Philosophy › The 20th century › Existentialism
Does life have meaning?
pressed by existentialists, 1940s· Big question· Ethics & how to live
Mostly agreedGood evidence; some details uncertain.
The question whether human life has a purpose or value beyond itself, and, if not, how we should live.
See it on the Philosophy map →The idea
Idea: religion once answered it, giving life a purpose set by God and an afterlife. After Nietzsche's 'God is dead' the 20th century pressed it hard. Main answers: meaning comes from God or a cosmic order; we create it ourselves (Sartre); there is none, and we should live in defiant revolt anyway (Camus); or it comes from caring about things truly worth caring about, like people and projects (Susan Wolf, 2010). Main objection: some analytic philosophers called the question confused.
Why it matters
It is the question most people actually bring to philosophy, linking ethics, religion and psychology, from Viktor Frankl to today's research on well-being.
Where it comes from
Tolstoy's A Confession (written 1879–82), Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning (1946), and analytic work by Thomas Nagel and Susan Wolf.
Still debated
Whether meaning must be objective, or can be simply whatever each person cares about, is still open.
Connections (2)
▸"God is dead" raised Does life have meaning?Mostly agreed
The connection
If God no longer gives life a purpose, the question of meaning becomes urgent and open. Nietzsche saw the danger of nihilism, the sense that nothing matters, and asked what could replace religion. His challenge set the terms for 20th-century answers, from creating our own values to Camus' defiance of the absurd.
When and how
Nietzsche raised it in the 1880s; it was pressed hardest in Europe after the two world wars, by Sartre, Camus and others in the 1940s.
How sure are we?
Nietzsche's notebooks discuss nihilism directly, and later writers such as Camus, in The Rebel (1951), discuss his diagnosis at length.
Debates and open questions
Whether meaning really depends on God is disputed: Epicureans, Buddhists and Confucians found purpose without a creator God, and many religious thinkers reject Nietzsche's premise.
▸Albert Camus and the absurd gave a defiant answer to Does life have meaning?Well documented
The connection
Camus took the question head on: 'There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide', that is, whether life is worth living. His answer: the universe offers no meaning, but we need neither despair nor a leap into faith. We can live in lucid revolt, like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock, and still be happy.
When and how
The Myth of Sisyphus, written 1940–41 and published by Gallimard in occupied Paris in 1942.
How we know
The essay's opening and closing lines state the question and the answer directly.
Debates and open questions
Critics ask whether revolt is a real answer or just an attitude, and whether happiness in a meaningless universe can be more than a hope.