The immortality requirement for life's meaning

Ratio

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 161-177

  Metz, Thaddeus ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI ST LOUIS   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141696746     PISSN: 00340006     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9329.00213     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. I have sought to analyse the sense of the question of what makes a person's life meaningful in 'The Concept of a Meaningful Life', American Philosophical Quarterly, 38 (2001), pp. 137-53
2. This is one major claim in David Swenson, 'The Transforming Power of Otherworldliness', repr. in E. D. Klemke (ed.), The Meaning of Life, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 3
3. For this view, see Michael Levine, 'What Does Death Have To Do with the Meaning of Life?' Religious Studies, 23 (1987), pp. 457-65
4. A term used by William Ernest Hocking, The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1957), pp. 74, 154
5. For those who espouse this perspective, see Delwin Brown, 'Process Philosophy and the Question of Life's Meaning', Religious Studies, 7 (1971), pp. 13-29
6. and Charles Hartshorne, 'The Meaning of Life', Process Studies, 25 (1996), pp. 10-8
7. Ecclesiastes 3: 19-20 and 9: 2-3 in The Holy Bible, New King James Version
8. For a recent statement, see Philip Quinn, 'How Christianity Secures Life's Meanings', in Joseph Runzo and Nancy Martin, eds., The Meaning of Life in the World Religions (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000), ch. 3. Note that neither text explicitly states that an eternal afterlife is necessary for perfect justice
9. rd Edition, Lewis White Beck, tr. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993), pp. 128-9
10. See, e.g., Plato's Phaedo
11. The idea of unchangeable purity is at least part of Kant's conception of moral perfection. See his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Theodore Greene and Hoyt Hudson, trs., (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1960), pp. 46, 57, 61, 65
12. Cf. Pascal's remark that 'the infinite abyss can be filled only by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. He alone is our true good. . . .' Pensées #425
13. Leo Tolstoy, 'My Confession', Leo Wiener, tr., repr. in Klemke, The Meaning of Life, ch. 1
14. Tolstoy, 'My Confession', p. 11
15. Cf. Bismarck's statement: 'Without the hope of an afterlife, this life is not even worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning,' as quoted in Thomas V. Morris, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), p. 26
16. For a recent Tolstoian statement, see William Craig, 'The Absurdity of Life Without God', in Klemke, The Meaning of Life, ch. 4
17. For someone who speaks this sort of way, see C. H. D. Clark, Christianity and Bertrand Russell (London: Lutterworth Press, 1958), p. 30
18. Anthony Flew, God and Philosophy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., 1966), p. 105
19. Probably the strongest explanation is that while such activities seem to merit performance from an everyday perspective, from a broader perspective nothing is worth doing unless it will have a ultimate consequence. Oswald Hanfling makes this kind of point in The Quest for Meaning (NewYork: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1987), pp. 22-4
20. Cf. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 11. Space precludes criticism of the point
21. For one who questions the authority of the objective standpoint, see David Schmidtz, 'The Meanings of Life', in Leroy Rouner, ed., Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Volume 22; If I Should Die: Life, Death, and Immortality (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), pp. 170-88
22. Hocking, The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience, pp. 68, 141
23. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), ch. 6
24. and The Examined Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), ch. 15
25. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, pp. 582, 594, 595
26. See also pp. 594, 611, 618
27. The following compressed considerations can be found in rich detail in Plotinus, The Enneads
28. Anselm, Monologion, and Proslogion
29. and Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, and Summa Theologica
30. This is the core of the view in David Swenson, 'The Dignity of Human Life', repr. in Klemke, The Meaning of Life, ch. 2