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1834
- The first English use of the expression “the meaning of life” appeared in 1834 in Thomas Carlyle’s (1795-1881) Sartor Resartus II. ix, where Teufelsdrockh observes, “our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom.”
iep.utm.edu/mean-ear/The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives
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Feb 10, 2021 · Two decades ago analytic reflection on life’s meaning was described as a “backwater” compared to that on well-being or good character, and it was possible to cite nearly all the literature in a given critical discussion of the field (Metz 2002). Neither is true any longer.
- Background
- Nineteenth Century Philosophers
- Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophers
- Early Twentieth Century Analytic, American, and English-Language Philosophers
- Conclusion
- References and Further Reading
a. The Origin of the English Expression “the Meaning of Life”
The English term “meaning” dates back to the fourteenth century C.E. Its origins, according to the Oxford English Dictionary(OED), lie in the Middle English word “meenyng” (also spelled “menaynge,” “meneyng,” and “mennyng”). In its earliest occurrences, in English original compositions as well as in English translations of earlier works, meaning is most often what, on the one hand, sentences, utterances, and stories, and, on the other hand, dreams, visions, signs, omens, and rituals have or m...
b. Questions about the Meaning of Life
The most familiar form of the question(s) about the meaning of life is simply, “What is the meaning of life?” Although the form of the question is one, when it is asked, any one (or more) of several different senses may be intended. Here are some of the more common of them. (1) In some cases, what the seeker seeks is the kernel, the inner reality, the core, or the essence, underlying some phenomenon. Thus one might ask what his essence, his true self is, and then feel that he has found the me...
c. The Broader Historical Background
Although nineteenth century thinkers were the first in the West to put the question precisely in the form “What is the meaning of life?” concern with questions in what may be called “the meaning-of-life family,” that is, ultimate questions about life, the world, existence, and its purpose may be found, in the East and the West alike, almost as far back as we can trace human thought about anything. Thus Gilgamesh (c. 2000 B.C.E.) asked why he must die; the composers of The Rig Veda (c. 1200 B....
Let us turn now to the story of what philosophers from Schopenhauer in the early 1800s to Ayer and Camus in the 1940s have had to say about the meaning of life.
In the early twentieth century questions about the meaning of life continued to be of interest to leading European or “Continental” philosophers.
Anglo-American philosophers in the very late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries continued to be interested in problems of the meaning of life as well.
The dismissal of the question about the meaning of life which was characteristic of Ayer and his generation, and Camus’s idea that meaninglessness doesn’t matter, may be what ironically sparked the recent interest in the question. The natural philosophical response is that surely the question of the meaning of life is meaningful and important: in l...
Ayer, A. J. “The Claims of Philosophy.” Reprinted in The Meaning of Life, 3rd Ed.. E. D. Klemke (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2008: 199-202. (Originally published in 1947)Baier, K. “The Meaning of Life.” Reprinted in The Meaning of Life. E. D. Klemke (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 1981: 81-117. (Originally published in 1947.)Camus, A. “The Myth of Sisyphus.” J. O’Brien (tr.). Reprinted in part in Ways of Wisdom: Readings on the Good Life, Steve Smith (ed.). Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983: 244-255. (Origi...Carlyle, T. 1834. Fraser’s Magazine. available online at Project Gutenberg.Apr 24, 2008 · The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction shows how centuries of thinkers — from Shakespeare and Schopenhauer to Marx, Sartre, and Beckett — have tackled the conundrum of the meaning of life.
- Terry Eagleton
Origin of the expression. 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]
It was Novalis who was, to the best of our knowledge, the first to use the phrase ‘ der sinn des lebens’ – ‘the meaning of life’. In a manuscript composed between late 1797 and mid 1798 he wrote that: “Only an artist can divine the meaning of life.”
May 15, 2007 · The Meaning of Life. First published Tue May 15, 2007. Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms.
May 10, 2010 · A light and lively essay on a variety of facets of the question of life’s meaning, often addressing linguistic and literary themes. Rejects subjective or “postmodern” approaches to meaning in favor of a need for harmonious or loving relationships.
