Research Centre on Greek Philosophy at the Academy of Athens
2nd of December 2015
“Existence, Meaning, Excellence: Some Preliminary Remarks on a Neo-Aristotelian
Enquiry into the Problem of the Meaning of Life”
Prof. Andrius Bielskis
Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius
andrius.bielskis@mruni.eu
The lecture will start from the premise that a key philosophical problem is the problem of
the meaning of life. It will be argued that the key question of philosophy is the question
also posed by Albert Camus, the question of whether life is worth living and whether it
has any meaning. Starting from the thesis that modern moral imagination is marked by
the sense of meaninglessness, I will argue that Aristotle’s philosophy is a far better guide
in our pursuit to live meaningful lives than that provided by ‘existentialists’ such as
Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Three philosophical concepts –
existence, meaning, excellence – will be spelled out and explained in the light of
Aristotle’s teleology. It will be argued that human excellence, indeed the excellence of
human civilisation, lies in our ability to exercise the quest for the good and meaning lives
in such a way that the activities of aretē leave traces, that is, the artefacts of this quest –
the great works of arts, philosophy, sciences, architecture.