Tracking the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Journey

353 Pages·2006·2.56 MB·English

by  Yuval Lurie

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T R AC K I N G T H E
MeaninG
O F L I F E
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Yuval Lurie
Tracking the
Meaning
of Life
a Philosophical
Journey
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS
COLUMBIA AND LONDON
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Copyright © 2006 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lurie, Yuval.
[Be-’ikvot mashma’ut ha-hayim. English]
Tracking the meaning of life : a philosophical journey / Yuval Lurie.
p. cm.
Summary: “Critical philosophical investigation of the question: What is the meaning
of life? Discusses views prominent in analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and existen-
tialism, drawing especially on the thought of Tolstoy, Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Camus
and exploring in depth the insights these thinkers offer regarding their own difficulties
concerning the meaning of life”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8262-1652-6 (hard cover : alk. paper)
1. Life. 2. Philosophy, Modern. I. Title.
BD431.L8613 2006
128—dc22
2006000829
This paper meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Designer: Stephanie Foley
Typesetter:foleydesign
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Typefaces: ITCNew Baskerville and NeutraText
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For Hagit
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Philosophical Provocation for This Book 1
PART I: THE PROBLEM OF LIFE
Chapter 1. Tolstoy Confesses Publicly and Tells the Story of Ivan Ilych 11
Chapter 2. A Philosophical Question 21
Chapter 3. An Existential Question 32
Chapter 4. An Ancient Question 43
Chapter 5. A Modern Question 58
Chapter 6. A Defiant Question 71
Chapter 7. A Solution that Chases a Dream 79
PART II: THE SENSE OF THE WORLD
Chapter 8. Wittgenstein Turns to Philosophy 89
Chapter 9. The Logical Limits of the World 97
Chapter 10. The Cognitive Limits of the World 105
Chapter 11. The Ethical Limits of the World 115
Chapter 12. The Meaning of Life as the Sense of the World 125
Chapter 13. Mystical Experience as a Substitute for Ethics 136
Chapter 14. Overcoming the Problem of Life 144
Chapter 15. What Cannot Be Put into Words but Makes Itself Manifest 152
Chapter 16. Assessing Wittgenstein’s View of the Meaning of Life 160
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viii Contents
PART III: INVENTING A MEANING TO LIFE
Chapter 17. Sartre Takes the Train to Dijon 171
Chapter 18. Life Journeys and Personal Self-Identity 178
Chapter 19. Attributing Personal Meaning to Life 192
Chapter 20. A Phenomenological Ontology 202
Chapter 21. Freedom as a Problematic Human Mode of Existence 212
Chapter 22. An Existentialist Ethics 221
Chapter 23. An Existentialist Conception of Meaning 232
Chapter 24. Affirmation through Criticism 241
PART IV: LOSS OF MEANING FROM LIFE
Chapter 25. Camus Tells the Stories of Meursault and of Sisyphus 249
Chapter 26. Sartre Disputes Camus 256
Chapter 27. Hare Disputes Camus 266
Chapter 28. Nagel Disputes Camus 276
Chapter 29. Meaning Blindness and Alien Life-Forms 288
Chapter 30. The Soul of Life 299
Chapter 31. The Moral of Camus’s Story 309
Epilogue: Poor Man’s Wisdom 315
Bibliography 329
Index 333
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Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK is a revised version of its Hebrew predecessor, published in
2002 by Haifa University Press and Maarive Publishing Company and
awarded the Bahat prize. Some of the thoughts included in it appeared in
two articles I previously published in Hebrew: “On the Very Question,” in
The Meaning of Life, edited by Assa Kasher, and “Wittgenstein on the
Meaning of Life,” in Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 49, 2000. I
thank these outlets for making use of that material. My son, Yotam, instigat-
ed the philosophical journey undertaken here. Robert Albin, Leor Aviman,
and Nechama Verbin read parts of the manuscript describing it. Gad
Prodovski and two readers from the University of Missouri Press read it in
its entirety. All of them made valuable suggestions for which I am thankful.
Ruvik Dannially made the initial translation of the book into English, and I
thank him. I also thank Nimrod Maman and Ithai Smolyar for helping with
the typescript.
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