PHIL 1100
Take Home Final Exam
TA: Ian Wright
Name: Swapnil Agrawal
Student No.: 210049237
Date: 4th August 2010
PART 1
Q1. Why did Camus mean in saying that life is “absurd”?
A. Albert Camus says that “Life is Absurd” by setting our daily life as an example.
According to him, our mind is motionless and each man has more or less the same kind
of life everyday. Before realizing the absurdity of life, man thinks that he is free to do
whatever he wants and doing a certain thing will direct his life in a certain way. But one
day, he exercises his mind and looks back to retrospect on the life that he has had. He
thought that he is free but then he realizes the absurdity of life and that the future is death,
which is man’s ultimate enemy. It is then that he questions his life and the absurdity in
life arises. By this absurdity, Camus does not mean that the universe or man alone is
absurd. It is the combination of both that is absurd. Over the several years we have come
to know that the universe is irrational and that many things happen without a reason.
Science does not explain the entire world. It means that the universe has no
predetermined order. But man looks for reason and tries to be rational with the universe.
He tries to find meaning in his life even while he is aware of this contradiction. He thinks
that he is free but after the realization of this absurdity he realizes that the freedom is
absurd too and what appeared as a choice may not really be a choice. Camus says that
man struggles everyday but ultimately all his struggles have no meaning. This is the
absurdity of Fate. The struggle on its own might mean something but when combined
together they mean nothing. This rational reasoning of man on the irrational universe
makes life absurd.
Q3. Moritz Schlick argued that our lives really attain significance when we are
at play? What did he mean by that?
A. To understand what Moritz Schlick wants to say, we must understand the
meaning of “play” and “work” in this context. According to Schlick, in the broader
sense of philosophy, play is a free action or activity with intrinsic values and the
activity is done for its own sake without any external goals attached. Work,
according to Schlick, is “any activity undertaken solely to realize some purpose”.
What this means is that work is an action with an external purpose. For our lives to
attain meaning, we must search for activities that are independent and have an
intrinsic value and have their own purpose. It is only then can we get joy from our
activities without worrying about its results. This activity according to Schlick is
“play” and activities when approached as a play can help complete work, which also,
according to Schlick, is an important part of our lives. Since the activity itself carries
the satisfaction, we are not pressurized by external results. When we are at play, we
are at our creative best because our involvement with the activity would not be
pressurized by its results. It is only when we are at play that our doings and the
results we achieve from them get combined into one and our life attains
significance.
Q5. Explain why Susan Wolf thinks that the most meaningful lives are “lives of
active engagement in projects of worth.”
A. Wolf argues that meaningful lives are those lives that are actively engaged in
projects of worth. Wolf puts forth three points in relation to this argument. 1. We
should be passionate towards the project. 2. The project we are involved in should
have a worth of its own. 3. We must actively and positively contribute to the project.
The first and third points make up for “active engagement in the project” and if we
are not passionate about a project or are not active in it then our lives are
meaningless. Our life is then full of boredom and alienation and any life of boredom
can be said to be meaningless. Such lives can be meaningless even if they satisfy the
second point of being involved in a project of worth. For example, a housewife takes
care of the entire family, which is a project of worth, but is not passionate about it.
This gives her no good reason to live and her life is thus meaningless. The other
possibility is of being actively involved in a project having no value. A project is said
to have worth when they have a certain object value. A project may have subject
value for a person but having no object value to it makes his life meaningless. For
example, a person who is actively engaged in the project of coin collection is not
doing anything of worth and hence his life is said to lack meaning. It is because of
this that the combination of both objective and subjective value are needed to make
a life meaningful. For example, when we look at the life of Albert Einstein, we know
that he was passionate about his research and also that his research was extremely
worthy. According to Wolf, we must be able to categorize between projects that are
worthy and those that are not and we must actively engage in projects that are
worthwhile, in a positive way.
PART 2
Q2. Are questions such as ‘Does life have a meaning?’ or ‘Is life worthwhile?’
actually meaningful questions? If not, why not? If so, what sense can be made
out of them?
A.
Philosophical questions such as ‘What is the meaning of life?’ and ‘Is life
worthwhile?’ have been one of the oldest in history. It consists of the purpose of our
life or the significance of it and questions our existence. Numerous numbers of
philosophers have tried to answer these questions and it has been the center of
much debate. It is debatable as to whether these question are meaningful questions
or not and that depends on each person himself. These philosophical questions,
according to me, are not meaningful questions.
According to Ayer, “A simple answer is that all events are tending towards a
certain specifiable end: so that to understand the meaning of life it is necessary only
to discover this end.” What Ayer is trying to say here is that the answer to this
question only satisfies our end but this does not give us satisfying explanation to our
existence but just a justification. This can be related to Tolstoy’s story where we can
see that he had a perfectly good life and even then he could not enjoy it because he
could not answer the questions of the meaning of life. He worried about what would
happen when he died, what would happen to all that he had earned, materialistic or
not. Someone who finds meaning in this question may argue that it is important to
know what’s in the end to live the present and value it. This seems a valid argument
but is it worth not enjoying your current life to find an answer to the end? Even if
the answer to the end were found it would be just a justification. Would you stop
enjoying or valuing your current life if the end would not be good? The answer is
obvious and it is important that instead of wondering about the “meaning OF life”
we wonder about the “meaning IN life.”
Susan Wolf has an interesting essay that explains the meaning in life. Wolf
says that we attain meaning in life when we passionately do an activity that has an
objective value. She gives an example of a person who collects rubber bands as an
activity and is passionate about it. This activity, according to her, is a worthless
activity and therefore the person’s life has no meaning. It might not have a meaning
for someone else but what if it is worthy to him? Looking at a broader perspective, I
mean to say that if a person finds meaning in something he has found the meaning
in his life regardless of whether it is of meaning to some one else or not and that is
all that matters.
This also explains why I feel that “Is life worthwhile?” is not a meaningful
question. While thinking about this question one might think, ‘All the things that I
have earned, my reputation, my values, materialistic goods and so on, will come to
an end after I die. Is life worthwhile?’ Again, one looks at the end and it is not the
end but the duration of your life that should be worthwhile. The question should be
“Is MY life worthwhile?” By life I don’t mean life in general. A person has to decide if
he is happy with the life he is living without worrying about what happens after he
dies. This can make his present better instead of ruining what he already has.
We look into our origin to find out the purpose of our life, the meaning of our
existence. There are various beliefs as to how the universe originated. Some say it
was the Big Bang theory while some say it was God. Louis P. Pojman believes that
religion gives meaning to life and God gives answers to all the questions whereas
Arthur Schopenhauer believes that God does not exist. Both of these authors,
though, are trying to figure out the meaning of life and ask us to be moral even when
they have separate beliefs. What this tells us that whatever the meaning of life
maybe it is known that we must be moral irrespective of what the meaning of life is.
In conclusion, I believe that all of us have to understand that we must not
worry about what happens at the end of our life. The end is not what matters but the
present and we must enjoy it and try to make the universe a better place. We must
not think about the significance of life, in general, but have a purpose that is within
our life i.e. have a ‘meaning in life.’
Q5. Schlick’s idea that what really makes our lives meaningful is ‘play’ seems to
conflict with the idea (expressed by both religious and secular thinkers) that the
moral life is what gives our lives a point and makes our lives meaningful. What is
your position on this? Can we reconcile the two ideas?
A.
Schlick’s idea is “our lives really attain significance when we are at ‘play.’” What
he means by play here, in a broader philosophical perspective, is a free action or activity
with intrinsic values. By intrinsic it is mean that the activity is done for its own sake
without any external goals attached i.e. The result and the actions are combined in one
activity itself. Schlick says that for our life to attain meaning we must search for activities
that have no external factors i.e. approach all activities as play. This is because man does
not worry about the consequences of what might happen due to his actions because of no
external pressure and hence in joyous. Work on the other hand has an external factor
attached to it and even though it is important, we must be at play to make our life
meaningful and significant.
However, the general idea behind the meaning of life expressed by both religious
and secular thinkers is that to have a meaningful life one must be moral. This idea stands
even when the religious and secular approach are drastically varied. Religious thinkers
think so because they believe that we are all a creation of God and that all is equal. We
must treat each person with equal respect under the parenthood of God. Secular thinkers
believe so mainly because they think that there is suffering in the world and while
travelling through the journey of life one must take care of the fellow travellers because
they are the ones who accompany us till the end. One might argue upon what moral
means but it is agreed upon that a moral life is what gives life meaning.
Schlick’s idea and the idea of religious and secular thinkers seem contradictory.
This is because it may not be necessary for a person to be moral while at play. For
example, wrestling is an activity when a person is at play but may or may not be moral
depending on how we define ‘being moral’. My position on this is that the two ideas are
reconcilable and hence we must be moral while at play.
To further understand how we can do this, we can compare ‘being moral’ and
‘being at play’. When a person is being moral, he does not think about the consequences
of being so. If the result of his activity defines his morality then he is not truly moral. For
example, if a person is helping another person only to get a favour from him, then he is
not truly moral. He is doing so to gain a result that is not internal to the activity and this
cannot give him true joy. When a person is truly moral, he is at play since his doings and
results are within the activity and it is, in a philosophical sense, a free activity. What we
understand from this is that it is not necessary that a person be moral when at play but a
person is at play when truly moral. A good example of being moral while at play would
be a person cracking a joke to make a sad person laugh. It is both moral and the activity
has no external goals attached. It is because of this that I think that the two ideas can be
reconciled. The merger of these two ideas can form a new idea of being moral while at
play. We can compare this idea to the various ideas that other philosophers have had and
can see that it is a truly good reconciliation. For example, Susan Wolf’s idea of “the most
meaningful lives are “lives of active engagement in projects of worth” is not fool-proof as
according to her Hitler had a meaningful life as well. He was passionate about what he
did while he did something that had a lot of object value. However, he was not moral and
this makes his life meaningless. What I mean by meaningless here is that his life did no
good to the universe and hence his life was of no significance. However, when the ideas
of being moral and being at play are reconciled, we can see that positive things happen
both to the society and to the individual which is why I believe it is a good idea and that
reconciliation of the two ideas can be done.
Being moral at play can give life true meaning by enjoying our actions and not
hurting anyone else in the process. It follows the idea of all the thinkers without being
selfish and helps a person get rid of external pressures.