In a recent
posting in practical ethics Hannah Maslen considers happiness
meaning and well-being. Let us accept that happiness and meaning in
life are both part of well-being. There is usually a positive correlation
between happiness and meaning. Usually happy people have a more meaningful life
and vice versa. However some research by Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs, Jennifer
Aaker and Emily Garbinsky shows this correlation is not always positive (1).
Maslen wonders if when this occasional incompatibility occurs whether we must
make a decision about which of these two goods to pursue. In what follows I
will consider this question. I will however use a slightly different approach
to what is meant by meaning in life.
Before
examining Maslen’s question I must consider what is meant by meaning in life. Firstly
I must make it clear I am not going to consider what a meaningful life is from
some objective viewpoint. I am going to consider what living a meaningful life actually
means to the person who lives that life. According to the researchers’ results
meaningfulness involves doing things that express and reflect the self and in
particular doing positive things for others. This involvement can increase someone’s
stress, worries, and anxiety. Secondly meaningfulness involves being a giver
more than a taker. Lastly meaningfulness integrates past, present, and future,
and sometimes meaningfulness means feeling bad. I agree with Maslen that these
results rule out a purely hedonistic life as a meaningful life. Moreover these
results seem to be incompatible with a meaningful life being based on desire fulfilment.
For as Maslen points out stress, worry and anxiety are associated with
frustrated desire, rather than desire fulfilment. It might be thought that a
meaningful life is one that includes a number of objective items, items such as
friendship and good health. Personally I believe such items may well contribute
to a meaningful life but that they do not define it.
I now want
to return to a common thread of this blog. I want to suggest that in order for
someone to have a meaningful life he must ‘care about’ or love something. Indeed
I would go as far as to suggest that for someone, whose life is totally devoid
of any ‘caring about’, he has a life totally devoid of any meaning and as a
result is not really a person at all. He is simply a wanton, see (2). In what
follows I will treat the terms ‘caring about’ and ‘loving’ as interchangeable in
much the same way as Harry Frankfurt does. Someone who ‘cares about’ or loves something
identifies himself with what he cares about and makes himself vulnerable
to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether what he cares about
flourishes or is harmed (3). The researchers’ results showed meaningfulness
involved doing things that express and reflect the self. Caring about something
means identifying with what is cared about. Identification involves doing
things that express and reflect the self. Secondly the researchers’ results
showed that meaningfulness can increase someone’s stress, worries and anxiety.
Caring about something makes someone vulnerable and so can also increase his
stress, worries and anxiety. Lastly these results show meaningfulness
integrates past, present, and future. According to Frankfurt
caring about involves consistency, steadiness of behaviour, and some degree of
persistence (4). It follows caring about must integrates past, present, and
future to some degree. In the light of the above it appears accepting that,
meaning is imparted to someone’s life by what he cares about or loves concurs
very well with the researchers’ results.
Let us
accept that meaning in someone’s life is dependent on what he loves or cares
about. If someone’s beloved flourishes then he is susceptible to the benefits
of this flourishing. He is happy. It is important to be clear that someone’s
beloved can refer to things as well as people. Someone’s beloved might for
instance be a cause, his religion, or a place. If someone’s beloved is harmed
then he is harmed. He is unhappy. At times caring about or meaning is incompatible
with our ideas about being happy. Some positive psychologists such as Martin
Seligman might disagree. Seligman would incorporate meaning into the meaning of
happiness, see PERMA . In
such cases happiness seems to mean well-being. Such a meaning seems at odds
with our intuitive ideas of happiness and in what follows ‘happiness’ will refer
to these intuitive ideas. Let us return to Maslen’s question, must we sometimes
make a decision about whether we should pursue happiness or meaning? I will now
argue the question is meaningless because if meaning depends on what we love or
‘care about’ we cannot make such a decision.
We cannot
make such a decision because we cannot make a decision to love. Someone cannot simply
decide to love someone or something. According to Frankfurt
the will of a lover is not free. On the contrary he, because of the very nature
of loving, is captivated by his beloved and his love. The will of the lover is
rigorously constrained. Love is not a matter of choice (5). It follows if meaning
depends on what we love that we cannot simply choose to have less meaning in
our lives in order to be happier. This conclusion has important consequences
for any pursuit of happiness. This pursuit is limited at least for our
intuitive ideas of happiness. This limitation means that whilst we may
of course seek to modify our life in order to be happier, that these
modifications cannot be based on consciously altering or lessening the meaning
in our lives. Of course I accept that what matters, what we love or what has
meaning, may change over time but this change is not a matter of our own volition.
I also accept even if we cannot simply will love we can nonetheless sometimes situate
ourselves in situations in which love might grow.
- Roy Baumeister, Kathleen
Vohs, Jennifer Aaker & Emily Garbinsky, 2013, Some key
differences between a happy life and a meaningful life, The Journal of
Positive Psychology, 2013, volume 8(6)
- Harry Frankfurt, 1999, Necessity,
Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press, page 114.
- Harry Frankfurt, 1988, The
Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press, page 83.
