International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 51: 71–81, 2002.

71
© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The meaning of life

E. M. ADAMS
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In my first position after graduate school, I was assigned a course to teach

entitled “Moral Philosophy and the Meaning of Life”. I had had an under-
graduate major in philosophy and a minor in sociology, a three-year divinity
degree, an M.A. in philosophy and literature, and another M.A. and the Ph.D.
in philosophy. But no where in my philosophical studies had I confronted the
question of the meaning of life. In fact, the theory of meaning to which I had
been exposed led me to think that there was a category mistake in talking
about the meaning of life, for life, I thought, was not the kind of thing that
could have meaning, except perhaps as a sign in some situations. I had no
problem with the “moral philosophy” part of the title and that is what the
course was reduced to. Through the years I have laid the foundations for a
discussion of the meaning of life and have actually discussed it in various
contexts, but I have never addressed the topic head on in my writings. After
more than fifty years of teaching, lecturing, and writing on philosophical
subjects, I want to focus directly in this paper on the meaning of life as an
important topic in philosophy.
In fact, I have come to recognize the demise of meaning and moral
cynicism within a general value skepticism as the major philosophical prob-
lems in modern Western culture. Philosophers have given enormous attention
to the value question but scarcely any to the phenomenon of meaning in
connection with life. I knew of meaning only with regard to the semantics of
language and symbol systems. Only existentialists have shown much concern
for problems about the meaning of life, the meaning of history, or the like,
and more often than not their concern is with the lack of such meaning and
the absurdity on life. I heard a distinguished analytic philosopher confess
rather apologetically, in his presidential address to the American Philosoph-
ical Association, that once in a time of weakness and lapse of judgment he
wrote a paper on the meaning of life. Yet problems about meaning, under
whatever name, have vexed human beings ever since they acquired the powers
of self-transcendence and became to some extent masters of their culture,
constructors of their institutions, authors of their own lives, and in general
partners in creation.
72 E. M. ADAMS

Whatever else may be true of us, as human beings, we are in our humanity
constituted by a complex structure of meaning and live in a world filled
largely with subject matter with inherent meaning and normative dimensions.
There is an old proverb to the effect that fish were the last creatures to
discover water. Some may cite it to account for our lack of awareness of
the ocean of meaning and normative structures in which we live and have our
being, but familiarity is not the explanation for our neglect of the meaning
dimension in our intellectual account of the realities we know. In our early
search for understanding of ourselves and our world, we were well aware of
the complexes of meaning and normative requirements in which we live. We
developed a theory about such phenomena. We spoke of a society of spirits
and their desires, acts of will, and commands. When this mythology became
unsatisfactory, we not only rejected the mythology; we denied the reality
that the mythology attempted to conceptualize. That left us with the one-
dimensional factual world of modern science. What we need is an adequate
metaphysics of meaning and normativity, not a denial of the primary realities
of lived experience.
Having no adequate theory of meaning or normativity and of their role in
the universe, we do not develop ways to deepen and to enrich the meaning
of our lives and to enhance the values that make life worthwhile. How can
be understand ourselves and the context of our existence in a way that would
enable us to define and to live a life that is fitting for our humanity, individu-
ality, and circumstances? That is, how can we understand ourselves and our
context in a way that would enable us to live fully meaningful and worthwhile
lives?
If this problem were our dominant concern as a people, if we defined the
human enterprise in terms of the enhancement of the meaningfulness and
worthwhileness of our lives, which would involve of course the meaning-
fulness of our activities and relationships, we would generate a humanistic
civilization in contrast with our modern materialistic culture that has been
generated by our preoccupation with the acquisition of wealth, power, and
possessions. When we came to define the real and to seek intelligibility in
terms of the categories and methodology of modern science, we conceptually
repackaged ourselves and all things human to fit into the world as defined
by presuppositions of modern science, a world devoid of inherent meaning,
normative laws, objective values, ends in nature, and teleological causality.
I have argued in a number of works1 that the two dominant cultural
problems in modern Western civilization, the demise of meaning and moral
cynicism in a general value subjectivism, are consequences of the way
we understand the human enterprise and the world. Furthermore, I have
contended that the conceptual framework in terms of which we define the
 THE MEANING OF LIFE 73

real and seek to render it intelligible is a consequence of our restricted view

of the knowledge-yielding powers of the human mind and that our view
of the knowledge-yielding powers of the human mind is a consequence of
our conception of the human enterprise as a quest for wealth, power, and
possessions. In other words, the culture develops in a way that will serve the
human enterprise as it is understood. But there is a correct way to under-
stand the human enterprise and if it is misunderstood, the misconception may
pervert the culture and be life defeating. Two ways to detect perversion of
the culture from within it are, I contend, (1) the spirit of the people who
internalize it, and (2) the generation in the culture of unsolvable philosoph-
ical perplexities – contradictions and antinomies that undermine the culture.
I have claimed that our literature and art and reports of psychotherapists
provide compelling evidence that in spite of our materialistic successes life
attitudes have taken a negative turn in the modern era; and I have argued
that our prevailing view of the knowledge-yielding powers of the human
mind, namely scientific methodology based on sensory experience for data-
gathering and theory confirmation, generates philosophical skepticism about
the value and meaning dimensions of the culture in a way that undermines
knowledge-claims in general and is self-destructive. As a corrective measure,
I have argued for a robust realistic humanism that takes emotive experiences
broadly conceived and reflection on our own subjectivity and perceptual
understanding of others and the culture as knowledge-yielding along with
sensory experience. In other words, our value materialism has perverted the
culture, deranged the modern mind, and set modern Western civilization on a
self-destructive course. We need a radical humanistic cultural reformation, I
contend, that would reinstate the humanistic categories of value, normativity,
and meaning in the descriptive/explanatory conceptual system in terms of
which we define the real and seek to render it intelligible. A correlative social
transformation would follow inevitably. The position will be simply assumed
here. My purpose in this paper is to consider the meaning of life within the
perspective of realistic humanism.

Meaning

The meaning of some things is external to them. For instance, we may say
that X means Y for P if X has, or is believed by P to have, a relation to
Y so that P, upon perceiving or thinking of X, thinks of or responds to Y.
This is the only kind of meaning that naturalists recognize. Of course they
have to give some naturalistic account, usually a behavioristic one, of such
mentalistic terms as “believed”, “perceiving”, “thinking”, and the like, for
naturalists recognize only factually constituted subject matter – subject matter
74 E. M. ADAMS

constituted by elements, features, or properties that exist or are exemplified

in it. That is why I had difficulty with the course title “Moral Philosophy and
the Meaning of Life”. I knew only the naturalistic theory of meaning.
But contrary to naturalists, meaning is inherent in or constitutive of some
subject matters; that is, some things have their identity and unity in terms of
an inherent structure of meaning. This is the case, I submit, with certain states
and acts such as thinking, believing, perceiving, remembering, and the like
and their objective counterparts, namely, thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and
memories, or any mental state or act, for that matter. My visual experience of
a squirrel on my bird feeder, for example. The squirrel on my bird feeder is
the semantic content of the experience and the logical form of the experience
is that of a taking; that is, the visual experience takes its semantic content to
exist in the world. It has a different form from an appearing with the same
content. The only way to identify the experience is in terms of what it is of
and its form; that is, in terms of what is semantically in the experience as
distinct from what is existentially in it and whether the experience takes its
semantic content to exist independently – whether the experience, by virtue
of its from, is a perception or only an appearing. Inherent meaning is, I
submit, the defining characteristic of mental phenomena, whether sensory
experiences, dreams, imaginings, thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, expecta-
tions, speech acts, desires, wishes, hopes, fears, memories, actions, and on
and on. We also find inherent structures of meaning in cultural and social
phenomena such as texts, symbols, stories, art works, and the like as well
as in offices, institutions, organizations, practices, mores, laws, regulations,
societies, civilizations, and so forth.
Furthermore, where some things are constituted by the exemplification of
features, or properties in them, and where some subject matters are consti-
tuted by inherent structures of meaning, some subject matters are constituted
by inherent normative structures, that is, by the normative requirement of
some features or properties, what or how they ought to be. For instance,
members of the human species ought to have two hands, whether they have
them or not. Anything that can be deformed or well-formed, immature or
mature, sick or well, etc. by its own inner dynamics has an inherent normative
structure.
A purely factually constituted world, the world pictured by modern
science, is of course much simpler than a multi-dimensional world with
factual, normative, and inherent meaning structures. The categorically more
complex world is not as subject to our manipulation and control as the
world science presents, but the scientific world is not our home. There is
no place in it for us. And we “mutilate” ourselves and deny our humanity
when we conceptually repackage ourselves so that we will fit into the world.
 THE MEANING OF LIFE 75

With the scientific worldview, we cannot both claim our humanity and make
our existence intelligible. I have found realistic humanism to be the best
alternative.

The meaning of subject matter constituted by meaning

Where the modern naturalist recognizes only factually constituted subject

matter, the realistic humanist acknowledges subject matters constituted by
inherent normative structures and inherent structures of meaning as well as
factual structures.
When we ask about the meaning of something that is constituted by a
structure of meaning, what are we asking for? Is it different from asking for
an explanation of it? Isn’t it an effort to render it intelligible? Would not the
conclusion that some subject matter constituted by an inherent structure of
meaning was meaningless be the same thing as the conclusion that it was
absurd, that it didn’t make sense, that it was a dangler, that it didn’t fit into
its context? For instance, what are we asking for when we ask what is the
meaning of the soliloquy of the lone watchman as he walked his watch at
the fort on Roanoke Island in North Carolina in Paul Green’s outdoor drama,
“The Lost Colony”. In England, according to the story, the watchman was a
homeless drunk who happened to stumble on board and go to sleep in one
of the ships at the dock that sailed to establish the first English colony in
the new world. He mused to himself as he kept watch one night as he and
the other settlers waited in vain for the return of the English ships with new
supplies, saying: “In England, I was a nobody. Roanoke has made a man of
me”. We know what the words mean. We understand the speech act in the
sense that we could paraphrase it or translate it into another language. Yet we
might still ask, “What does this statement mean?” It is an inherent structure of
meaning. The answer may be that it means what the play means, that it makes
the point of the drama, which also is an inherent structure of meaning. And
to know what the play means, we have to know a great deal about European
and American history. But even that is not enough to understand fully the
meaning of the watchman’s soliloquy? What does it mean to be a man? What
does it mean to be a nobody? What does it mean for the survival tactics of
wilderness life to transform a nobody into a man? And on and on. Where is
there a stopping point? I suggest that making sense of any subject mater with
an inherent structure of meaning requires a context with inherent structures
of meaning.
Actions other than linguistic acts are also constituted by inherent struc-
tures of meaning and we expect them to be meaningful. We find an act to be
meaningful if it is in some way part of a project that is meaningful. And the
76 E. M. ADAMS

project from which the act acquires meaning derives its meaning from still
another project, and so on. At some point, we find acts and projects mean-
ingful by being an integral part of one’s life. If one’s life loses its meaning, all
the acts and project that are part of it lose their meaning and one suffers what
Leo Tolstoy2 called a “life arrest”. I have known this to happen to people.
I knew a wonderful lady who had a good life. When her life was disrupted
by the sudden death of her husband, she lost all interest in things. Her life
was put on “hold”. Nothing seemed to stir her to action. She said nothing
meant anything anymore. She was suffering from what medicine men in some
Indian tribes in Central America call “loss of soul” and modern psychiatrists
call deep depression. People suffer from this malady in varying degrees. No
doubt all of us suffer from it to some extent and for various reasons. But for
those who conclude with Steven Weinberg3 that the more we understand the
universe the less point there seems to be to any thing, the harder it is to keep
going, for this belief robs everything of its meaning at one fell swoop. Yet
we, by our nature as rational beings, demand that our experiences, actions,
relationships, and lives be meaningful. This is of a piece with our requirement
that the realities we encounter be intelligible, for such phenomena are not
intelligible if not meaningful. The primary mission of religion is to affirm
and to cultivate a sense of the meaningfulness of life, especially in the face of
situations that threaten it, such as death.

What is a life?

Perhaps the most revealing thing we can say about a life is that it can be told.
This places a life in a category along with experiences, actions, memories,
dreams, stories, and the like. Some things can be only reported, described,
or told about. Only subject matter constituted by an inherent structure of
meaning can be told, for the telling of something in the sense intended is the
articulation of it. The telling puts the subject matter in question into words,
which is quite different from describing it. A description of something is of
and about it. It is external to what it is about. A description or report may
be in concepts alien to the subject matter in question, even where the subject
matter has an internal conceptual structure as in the case of an experience or
an action. Of course the subject matter has to lend itself to being delineated
in terms of the concepts used in describing or reporting it. But the concepts
in terms of which an experience or action is told have to be internal to the
experience or action in question; that is, the experience or action, whether
fictitious or lived, has to be conceptually structured in terms of the concepts
in terms of which it is told. It cannot be told in a language conceptually alien
to it. The author of a novel has to assume the posture of a participant in
 THE MEANING OF LIFE 77

the story. Otherwise the author is a reporter of the imagined experiences in

question. He or she is not a novelist. Anyone of a group may tell what they
underwent or shared in doing, but a person who did not share in the experi-
ence or somehow enter into it empathetically could not tell it in the requisite
sense. A report or description of something is from an external perspective;
the telling of something in the sense intended here is from an internal or
subjective perspective.
A life is a story; it is a lived story that can be told. The son of a friend
of mine said of his father, shortly after the father’s death, that his father
did not believe that any experience or life was fully real until it had been
told. This seems to be particularly true of our dreams. Unless a dream is
told shortly after the dreamer awakens, it quickly vanishes beyond recall as
though it were not real enough to be sustained in one’s memory. The same is
somewhat true of our waking experiences. Telling or recalling an experience
in some form seems to endow it with a higher degree of reality. Telling an
experience interrelates it to other experiences of the agent and/or of others
and thereby increases its causal power and its connections. To the extent
an experience is not recalled, it is relatively ineffective and to the extent
something is ineffective it is less real.
A life, as is the case with an experience or a story, is a conceptually
delineated structure of inherent meaning. It is a web of experiences, thoughts,
plans, actions, memories, anticipations, social relationships, projects, presup-
positions, assumptions, and the like, all tied together and governed by a
self-concept that embraces a normative constitution that is grounded in
one’s nature as a human knower-agent, plus an individually authored life
plan. The whole complex is grounded in and energized by a particular
human body. Although individuated, human beings are immersed in and
nurtured by a family and a historical community. They can thrive only in
a socio/cultural environmental system in a way similar to the way biolog-
ical organisms require a biological environmental system, but there is an
important difference.
Where biological organisms are causally dependent on a biological
environment, human beings are dependent not only on an ecological environ-
ment but also on a socio/cultural environment for their identity as well as
for their existence. I have heard it argued that persons are those recognized
as persons in a community. I disagree with that as a definition, for it would
follow that if a society had a class of human beings not recognized as persons
they would not be persons with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto
and therefore these outcasts would not be wronged in not being treated as
persons. But there is an element of truth in the claim that persons have to be
recognized as persons in a community in order to be persons, for one has to
78 E. M. ADAMS

have a concept of oneself as a person in order to be and to act as a person

just as one has to have a concept of oneself as president of the United States
in order to be and to act as the president of the United States. If one lives
in a community in which one is not recognized as a person, one may not
develop the concept of oneself as a person. And without such a self-concept
one cannot live as a person. Where biological organisms are nature-based
beings, persons are nature-, culture-, and knowledge-based beings.
One has to be a culture- and a knowledge-based being in order to have a
life. Tigers live mostly by nature. Body-based desires, instincts, and emotions
seem to be their primary movers. Some items and features of the environment
become causal factors in their behavior by their presence to them in percep-
tions and rudimentary memory. Hence a level of causation is involved that is
not found in purely nature-based beings, but this is hardly sufficient to have
a life. Each tiger lives the life of the tiger. The organism of the tiger provides
the organization and unity of a tiger’s life. The life of a human being has
its organization, unity, and identity in terms of one’s self-concept and life
plan. These are heavily culture- and knowledge-based. The self-concept is
either accepted from the culture uncritically or formed by one’s own critical
and knowledge-yielding powers, perhaps a combination of both. The more it
and one’s life plan are dependent on one’s critical and knowledge-yielding
powers, the freer one is from nature and the culture and the more one is
the author of one’s own life. So far as we know, human beings in cultural
communities are the only beings at a sufficiently high a level of being to have
lives to live, for only they have the requisite culture and knowledge-yielding
powers to live by a normative self-concept and a life plan.

The meaning of life

We have to distinguish between the meaning of life and the meaning of a life.
The meaning of a life may be a matter of great concern to a biographer or
historian, or to anyone if it concerns one’s own life. It is the general question
about the meaning of life that is of theoretical interest; and of course it is a
matter of great important to all of us, for if we reach a negative conclusion
on it, the quest for meaning in our individual lives in stymied; and if there
is a general meaning of life, that too is a matter of concern, for we have to
incorporate it and build on it in defining and living meaningful individual
lives. Furthermore, a general meaning of life underwrites and reinforces the
meaning of a particular life.
Just as belief in the intelligibility of the world is presupposed by our quest
for understanding, the meaningfulness of life is presupposed in living a life.
We have to believe that life is not absurd, that it is not a tale told by an idiot,
 THE MEANING OF LIFE 79

that it makes sense, in order to keep on with the struggles of life. We have to
believe that we are not like actors playing their roles without a stage. The most
important theoretical question for us is what kind of a stage do we require for
our lives to be meaningful.
As with the soliloquy of the watchman in Green’s “Lost Colony” or any
subject matter constituted by an inherent structure of meaning, the meaning
of a life, as well as the meaning of life in general, depends on the context.
A particular life may have meaning in terms of one’s place in one’s family
– in terms of one’s place in the lives of one’s parents, one’s spouse, one’s
children and grandchildren; in terms of one’s role in one’s community, in
institutions in which one is involved, in some historical movements in which
one participates, and so forth. Those who think of only the meaning of a
life without considering the meaning of life in general are likely to come
to the conclusion that without immortality of the individual life is meaning-
less. Tolstoy thought that, if at some future time his life would be over and
forgotten, without making any difference then, its meaning would be canceled
for all times. It would be utterly meaningless; nothing would mean anything
even while he was living. He found these thoughts paralyzing; they arrested
his life for five years. I have heard people say that if there is no life after
death, then the life of a human being, no matter how great he or she might be
by historical standards, is as meaningless as the life of a dog. This seems to
be one of the strong motivating factors behind the belief in immortality. The
primary point of the belief seems to be the affiration of the meaningfulness of
life in the face of death, perhaps the greatest challenge to it.
However, there may be other ways individuals may participate in the
eternal. I have suggested elsewhere that it takes a world with a similar categor-
ical structure, not just what we ordinarily identify as an ecological system,
to produce and to sustain a biological organism, for the categories of an
organism cannot be generated in a context where they were totally lacking
before; that is, normativity and intentionality are no more subject to explana-
tion in terms of a simpler reality than factuality. Any effort to explain them
would presuppose them. And if this is so, it takes a humanistic world not only
to generate and to sustain a human life but even a biological organism.
To ask what is the meaning of subject matter constituted by an inherent
structure of meaning is to ask for an explanation of it; it is to ask why it is.
In the case of the watchman’s musings about his Roanoke experience, the
question asks for the point of Green’s having him make the utterance at that
point in the play. The question asks for how the soliloquy contributes to the
meaning of the play.
Time is a categorical dimension of the world. Reality is not just a matter
of what is at some present time. It is a matter of what has been as well as what
80 E. M. ADAMS

is in any mode in any given present or expanse of time. From the perspective
of the eternal, nothing is annihilated. Of course what is at one time may not
be at some other time. But if it ever is, it remains in its place in time as part
of the inventory of the world. It makes its contribution to the state of being.
A human being’s life has its ultimate meaning, I suggest, in terms of its place
in the eternal makeup of the world. The place of one’s life is determined by
both one’s normative self-concept and life plan on one hand and by how well
one fulfills one’s self-concept and how well one lives one’s life plan.
One’s self-concept is necessarily very complex and may be incorrect or
unjustified in multiple ways, both with respect to its normative and factual
aspects. When we come into reflective consciousness, we find ourselves a
project already in progress. We have a rudimentary self-concept that has
been generated in the culture from the conditioning and tutoring we have
received from our social relationships in our environment. As we develop
our knowledge-yielding and critical powers, we progressively reconstruct
and amend our early self concept and develop of a life plan. Some people
remain largely a creature of nature and the cultural/social environment.
Others achieve greater self-mastery, both with regard to who they are and
how they live.
The most important question for us is not the length of one’s life, but how
well one used one’s time in developing one’s powers, defining one’s identity
and life plan, and working for an order of goodness. Some people may within
a short time become a great human being and make a tremendous impact on
the course of human history for a better world. And of course one can in an
equally short time become a powerful evil force and greatly impoverish or
degrade the human order.
We have a normative constitution as rational thinkers, knowers, and
agents. This constitution is taken up in our normative self-concept and this in
our sense of who we are. So we are sensitive to logical and moral criticism.
We have logical and moral consciences; logical and moral errors are injures
to our selfhood and they hurt. We are by our nature under an inner imperative
to develop ourselves and to define and to live a life that would satisfy our
logical and moral consciences. One’s life is meaningful to the extent that
it is the life reality requires of one, given one’s abilities and circumstances.
There are normative requirements impinging on one from within one’s own
constitution and from within one’s time and place. The universe, I suggest, is
a dynamic, creative process working for its self-fulfillment, for the fulfillment
of its inherent normative structure. The normative requirements that comprise
this structure are the causal power of beings working for their own fulfillment.
The universe, I suggest, is coming to self-knowledge through humanity in
human culture and it is achieving a new level of being through the knowledge-
 THE MEANING OF LIFE 81

based action of human beings. We are partners in creation. Our lives have
their meaning through our participation in this struggle for the realization
of what ought to be. I like to say that our mission is to be enlightened,
rational, creative pulses to the divine heartbeat of the universe, working for
the realization of what ought to be in our own persons, in society, and in the
culture. These requirements that impinge on us, those that are grounded in us
and partially constitute us and those that are grounded in our social, cultural,
and physical context are part of the overall complex normative structure of
being; and in working for their fulfillment, we are working not only for the
self-realization of ourselves but as partners in the realization or fulfillment of
being itself.
In conclusion, we may say that the meaning of life is for each human being
to have a fitting self-defined identity and a life appropriate to one’s identity,
abilities, circumstances, and opportunities. The meaning of such a life lies
in the perfection of one’s own being, its contribution to the lives of others,
its role in the institutions of one’s society and in historical movements, and
ultimately from its part in the fruition of being in an order of goodness. Each
life is an interpretation of what it is to define and to live a life that is worthy of
one’s humanity and individuality in the circumstances of one’s existence. The
whole creation seems bent toward self-fulfillment of being in self-knowledge,
self-expression, and a new level of freedom in humanity and in our culture
and knowledge-based social order.
Not many in our scientific/technological age with its naturalistic meta-
physics are prepared to accept the metaphysical view of the world that makes
the meaning of life possible. Yet the meaning of life and the metaphysics it
requires are presuppositions of living a life.

Notes
1. E. M. Adams, Philosophy and the Modern Mind (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro-
lina Press, 1975);
E. M. Adams, Metaphysics of Self and World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1991);
E. M. Adams, A Society Fit for Human Beings (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1997).
2. Leo Tolstoy, My Confession, trans. Leo Wiener The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy
(Boston: Dana Estes & Co., 1904–1905).
3. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

Address for correspondence: E. M. Adams, 110 Gristmill Lane, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA