We start with the “Bhagavad-Gita”, a classic of Hindu thought - it is actually an episode from the great Indian epic “Mahabharata”. The hero in the Gita, Arjuna, finds himself on the eve of a battle in which he must lead his army against one led by many of his near relatives. The text counsels a life of action pursued with a certain kind of impersonal detachment in the context of a devotional attitude that allows one to understand one’s role in the universe.
Turning to ancient Greece, Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” - Aristotle’s answer to our question contrasts dramatically with that offered by the Gita, locating happiness in the cultivation of a set of mundane virtues, such as courage, honesty, generosity, temperance, and the like, in the context of friendship and civic life. Aristotle develops a subtle moral psychology that paints an unusually detailed picture of the many dimensions of a meaningful life when understood from the human, as opposed to the cosmic, perspective.
A third approach is represented by the austere vision presented in the “book of Job” in the Hebrew Bible - Here, the puzzle regarding whether life can have any meaning is posed in the context of the possibility of divine indifference and a fundamentally cruel universe.
We then turn to the work of Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius, two influential Roman thinkers, both of whom meditate extensively on the problem with which we started: How can anything as fleeting and small as a human life mean anything in the grand scheme of things? Each focuses his meditation on the consequent significance of death and impermanence, making direct contact with each of the three traditions with which we began.
The fourth ancient approach we consider emerges from classical China - We begin with an exploration of “The Analects”, in which Confucius (Kongfuzi) develops an account of human perfection in terms of careful social cultivation in the context of social relations. We will see this view challenged by Daoism, grounded in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, in which meaning is to be found by harmonizing one’s life with the fundamental structure of the universe. This requires not action or cultivation, as is suggested by the Confucian or Aristotelian approaches, but rather, a studied inaction and spontaneity.
The final ancient approach is that of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the account of moral development and the goal of human life articulated by the 9th-century Indian philosopher Santideva.
Our attention now shifts to modernity; John Stewart Mill’s “On Liberty”. - We’ll explore the view that the meaningful life is that lived autonomously, with active engagement in the public sphere, involving the free exercise of one’s rights to thought and to speech, unfettered by religion or law.
Poignant critiques of this individualist, libertarian vision of modernity is offered by Lev Tolstoy and Nietzsche. Tolstoy argues that modernity eviscerates life of spiritual values and interpersonal relations. Nietzsche, in “Twilight of the Idols”, argues that the central underpinnings of modernity are simply erroneous and defends a radically different view of the meaning of life.
We then turn to the Lakota philosopher Lame Deer, who sees human life as gaining its meaning from a complex relation to the natural world in the context of which it is lived.
We finish with the perspective of the 14th Dalai Lama, who integrates the views of Santideva with those of European modernity, defending an account of the meaningful life in the modern world that takes seriously such modern values as human rights, liberty, and a secular order but demanding the cultivation of compassion.
Source credit: Dr. Jay L. Garfield, Professor of Philosophy, Smith College
Turning to ancient Greece, Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” - Aristotle’s answer to our question contrasts dramatically with that offered by the Gita, locating happiness in the cultivation of a set of mundane virtues, such as courage, honesty, generosity, temperance, and the like, in the context of friendship and civic life. Aristotle develops a subtle moral psychology that paints an unusually detailed picture of the many dimensions of a meaningful life when understood from the human, as opposed to the cosmic, perspective.
A third approach is represented by the austere vision presented in the “book of Job” in the Hebrew Bible - Here, the puzzle regarding whether life can have any meaning is posed in the context of the possibility of divine indifference and a fundamentally cruel universe.
We then turn to the work of Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius, two influential Roman thinkers, both of whom meditate extensively on the problem with which we started: How can anything as fleeting and small as a human life mean anything in the grand scheme of things? Each focuses his meditation on the consequent significance of death and impermanence, making direct contact with each of the three traditions with which we began.
The fourth ancient approach we consider emerges from classical China - We begin with an exploration of “The Analects”, in which Confucius (Kongfuzi) develops an account of human perfection in terms of careful social cultivation in the context of social relations. We will see this view challenged by Daoism, grounded in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, in which meaning is to be found by harmonizing one’s life with the fundamental structure of the universe. This requires not action or cultivation, as is suggested by the Confucian or Aristotelian approaches, but rather, a studied inaction and spontaneity.
The final ancient approach is that of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the account of moral development and the goal of human life articulated by the 9th-century Indian philosopher Santideva.
Our attention now shifts to modernity; John Stewart Mill’s “On Liberty”. - We’ll explore the view that the meaningful life is that lived autonomously, with active engagement in the public sphere, involving the free exercise of one’s rights to thought and to speech, unfettered by religion or law.
Poignant critiques of this individualist, libertarian vision of modernity is offered by Lev Tolstoy and Nietzsche. Tolstoy argues that modernity eviscerates life of spiritual values and interpersonal relations. Nietzsche, in “Twilight of the Idols”, argues that the central underpinnings of modernity are simply erroneous and defends a radically different view of the meaning of life.
We then turn to the Lakota philosopher Lame Deer, who sees human life as gaining its meaning from a complex relation to the natural world in the context of which it is lived.
We finish with the perspective of the 14th Dalai Lama, who integrates the views of Santideva with those of European modernity, defending an account of the meaningful life in the modern world that takes seriously such modern values as human rights, liberty, and a secular order but demanding the cultivation of compassion.
Source credit: Dr. Jay L. Garfield, Professor of Philosophy, Smith College
We are talking about a 'personal philosophy'. I, personally, don't need a Lot of Things. 