Hostname: page-component-857557d7f7-c8jtx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-21T23:11:45.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conceptualizing great meaning in life: Metz on the good, the true, and the beautiful

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2012

IDDO LANDAU
IDDO LANDAU*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Haifa University, Haifa 31905, Israel e-mail: ilandau@research.haifa.ac.il
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is a reply to Thaddeus Metz's ‘The good, the true, and the beautiful’ (2011). I suggest that Metz's theory is too broad since it entails that merely understanding Einstein's or Darwin's views can make a life highly meaningful. Furthermore, it is unclear whether ‘fundamental conditions’, toward which highly meaningful lives are oriented, may or may not be necessary conditions to ‘non-fundamental conditions’, how completely the former should explain the latter, and whether Metz's account is indeed non-consequentialist. While acknowledging the importance of Metz's contribution, I consider alternative directions that future research might take.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 505 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aristotle (2002) Nicomachean Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Metz, Thaddeus (2001) ‘The concept of a meaningful life’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 38, 137–153.Google Scholar
Metz, Thaddeus (2002) ‘Recent work on the meaning of life’, Ethics, 112, 781–814.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metz, Thaddeus (2011) ‘The good, the true, and the beautiful: toward a unified account of great meaning in life’, Religious Studies, 47, 389–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nozick, Robert (1974) Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books).Google Scholar
Schlick, Moritz (1987) ‘On the meaning of life’, in , O., Hanfling (ed.) Life and Meaning (Cambridge MA: Blackwell), 60–73.Google Scholar
Schmidtz, David (2001) ‘The meanings of life’, in , L. S., Rouner (ed.) If I Should Die (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 170–188.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles (1992) The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Richard (1970) ‘The meaning of life’, in Good and Evil (London: Macmillan), 256–268.Google Scholar
Trisel, Brooke Allan (2004) ‘Human extinction and the value of our efforts’, The Philosophical Forum, 35, 371–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, Susan (2010) Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar