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Thesis ‘Does life have meaning?’ is a recent European question most traditions would not ask

Kwame Asante Fellow
· 6 replies
Meaning of lifeAfrican & AfricanaChineseIslamicConfucianismExistentialismAlbert CamusConfuciusKwame GyekyeQoheleth#comparative-philosophy#meaning-of-life#modernity#personhood
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Where it stands

When my students in Accra first meet existentialism, a few of them find it thrilling and most find it puzzling. "Why would life need to have a meaning," one asked me, "when it already has a place?"

That is my thesis, put more carefully. The question "does life have meaning?", understood as asking whether an individual can find or create significance against an indifferent universe, is a recent and largely European question, about two centuries old. Most traditions, for most of history, did not ask it in that form. They asked how to live well in a place already given: in a lineage, a cosmos, a community, a covenant.

In the Akan understanding I grew up with, a person is not born complete. Personhood is something achieved by living well within a community: one becomes a person (onipa) in the full sense by fulfilling obligations to family, lineage and ancestors. The question for an Akan elder is not "does my life have meaning?" but "have I lived as a person should?" Gyekye's moderate communitarianism tries to state this without erasing individual judgement.

Confucian thought, as I understand it, has a similar shape: meaning lies in relationships, cultivation and continuity. Islamic thought gives life a purpose and an account to be rendered. In each case the answer is built into the world before the individual arrives.

So the existentialist answer, that there is no inherent meaning and it must be created, is not the human condition seen clearly. It is one historically located response to a particular loss. I invite objections, especially from those who think the question is older or more universal than I allow.

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6 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Ratna Wulandari

    For Fellow

    For. In the Javanese ethics my mother taught me through batik, the questions were about harmony (rukun) and proper respect (hormat): keeping the right relation to family, elders, neighbours and the unseen. Nobody asked whether life had a meaning. They asked whether you were keeping your place well, and the motifs themselves were a way of saying where each thing belongs. When I read Camus at university it felt like a question from a different house.

  2. Vũ Quốc Bảo

    For Fellow

    For, partly. In Vietnamese Buddhist teaching I grew up with, the question "what is the meaning of life?" would be treated as a symptom of the craving the practice is meant to dissolve. Not answered yes or no, but recognised as part of the problem. That's a third position your thesis doesn't name: not "life has a place" and not "life lacks meaning", but "the question is a sign of suffering".

    Helpful · 2

Against the thesis 2

  1. Claire Dubois

    Against Fellow

    Against, with an ancient counter-example. Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, asks exactly this question: all is vanity, the sun rises and sets, one generation goes and another comes, and what profit has a man from all his labour? That is not a modern European voice. It is Hebrew wisdom from well over two thousand years ago. Camus himself rejected the existentialist label, but his question about whether life is worth living has ancient company.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Bilal Rashid

    Against Fellow

    Against, at least as stated. The Qurʾān asks the question outright: "Did you think that We created you without purpose, and that you would not be returned to Us?" (23:115). It is posed to the reader and then answered. You're right that the answer is given rather than created. But the question itself, whether life has a purpose, is very much asked, and asked of individuals, not only of communities.

    Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Sasha Kovalenko

    Fellow

    Skovoroda, in eighteenth-century Ukraine, offers a middle case. For him happiness lies in "kindred" work, work that suits one's nature as given by God. That's a place-based answer, but it's also deeply personal: you must find your own kinship, nobody can assign it to you. So the boundary between "given place" and "personal search" is not as clean as the thesis needs.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Kwame Asante

    Fellow

    Claire and Bilal are right that the question is old; I overstated. Qoheleth and the Qurʾān both ask it. What is recent is the answer that there is no given purpose and the individual must manufacture one alone. Let me revise: the question is ancient; the framing of meaning as a private product, against an indifferent universe, is recent. Bảo's third position and Sasha's middle case both belong in the picture.