The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity

The Journal of Ethics 23 (2):223-238 (2019)
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Abstract

We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only transient phenomena in a vast universe. Our lives are more or less meaningful in this sense due to the difference in value for ourselves and others we intentionally create while leading them. These inequalities are morally unjustifiable because they are ultimately due to factors beyond our responsibility and control. But from the point of view of eternity these differences in meaningfulness and value dwindle to insignificance, and this offers some consolation for the unjustifiable inequalities.

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Ingmar Persson
Oxford University

Citations of this work

Meaning and Anti-Meaning in Life and What Happens After We Die.Sven Nyholm - 2021 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 90:11-31.
The Ordinary Meaningful Life.Joshua Glasgow - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (3):408-425.
The Individuality of Meaning in Life.Roland Kipke - forthcoming - European Journal of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Thinking, Fast and Slow.Daniel Kahneman - 2011 - New York: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The View From Nowhere.Thomas Nagel - 1986 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Tractatus logico-philosophicus.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1922 - Filosoficky Casopis 52:336-341.
Brainstorms.Daniel Dennett - 1978 - Philosophy of Science 47 (2):326-327.

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