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Is Susan Wolf’s account of meaning just “do what you love” with extra steps?

Rohan Desai Fellow
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Meaning of lifeAnalyticSusan Wolf#fitting-fulfilment#objective-value#passion#susan-wolf
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Every founder book I read on the way down said the same thing: find your passion and meaning will follow. I believed it. I was passionate. It didn't.

Someone here recommended Susan Wolf, and the phrase I keep seeing is that meaning arises "when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness". On first reading that sounds like "do what you love" plus a footnote saying "but make sure it's good".

Is that all it is? What does the "objective" part add, and who decides what is objectively worthwhile? Because if the answer is "philosophers decide", I'm not sure that's better than the founder books.

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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Rowena Abellana

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Rohan, the "extra steps" are the whole point, so let me spell them out.

    Wolf's view is a hybrid. It says two things are each necessary and together sufficient for meaning: that you are actively engaged with, gripped by, what you're doing (the subjective part), and that what you're doing is genuinely worthwhile, independent of your being gripped by it (the objective part).

    Each half rules out a kind of life. The subjective half rules out the person who dutifully serves a great cause they feel nothing for: valuable, but not meaningful for them. The objective half rules out the person passionately devoted to something worthless. Wolf's examples include a couch-bound character she calls the Blob, and people devoted to trivial projects. They may be happy, but we hesitate to call their lives meaningful.

    "Do what you love" keeps only the first half. Your experience is evidence for the second: you were passionate, but perhaps about something that didn't, on reflection, seem worth the passion. That's exactly the case the objective condition is for.

    As for "who decides": Wolf admits she has no complete theory of objective value. She thinks we can recognise clear cases, like caring for others, creating, understanding, without a full theory. That's an honest gap, and critics press on it.

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Other answers

  1. Mateo Quispe

    Fellow

    The gap Rowena mentions is not small. When philosophers list "objectively worthwhile" activities, the list tends to look like a university faculty's hobbies: art, science, scholarship, intimate relationships. A market woman in Lima feeding a family for forty years can drop out of the picture unless the list is very carefully made. I'm not against objective value. I'm against assuming the people making the list are neutral.

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    1. Rowena Abellana

      Fellow

      Fair, Mateo, though I'd say caring for others is on every version of Wolf's list, and your market woman is the clearest case of it.

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  2. Hugo Marchetti

    Fellow

    For what it's worth, Camus would say both of you are looking for a guarantee he thinks isn't available. But he also says revolt is a kind of passion that stays lucid. I read Wolf as Camus with the despair taken out and the furniture put back.

  3. Rohan Desai

    Fellow

    This helps. My company was something I loved and which, honestly, didn't need to exist. Wolf explains why the passion didn't save me. Mateo's warning I'm taking too: I'll be suspicious of anyone, including me, who decides what's worthwhile for everyone else.

    Helpful · 1