Meaning of life


The meaning of life, or the answer to the question: "What is the meaning of life?", pertains to the significance of living or existence in general. Many other related questions include: "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", or "What is the purpose of existence?" There have been many proposed answers to these questions from many different cultural and ideological backgrounds. The search for life's meaning has produced much philosophical, scientific, theological, and metaphysical speculation throughout history. Different people and cultures believe different things for the answer to this question.

The meaning of life can be derived from philosophical and religious contemplation of, and scientific inquiries about existence, social ties, consciousness, and happiness. Many other issues are also involved, such as symbolic meaning, ontology, value, purpose, ethics, good and evil, free will, the existence of one or multiple gods, conceptions of God, the soul, and the afterlife. Scientific contributions focus primarily on describing related empirical facts about the universe, exploring the context and parameters concerning the "how" of life. Science also studies and can provide recommendations for the pursuit of well-being and a related conception of morality. An alternative, humanistic approach poses the question, "What is the meaning of my life?"

The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), book II chapter IX, "The Everlasting Yea".[1]

Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.[2]

Carlyle may have been inspired by earlier usage of the equivalent German expression der Sinn des Lebens by German Romantic writers Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel. Schlegel was the first to use it in print by way of his novel Lucinde (1799), though Novalis had done so in a 1797–1798 manuscript, in which he wrote: "Only an artist can divine the meaning of life." Additionally, the word lebenssinn, translated as life's meaning, had been used by Goethe in a 1796 letter to Schiller.[3] These authors grappled with the rationalism and materialism of modernity. Carlyle called this the "Torch of Science", which burned "more fiercely than ever" and made religion "all parched away, under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief", resulting in the "Wilderness" of "the wide World in an Atheistic Century".[4]

Arthur Schopenhauer was the first to explicitly ask the question,[1] in an essay entitled "Character".


"The Storm Fiend" — Heading to Book II Chapter IX of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, 1898 illustration by E. J. Sullivan
Philosopher in Meditation (detail) by Rembrandt.
DNA contains the genetic instructions for the development and functioning of all known organisms
Modern view of the expansion of space. The inflationary epoch is a period of rapidly accelerating expansion at left.
Hieronymus Bosch's Ascent of the Blessed depicts a tunnel of light and spiritual figures, often described in reports of near-death experiences.
Plato and Aristotle in The School of Athens fresco by Raphael. Plato is pointing heavenwards to the sky, and Aristotle is gesturing to the world.
Antisthenes. Roman copy after a Hellenistic original. From the Villa of Cassius at Tivoli, 1774.
Bust of Zeno of Citium at the Neues Museum
Immanuel Kant is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the late Enlightenment.
Jeremy Bentham
The End of the World by John Martin.
Edvard Munch's The Scream, a representation of existential angst.
The "Happy Human" symbol representing secular humanism.
Symbols of the three main Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro is symbolic of Christianity,[115] illustrating the concept of seeking redemption through Jesus Christ.
Areopagus from the Acropolis (Athens, 2006)
The Ringstone symbol represents humanity's connection to God.
A golden Aum written in Devanagari. The Aum is sacred in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religions.
The eight-spoked Dharmachakra.
The Khanda, an important symbol of Sikhism.
Taijitu symbolizes the unity of opposites between yin and yang.
Shinto torii, a traditional Japanese gate.
Dante and Beatrice see God as a point of light surrounded by angels; from Gustave Doré's illustrations for the Divine Comedy.
Charles Allan Gilbert's All is Vanity, an example of vanitas, depicts a young woman amidst her makeup and perfumes, preoccupied with her own beauty at the mirror of her vanity. But all is positioned in such a way as to make the image of a skull appear, expressing memento mori, that no matter how good she looks, it won't last, as death is inevitable.
Hamlet meditating upon Yorick's skull has become the most lasting embodiment of the imagery of vanitas, conveying the theme memento mori ('Remember you shall die'). Whatever the meaning of life, it (life) is fleeting.