world with the forces of good. This matter - a truly metaphysical matter - is possible at all only because it is not at all a simple human matter. Here only the work of preparing the soil belongs to man, while the growth is accomplished by God himself. This is a metaphysical, Divine-human process in which only man participates, and that is why in it the affirmation of human life in its true meaning can be realized.”
Conclusion
Having examined the views of outstanding philosophers and sages of mankind, we see that the problem of the meaning of human existence has always been at the center of philosophical research.
Of course, we see that philosophers were limited by the level of knowledge and tasks of the society in which they lived.
So in Ancient China, for Lao Tzu, the main thing for a person is to live according to the laws of the Supreme Principle (Tao), and the sage rejects everything that connects a person with earthly life. Confucius, on the contrary, was occupied with practical earthly tasks and man interests him not in himself, but as part of a hierarchy where he occupies a certain place.
The sages of Ancient India argued that a person needs to discover the all-universal Spirit; only through his “I” can a person approach and merge with the world “Atman”.
Ancient philosophy shaped the main Western European approaches to identifying man as a separate and special philosophical problem and defined him as an independent value and recognized his right to activity and initiative in front of the objective world order.
Christianity was the next and to date the main religious teaching that formed a new meaning of human existence, recognizing a person as a person, looking at man as the earthly incarnation of God and at God as the highest love for people. Christianity has become a religion about how a person can live, about the meaning of human existence, about conscience, duty, honor.
The philosophy of the New Age, formed under the influence of the development of capitalist relations and the flourishing of sciences, primarily mechanics, physics, and mathematics, opened the way to a rational interpretation of human essence and considered man from physiological and pragmatic positions.
The human sciences that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century (psychology, sociology, biological theory of evolution) made the previous philosophical image devoid of experimental foundations and practical value.
Having discovered the important role of the unconscious in the life of both an individual and the whole society, Freud showed his ways of solving both personal and social problems of human life.
Existential philosophy is understood as a radicalization of the original statement of the philosophy of life, as it was embodied at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, primarily by Nietzsche. The task posed by the philosophy of life is to understand human life, excluding all external attitudes, directly from itself.
One of the characteristic features of Russian philosophy of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries is also attention to man and anthropocentrism. And the main direction of which was spiritual.
For the Russian philosopher Frank .... “To be meaningful, our life - contrary to the assurances of fans of “life for life” and in accordance with the obvious demand of our soul - must be serving the highest and absolute good."(14) And at the same time, a person must also continuously be rationally aware of all this relationship to the highest good. According to Frank, the sought-after “meaning of life” lies in this unity of life and Truth.
Summing up a brief overview of mankind’s religious and philosophical quest for the meaning of life, we see that throughout its history humanity has come closer to understanding man’s closeness to a higher spiritual principle. And the leading thinkers of all times - from the Brahmans to modern philosophers - understood that man could realize his mission only in serving eternal truths, spiritual work on his soul, the world around him and ultimately merging with his Creator - merging “the perishable with the incorruptible.”
Bibliography
1 person. Thinkers past and present on his life, death and immortality. The ancient world - the Age of Enlightenment. (Editorial committee: I.T. Frolov et al.; compiled by P.S. Gurevich. - M. Politizdat, 1991.
2. Groves K. P. The Origin of Modern Man. 1996. No. 3.
3. Z. Freud. Dissatisfaction with the culture. Favorites. London, 1969.
4. Berdyaev N. A. The meaning of creativity. M., 1993.
5. Soloviev V.S. The moral meaning of life in its preliminary concept. Collected works of Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov.
The main question that people have asked at all times is: “What is the meaning of human life?” It arises because you want to know where a person came from, who he was created for, why he exists and what he should achieve in the end. The meaning of life has always interested the minds of the luminaries of philosophy. However, psychologists now note the importance of this question, to which an answer must be found.
The meaning of life allows a person to understand his place. Understanding where an individual came from, what he must live for, and what he must ultimately achieve, a person knows his place, which helps him decide, calm down, and even begin to live in accordance with his destiny.
We can say what allows a person to become happy. After all, until you know what to live for, you don’t know what to do and how to please yourself in order to feel a sense of satisfaction.
The question about the meaning of life arises in a person’s head only when he is a little lost, faced with stress or frightening situations. When a person is lost, he begins to think about the meaning of his existence. And when he doesn’t find it, then various negative thoughts arise (for example, suicidal) and the personality changes (character qualities change).
What is the meaning of human life?
The online magazine site determines the meaning of a person’s life in what he lives for. This is what he wakes up for every morning, gets out of bed, begins to act, overcomes difficulties, eliminates mistakes, learns, etc. In all centuries, they have tried to find the answer to the question of what is the meaning of life. However, to date the answer has not been found.
We can say that each person has his own meaning in life, which depends on his psychology, character traits and lifestyle. The most important thing is that social conditions and the world as a whole do not prevent a person from realizing his values. It is very difficult to live happily and in accordance with your purpose when circumstances and surrounding conditions interfere with your self-realization in various ways. That is why the meaning of life must to some extent correspond to the time in which a person lives.
Determine for yourself how you want to live, and follow this path that will make you happy. This is the meaning of life - to give a person the opportunity to choose their own path and be the master of their own destiny.
Philosophers note that the meaning of life for a person becomes what he attaches important and significant meaning. It could be some kind of thing, a gift from a loved one, money, children, etc. That is why the meaning of life is different for everyone - different things, people and phenomena are important to each person, on which he is ready to spend his time and energy.
Purpose and meaning of life
At each stage of life, a person’s meanings in life change, and, accordingly, the goals on which he spends his energy change. For example, in childhood, a child considered his meaning in life to have as many toys as possible, but in adulthood, goals may change, for example, to start a family.
It should be noted that each direction has its own understanding of what a person’s meaning of life is. For example, religion believes that the meaning of life should be contemplation, knowledge of oneself and God. The institution of marriage promotes the creation of a family and the birth of children, to whom one should devote all one’s time. Fashion trends dictate the idea that a person should always and everywhere look stylish and beautiful, which determines his meaning in life.
In every area, at every stage of life, the meaning of a person’s life changes. From this we draw conclusions:
- You should not be upset because you used to strive for certain goals, but now they have become uninteresting to you. Time has passed and you see significance in something else.
- Don't panic that you've lost the meaning of life. Perhaps you are at a stage of rethinking, when one meaning is replaced by another.
Some people create families, others create families, others go in for sports, others work and earn money. Everyone lives in accordance with what he has made for himself the meaning of life. And if that doesn't make him happy, then he's wrong. You should reconsider your views in order to take the path of the true meaning of life.
The meaning of life and human purpose
Why is it still very important to understand the meaning of human life? When he answers this question, everything becomes clear to him. What exactly? How to move on with your life. The meaning of life is the goal, the final destination, the significance of something. And purpose is a way of being, of life, which a person will adhere to in order to move towards his meaning in life.
We can say that the presence of meaning in life determines the path that a person will follow. What will he do? What views should you follow? What to strive for? All this is determined by the meaning of life that a person assigns for himself.
Bottom line
What is the meaning of life? This question becomes relevant when a person is lost in life. He is depressed, has lost something valuable to himself, is bored and does not know where to go next. It is the answer to the question about the meaning of life that allows a person to decide what to do next, what to strive for, what goals to achieve. And without all this, he becomes a “worm” that simply does not know where to crawl.
There really is no meaning to life. Man is an object that forms part of one whole called the “Universe”. A person himself is only part of a whole chain that maintains its balance. For the Universe, humanity is a necessary element of its existence. This only says that people are necessary for the Universe, otherwise they simply would not exist. Therefore, at the level of instincts, a person has mechanisms that will encourage him to maintain his existence: fear of death, hunger, the desire to reproduce, etc.
The meaning of life does not exist. A person is simply given a certain period of time that he must live. And what he will do during this period no longer matters. He can lie and do nothing, or he can work all day long - all this does not matter, since the only thing that is important to the Universe is that the person is alive for some time.
People come up with their own meanings in life. More precisely, each person is allocated a specific period of time and given the right to decide how exactly he will live it. The meaning of every person’s life lies in what he decides for himself: how he will live, what he will value and what he will be passionate about. People entertain themselves while they live. And how exactly they will do this is their right to decide, since it has no meaning for the entire Universe.
People themselves come up with the meanings of life in order to somehow fill the period of time that they must live. Therefore, the meaning of life is to find entertainment for yourself on which you will spend your time and energy. What exactly you choose is up to you. But in any case, it will be your choice, for which you will be responsible to yourself.
