On the Meaning of Life

This picture of the Skara Brae village remains which look as though they are about to be overwhelmed finally by the waves ... makes me think of the fragilty and contingency of human existence. But as the New Year has arrived it's time to start thinking about work. I'm still reading and benefitting from John Armstrong's book on Goethe, though at some point I need to think my way through the issue of 'the Meaning of Life'. I have even bought a little book on the theme by Terry Eagleton ... I suppose to see what he makes of the question. There are certainly diverse and opposed experiences which some writers will describe as experiences of meaning, the sense that life has some meaning, or that it lacks meaning, and so forth. But I find myself quite doubtful about whether to go along with such assessments. I am inclined, perhaps wrongly, to associate talk of life having a meaning with the idea of its being a preparation for the life to come, though I know that puts it too crudely, with the implication that life does not have meaning after all if we abandon the relevant religious beliefs. But this is just to say that in that case the concept of 'meaning' has no application, rather than that meaning is now absent and it is all 'absurd'. However, there is still the problem of the negative sense of life that sees it is as allegedly pointless or meaningless. I wonder whether this negative experience of life, which is real enough, is better described in other ways, in terms of despair, perhaps, or a sense of futility, as opposed to engagement and fulfilment, absorption. Everthing would then turn on what it was that one found futile or absorbing. No answers here, just a preliminary thought that talk of meaning in relation to life is at best not helpful, possibly a metaphor. I suspect that what is more fundamental is an ethical sense. Okay, just notes ... I think this last thought is not quite connected. I'm thinking about the idea of Bildung or 'self-cultivation' and it seems to me that its deepest impulse is an ethical one, and that this determines the form of the cultivation or attention to the self. I don't say 'should' ...