What is it that makes lives meaningful? In this impressive and important book, Thaddeus Metz criticizes the replies already found in the literature and aims to propose a new, better reply of his own. Although this is clearly not the main purpose of the book, his thorough and fair consideration of other accounts also provides an excellent critical survey of analytic work in the field. He consciously limits his discussion to the analytic Anglo-American literature on meaning in life, barely considering the ‘continental’ works on the topic, although the views of authors such as Camus and Sartre are occasionally discussed.
In the introduction (chapter 1) and in part I (chapters 2–4), Metz clarifies the question, discusses his methodology, presents some general characteristics of meaningfulness, and anticipates part of his own account. While most accounts search for one necessary and sufficient condition for the concept of meaningfulness, Metz claims that it would be more fruitful to work with a ‘family resemblance’ model. He argues that talk of ‘meaningfulness’ exhibits at least in part a non-instrumental value and is exemplified by the good, the true, and the beautiful, broadly conceived (thus, ‘the beautiful’ also covers, for him, Dürer's aesthetic representation of his 63-year-old mother, who is not herself beautiful). Meaningfulness also analytically has much to do with purposiveness beyond one's own pleasure, transcendence of one's animal nature, and conditions worthy of great pride or admiration. Metz carefully distinguishes meaningfulness from both happiness and rightness (although both of these may well enhance meaningfulness) and points out that the book focuses on individual human lives or parts thereof (rather than, say, the human race at large or the cosmos) as bearers of meaning. Metz distinguishes between ‘pure whole lifers’ (who take only entire lives to be bearers of meaning), ‘pure part-lifers’ (who take only parts of lives, such as performances or activities, to be bearers of meaning), and those who hold a mixed view, according to which both whole lives and parts thereof are capable of exhibiting meaning; Metz himself argues for the mixed view.
Before presenting his own theory of what makes a life meaningful, Metz evaluates important competitors. In part II (chapters 5–8), he critically examines supernaturalism, the view that some relationship with the spiritual realm is a necessary condition for having a meaningful life. While most supernaturalist theories emphasize both God and immortal souls as necessary for meaningfulness, Metz examines each condition separately, inspecting arguments first for the claim that people's lives can be meaningful only if they have a certain relationship with God, and then for the claim that lives can be meaningful only if there are immortal souls, even if God does not exist (as can be held, for example, in versions of a karma theory). Metz considers many arguments for both the former and the latter, carefully distinguishing different types and subtypes, pointing out the strongest versions and, in many cases, suggesting even stronger reconstructions, to make them invulnerable to previous criticisms before advancing to criticize those as well.
Supernaturalists may attempt, however, to reply to some of Metz's criticisms. For example, when discussing God-centred theories, Metz mentions the supernaturalist claim that being created by God for a reason is the only way our lives can avoid being contingent. Metz presents several interesting criticisms of this claim, one of which is that if being created by God were sufficient to make one's life meaningful then everyone's life would be meaningful and, moreover, meaningful to the same degree, which clashes with our intuition that some lives are not meaningful at all and others are meaningful to varying degrees (p. 84). But a supernaturalist might reply that she holds being created by God for a purpose, and thus avoiding contingency, to be only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for meaningfulness, which is consistent with the meaninglessness of some people's lives and the variety in the degree of meaningfulness of the lives of others.
Likewise, Metz elaborates on the supernaturalist argument that God's purpose is the only possible source of an objective morality, without which our lives would be meaningless. He chooses to argue here against John Cottingham's detailed and powerful version of this argument. He replies that in order for Cottingham's argument to work the evidence for God's existence must be of at least the same strength as the evidence for the objectivity of morality, while Cottingham accepts that evidence for the former is weaker than that for the latter (pp. 88–90). Instead of a God-based morality Metz explicates a type of a naturalist moral realism (consciously influenced by, among others, Richard Boyd's, David Brink's, and Alan Gilbert's meta-ethical views). Metz presents interesting and strong argumentation for his version of a naturalistic moral realism (pp. 91–93), but it is not clear that his naturalistic account is invulnerable to the same criticism he advanced against Cottingham's theistic account. For Metz's argument to work the evidence for his naturalistic moral realism must be of at least the same strength as the evidence for the objectivity of morality, while many might hold that in his account, too, the evidence of the former is still weaker than that for the latter.
After rejecting many specific arguments for supernaturalism, Metz does accept that life could plausibly become more meaningful by relating to God (if He exists) through respect, love, communion, etc. (pp. 120–122), but eventually rejects supernaturalism altogether with an argument that exhibits a structure similar to that presented above. Supernaturalism should be rejected because we do not know whether anything spiritual exists, while we do know that meaningfulness exists (pp. 145–146). Moreover, assume that there is neither God nor souls. Would we not still take the works and lives of, say, Mother Teresa, Dostoyevsky, Einstein, and Darwin to be meaningful? Metz treats this as a rhetorical question: of course such lives are meaningful, and it would be wrong to see them as being of no greater worth than the existence of rocks or plants, as Tolstoy or Craig claim (pp. 144–145).
But supernaturalists may reply that they know that God exists with much more certainty than that with which they know that meaningfulness exists, and that they would certainly not take the lives of Mother Teresa, Dostoyevsky, Einstein, etc. to be meaningful if there were neither God nor soul. Mother Teresa and Dostoyevsky themselves would probably hold this view as regards their own lives, and many find Tolstoy's famous assertion – that notwithstanding his literary achievement he found his life meaningless – to be intuitive and plausible. Metz presents typical atheist intuitions, according to which life can be meaningful without God. However, many theists have the opposite intuition that, if there is no God to love and direct them, or in whose grace they can find solace or bliss, their lives are meaningless irrespective of any achievements they might accomplish. Moreover, supernaturalists need not accept the rather radical and implausible claims of Tolstoy and Craig that if there is no God their existence is similar to that of rocks or plants; supernaturalists may hold the more moderate and plausible view that the value of their lives is much higher than that of the existence of rocks or plants but is still – if there is no God – insufficient for a meaningful life. Thus, supernaturalists might suggest that Metz's argument, aiming to prove a naturalist conclusion, is based not on neutral presuppositions held by both naturalists and supernaturalists but rather on presuppositions already tilted towards his naturalist conclusion.
After rejecting supernaturalism in part II, Metz proceeds in part III to consider naturalism, distinguishing between subjectivist (chapter 9) and objectivist (chapters 10–12) accounts. Four types of subjectivism are discerned in chapter 9, all of which Metz rejects because of their deep counterintuitiveness: they entail that we should accept urinating in the snow or eating excrement as meaningful, and that is absurd. Chapters 10 and 11 analyse existing objectivist accounts, and here too, as in earlier chapters, Metz discusses the accounts with care and precision, showing both weaknesses and strengths, suggesting reconstructions and then proceeding to show why those reconstructions are still problematic. In chapter 12 Metz proceeds to present his own objectivist, naturalist account. He is very clear that this is not the last word on the topic. He believes that his account, too, has its own difficulties and that future work in the field will have to develop it further. However, he takes his account to be stronger than all previous ones. I agree; Metz's account supersedes previous ones and significantly advances the discussion on meaning in life. For reasons of space I cannot describe and discuss all the features of this rich account here; by way of helping to develop the discussion further I will focus on one difficulty that I think future work will have to address.
For Metz, meaningful activities are those in which one orients one's rationality (broadly conceived) towards what he calls fundamental conditions, that is, conditions largely responsible for many other conditions in a given domain. For example, Mother Teresa tended to fundamental conditions (and thus was engaged in meaningful activities) because when she saved people's lives she was tending to what was responsible for much else in these people's lives; saving their lives enabled them to learn, create art, or engage in moral acts of their own. Had Mother Teresa merely trimmed people's toenails she would not have been engaged in meaningful activities because she would not have been tending to fundamental conditions, that is, conditions responsible for much else in people's lives. For Metz, both orienting oneself towards fundamental conditions and the fundamental conditions themselves have much to do with reason: ‘meaning comes from not merely exercising one's own reason, but also from getting others to do so’ (p. 232). However, he employs ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’ in a very broad sense that includes not only intellectual activities but almost all mental ones, including deliberation, conation, emotion, and affection, but not sensory perception or the feeling of pleasure. Metz seems to want to offer an account that does not restrict meaningfulness to intellectual pursuits alone, but that at the same time distinguishes clearly between humans and animals and conforms to the intuition that meaningful activities involve transcending our animal nature.
But emphasizing that meaningfulness has to do with contributing to other people's ability to develop their own rational capacities (even if ‘rationality’ is broadly conceived) may exclude activities that many see as meaningful, thus rendering the account too narrow. Metz himself points out one such activity: diminishing animal pain or preventing cruelty against animals (p. 239), since he takes animals not to have reason even under his broad interpretation. But his account also excludes other meaningful activities. Some environmentalists wish to protect the environment so that it will still be usable by future human beings (‘let's not destroy the rain forest because other people may want to enjoy its beauty and some of its plants may help cure cancer’). But some environmentalists wish to protect the environment because they take it to be valuable for its own sake, believing that whales, forests, mountains, waterfalls, and the like are worthy in themselves and should not be destroyed even if their destruction would not negatively affect any human being. (Of course, the two motivations need not conflict.) Metz's account would not consider environmental work done out of the latter motivation to be meaningful.
There are similar issues involved with helping people who are severely cognitively and psychologically challenged. There were times when ‘fools’ and the emotionally disturbed used to wander about, often taunted and pelted with stones, sometimes even sexually molested, by groups of children and some adults. (Unfortunately, in some countries this is still the case today.) Most would see those who helped to change this situation, so that the vulnerable are now protected and taken care of in various institutions, as having engaged in meaningful activities. But doing so did not help those who are severely cognitively and psychologically challenged to behave more rationally even under Metz's broad interpretation of ‘rationality’. Neither did the finding of ways to decrease the pain of the senile or comatose, or to promote activities that preserve such people's dignity, since no development of rational capabilities is involved. Metz does point out that when people are in pain their voluntary, rational choosing is stunted (pp. 228–229). Hence, relieving pain contributes to people's rationality, and could be seen as meaningful. But this does not apply, of course, to those who are severely cognitively and psychologically challenged. Metz's account may at present be insufficiently sensitive to a class of actions that we take to be highly meaningful: those having to do with compassion that aims to prevent or decrease pain, suffering, and degradation, and that finds value also in what is not rational. His present account may be overly reason-oriented.
Metz may or may not have a reply to this or other criticisms. But even if he does not, he is correct in taking his own account to surpass previous ones. The new account of meaningfulness he suggests in this book and the meticulous analyses he offers of previous accounts are a very significant contribution to the field. Future philosophical research on meaning in life will have to take account of his innovative and high-quality research. Owing to the subtlety and precision of its arguments, this work is mostly suitable for professional philosophers and theologians as well as graduate students; educated laypersons and undergraduate students might find some sections of the book difficult to follow.
