Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why it MattersPrinceton University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-69114524-2,€ 19.99

Simon Derpmann

Published online: 25 November 2011# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

The book contains Susan Wolf’s Tanner Lectures Meaning in Life and Why it Matters thatwere delivered at Princeton in 2007. The text of the lectures is accompanied by anintroduction by Stephen Macedo and followed by four short comments by John Koethe,Robert Adams, Nomy Arpaly, and Jonathan Haidt, as well as Wolf ’s response to her critics.Wolf’s lectures are not on the meaning of life understood as the general purpose or sanctityof human existence. Rather, Wolf analyzes a specific type of personal identification that canbe understood as a source of a specific type of motivating and normative reasons.

Wolf starts her argument by pointing out a misleading dichotomy in the theory ofpractical reason. In her view, the conception of agents as being motivated either by egoisticconsiderations or by taking on an entirely impersonal perspective leaves out a significanttype of reasons. If moral agency consists in doing what is best for the world, and strivingfor happiness is ultimately a self-concerned endeavor, then practical reasons concerning themeaning of a person’s life are neither reducible to happiness nor to morality.

Wolf identifies two ideas that underlie meaningfulness. The first defines meaningfulnessthrough personal fulfillment, since whatever is supposed to confer meaning to someone’slife will only do so, if the person cares about it. The second is the conception that whateverconfers meaning must be of independent value. Along these lines, Wolf distinguishes asubjective (the fulfillment view) and an objective (the larger-than-oneself view) conceptionof meaningfulness. Wolf opposes both conceptions. In her view, the fulfillment view has noconceptual resources to account for the fact that some of the projects and relationships thatare possibly endorsed by persons, like making handwritten copies of War and Peace, do notconfer meaning to their lives. There are simply things that, objectively, persons should notendorse. In accordance with this criticism, the larger-than-oneself view emphasizes value ofmeaningful activities outside the agent and independent of the agent. However, Wolfargues, a person’s life cannot be said to derive meaning from a value that she does not careor even know about. Instead, she proposes to ‘link’ the subjective and the objectivecomponent of meaningfulness. Wolf defends a combination (the fitting fulfillment view) of

Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2012) 15:421–422DOI 10.1007/s10677-011-9321-8

S. Derpmann (*)Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Philosophisches Seminar, Domplatz 23,48143 Münster, Germanye-mail: simon.derpmann@uni-muenster.de

the fulfillment view and the larger than oneself view. Thus, an activity or commitment canonly confer meaning, if it is both subjectively endorsed and objectively valuable. Shereserves the term meaning for a category of value that is realized by “loving objects worthyof love and engaging with them in a positive way” (8, 13).

Having proposed this unified view, Wolf focuses on the idea of objectivity that the fittingfulfillment view relies on. Value needs to be subject-independent in two ways in order to beable to confer meaning to a person’s actions. First, the locus of value has to lie outside theperson who engages with it in a meaningful way, i.e. the person has act for something orsomeone else. Second, the standard of judgment cannot be solely the standard of the personherself. A meaningful activity must be considered meaningful objectively, or from animpartial point of view.

Wolf’s conception of meaning is largely convincing, However, in her analysis of theindependence of the value that constitutes meaning, a scholar of philosophy will want tohear more about the arguments for the options of how to understand values as neitherentirely subjective, nor as entirely objective. Wolf shows that the understanding ofobjectivity that is implied in her conception of meaningfulness does not commit her toqueer metaphysical views. However, she could refer more firmly to recent efforts to makesense of ideas of care, love, personal projects and agent-relative reasons. The dichotomybetween morals and self-concern as well as the strong division between subjective andobjective have been questioned more heavily in philosophical theory than Wolf’sreconstruction suggests. Accordingly, the analysis of meaningfulness as part of leading agood life, that Wolf justifiably brings forward to contest false dichotomies in practicalphilosophy, could be followed by similar arguments concerning the intersubjectivenormative significance of relationships towards others that need to be described in otherterms than personal happiness or a narrow conception of morality.

In her lectures, Wolf decidedly does not give a material conception of meaningfulness.Rather, she analyses what is to be understood by the claim that activities and endorsementsare meaningful. She explains why it is theoretically and practically important that the classof reasons connected to meaning is made subject to reflection, so that we will continue tocare about meaningfulness. Wolf’s lectures offer a valuable starting point into thinkingabout the good life in terms of meaningfulness and of the ability of philosophy to makesense of these concepts that encourages the reader to go into the philosophical details.

422 S. Derpmann