Is there a certain age when men in particular start agonising over the ultimate meaning of life? For Leo Tolstoy the crisis came aged 50, when the novelist suddenly asked himself, “Why should I do anything?”
Friedrich Nietzsche hit the peak of his existential inquiries in his early 40s, and although the contemporary psychologist Jordan Peterson started his magnum opus Maps of Meaning in his late 30s, he spent 13 years working on it and followed it up with a bestselling book broadly on the same topic.
A meaningful life, Peterson concluded, was a commitment to “the heroism of genuine Being”. For Nietzsche, it was all about suffering for authenticity, while Tolstoy, in the final analysis, couldn’t see the point of anything if God did not exist.
Seeking 'rational foundations' for a meaning of life, the Russian writer immersed himself in the scientific discoveries of 'mankind's best minds'
It's not the case that women don't write about the meaning of life: one of the most-quoted and clear-sighted books on the subject in recent years is by the American philosopher Susan Wolf, and this column has interviewed a number of women writers who have explored the topic in different ways. But it's hard not to notice the gender imbalance in the publishing world.
Could it be that women traditionally have been denied the kind of latitude necessary for at times self-indulgent introspection? I’m reminded of a New Yorker cartoon in which a working mother cooking dinner with a baby in her arms is approached by her casually-dressed husband who declares: “I need to talk about my inner life”.
Or could it be that women generally have more sense than to look for an ultimate instruction manual to life, the universe and everything? The sociologist Tom Inglis once interviewed 100 people asking them what gave their life meaning and he found "there seemed to be little need or interest in developing a strong, coherent explanation of life … Life was something they lived rather than thought about".
There is some logic to this approach. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living but, as many writers have since replied, is the unlived life worth examining?
These half-baked thoughts surfaced as three new books on the meaning of life, all by men, arrived in the Unthinkable postbox.
Genre-busting analysis
First up is The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe (Profile Books) by Jeremy Lent, a genre-busting analysis of the topic through evolutionary biology and neuroscience "with insights from Buddhism, Taoism and Indigenous wisdom".
Lent spent his early adulthood pursuing the usual material trimmings as a tech entrepreneur until his plans were upended by his wife’s death. “I made a solemn promise to myself that whatever path I chose for the rest of my life would be one that was truly meaningful,” he writes. “But where did meaning arise?” The question leads him on a circuitous intellectual journey encompassing discussion of topics as diverse as Aboriginal Dreamtime, communication between trees, and the laws of thermodynamics.
His attempt to find “the answer” in biology and physics proves frustrating as it did for Tolstoy. Seeking “rational foundations” for a meaning of life, the Russian writer immersed himself in the scientific discoveries of “mankind’s best minds” but still “I came to 0=0”.
Lent settles for describing a meaning of life, rather than the meaning, which is perhaps the best anyone can do. Meaning comes from interconnectedness, he argues. “I am here to weave my unique strand into the web of meaning.”
Whether there is an ultimate meaning of life is left as an open question, although he hints at this possibility by highlighting geometrical patterns carved into the universe. This is highly speculative stuff and it drifts into wishful thinking when Lent concludes: “Every major evolutionary step since life began on Earth was a result of increased cooperation between different types of organisms.”
‘Grand plan’
Seeing human life as part of a cosmological grand plan - as though we’re all characters in a disembodied David Attenburgh production - is not the most far-fetched idea. Indeed, countless Christians and Muslims believe exactly that, only with a different creative director.
Patrick Masterson is a Christian and his book, In Reasonable Hope: Philosophical Reflections on Ultimate Meaning (CUA Press), defends what he admits is a vulnerable intellectual position. A former president of University College Dublin where he was also a professor of philosophy, Masterson juxtaposes scientific thinking with a mindset open to "emergence" - emergence of life through a creator, of love between human beings and of life after death.
The concept is crucial to the personal relationship he has with his late wife Frankie (like Lent, Masterson is a widower). Is he deluded in believing in Frankie’s “abiding reality . . . even after her physical death”? Masterson is sure their love hasn’t died but, he asks, can this belief be sustained without the supporting plank of Christian revelation?
'For the person who believes there is no ultimate meaning because there is no ultimate meaner, the problem of suffering does not arise'
“Deny the risen Christ, and the affirmation of the abiding existence of one’s beloved can appear to be a very fallible assertion, perhaps a futile desire or a grief-induced exercise in wish fulfilment,” he writes.
Reassurance comes from the “logic of faith” and the idea that an “infinitely good and loving God” wouldn’t just allow people disappear without trace. It may be a circular argument, Masterson admits, “but not, I believe, a contradiction”.
Ah, but is God good? Richard Holloway poses the question in Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe (Canongate), which was originally released last year but is now out in paperback.
Problem of suffering
Once a leading figure in the Scottish Episcopal Church - and dubbed the “barmy bishop” by sections of the UK media because of his liberal views - Holloway identifies human suffering as “the greatest problem that confronts the religious consciousness”.
He writes: “For the person who believes there is no ultimate meaning because there is no ultimate meaner, the problem of suffering does not arise.” But someone of faith can’t avoid the question: What kind of God would allow children to be tortured?
Holloway’s solution is to follow Jesus while assuming God does not exist. “I am a Christian without God.” But he emphasises the legitimacy of disagreement and sees the book as “fumbling towards a new ecumenism of the meanings by which we interpret our common existence”.
Holloway is brilliant at puncturing clerical pomposity. Religion talks about salvation but Holloway asks: “Salvation from what?” He makes a strong case that religious dogmatism is highly gendered.
“Mansplaining”, that combination of overconfidence and cluelessness, “is rife in Christianity, which has a passion for proclaiming its confident solutions to all the existential puzzles that beset us”. He is too diplomatic to say it but Islam, Judaism and other faiths need to look at the bearded man in the mirror too.
Not to sound too morbid but this book might be read alongside Bryan Magee's Ultimate Questions published a few years before that philosopher's death in July 2019. The atheistic Magee processed the idea of oblivion with the sort of resoluteness you'd imagine Stephen Dedalus having had he lived beyond James Joyce's novels.
Holloway, now aged 87, is conscious of death approaching - his previous book was titled Waiting for the Last Bus. There’s not much time left to recant before a potential drop-off at the pearly gates. Should that situation arise, however, you can imagine Holloway, with his arms folded and chin held high, telling St Peter he is not coming in until he gets to speak to Mary Magdalene.
Each of these authors makes a valuable contribution to the debate over life’s meaning and, while it might be tempting to pit one against another, Holloway has a parting thought.
“One of the things I am trying to suggest,” he writes, “is that contradictory stories can honestly be told about the world.”
ASK A SAGE
What's the point of life?
Mary Midgley replies: "Well, there are many points … And that the point of life could be to make life better doesn't seem to me too mysterious."
