This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Having criticized the idea that God gives life meaning by assigning a purpose to us collectively or to each one of us individually, this does not mean that God is irrelevant to the meaning of life. It does not exclude the idea that part of the meaning of life consists in the contemplation or worship of the divine…
Contemplation | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Worship | God | Contemplation |
The Nine Mistakes [about ways to think about the meaning of life]: (1) Only the infinite has meaning; the finite can only have meaning insofar as it participates in the infinite. (2) The meaning of life consists in some goal or purpose. (3) The meaning of life is happiness. (4) The meaning of life must be invented. (5) Life cannot have a meaning if the universe is entirely composed of matter, as science teaches us. (6) The sole or primary purpose of evaluations is to guide our choice of actions, and value judgments are reducible to reasons for action. (7) The meaning of a person’s life cannot extend to things beyond the boundaries of his or her mode of living. (8) A person’s life does not having meaning because only linguistic items can be meaningful. (9) The meaning of our lives consists in our living in accordance with a self-determined life-plan.
Action | Choice | Life | Life | Meaning | Plan | Purpose | Purpose | Science | Self | Universe | Think | Value |
Lord Trent, aka Baron Trent, Sir Jesse Boot, 1st Baronet
As I learnt very early in my life in Whitehall, the acid test of any political question is: What is the alternative?
Mundaka Upanishad, or or the Mundakopanishad
By means of higher knowledge, the wise behold every where the changeless Reality – which transcends the senses, which is uncaused, which is indefinable, which is all pervading and subtler than the subtlest, which is everlasting and is the source of all things and beings.
Ultimate Reality must be at least personal, or perhaps better said, Supra-personal or trans-personal – but not less than personal, and therefore not just non-personal.
The meaning of life must be in the living of it. This is because, (a) in a sense, the meaning of one’s life is oneself, and (b) it is the person that has primary non-instrumental value. The individual has value and, consequently, so does his or her life and so do the processes that constitute that life. The finite processes of life have meaning, without the need of the Absolute.
Absolute | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Sense | Value |
Religion is not necessary to give meaning to life, thought it is necessary to any claim that there is one state or being of supreme intrinsic value, and there is one overridingly important human purpose and that is an objective, morally ordered pattern.
Important | Life | Life | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Thought | Thought |
Traditionally, the relation between the divine and the human is that the divine confers meaning on our finite and otherwise petty lives. The idea… is that the divine has qualities that are meaningful because of our possible response to them. In other words, rather than starting from the divine and understanding the meaning of our lives in terms of that, we should start from meaningful activities, such as contemplation and worship, that constitute an appropriate response to the divine, and from this, try to make sense of the divine.
Contemplation | Meaning | Qualities | Sense | Understanding | Words | Worship | Contemplation |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Faith is the knowledge of the meaning of human life, in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the force of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe there was something to live for, he would not live. If he does not see and understand the unreality of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he sees that unreality, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith it is impossible to live.
Destroy | Faith | Force | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Understand |
A meaningful life is also not one that has merely instrumental value to some goal, even if the goal is divine. This suggests two important conclusions; First, meaningful activities are those that have a certain kind of non-instrumental value, and a meaningful life is one that consists of such activities. Second, derived from this, the meaning of a life must be in the living of it, or rather in the way it is lived. These are important conclusions, because they apply even if God has a purpose in mind for us and even if there is an everlasting afterlife. Even if there is a goal worth struggling for, the meaning is in the struggle.
Afterlife | God | Important | Life | Life | Meaning | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Struggle | Worth | God | Value |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
I believe that the true welfare of man lies in the fulfillment of the Will of God; and that His will consists in men loving each other, and therefore behaving toward others as they desire that others should behave with them. I believe that the meaning of life of every man, therefore, lies only in the increase of love in himself; that this increase of love leads the individual man in this life toward greater and greater welfare; that after death it gives the greater welfare the more love there be in the man; and that, at the same time, more than anything else, it contributes to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, i.e., to an order of life where the discord, deceit, and violence which now reign will be replaced by free agreement, truth, and brotherly love between men.
Death | Deceit | Desire | Earth | Fulfillment | God | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Men | Order | Time | Truth | Will | God |