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Five Tests for What Makes a Life Worth Living

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Notes

  1. Fred Feldman, What is This Thing Called Happiness? (2010, Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 161, 167, and 168, disagrees. He suggests that we commonly use the phrase “a life worth living” as roughly synonymous with a life high in individual welfare. Richard Kraut, “Desire and the Human Good,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 68.2 (1994): 39–54, pp. 40 and 52, uses the phrase this way.

  2. David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006, New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 22–24, notes the ambiguity.

  3. Benatar (2006, pp. 22–24) thinks that the two require very different standards. David DeGrazia, “Is It Wrong to Impose the Harms of Human Life? A Reply to Benatar,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 331 (2010): 317–331, p. 320, questions the need for different standards.

  4. Owen Flanagan, Self-Expressions: Mind, Morals, and the Meaning of Life (1996, Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 3–11, also draws the connection between activities worth doing, or things worth caring about, and lives worth living.

  5. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971, Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p. 432); and Susan Wolf, “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life,” Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1997): 207–25, p. 211.

  6. Only a few have drawn a distinction between what makes a life worth living and what makes a life meaningful. As far as I can tell, Kurt Baier, “Threats of Futility: Is Life Worth Living?,” Free Inquiry 8 (1988): 47–52, provides the first sustained discussion of the distinction. Kurt Baier, Problems of Life and Death (1997, Amherst: Prometheus Books), pp. 67–69, also makes a few passing remarks on worth. Apart from this, only Brooke Alan Trisel, “Futility and the Meaning of Life Debate,” Sorites 14 (2002): 70–84, pp. 62–65, provides a substantial defense of the distinction. Thaddeus Metz, “New Developments in the Meaning of Life,” Philosophy Compass 2.2 (2007): 197–217, p. 213, suggests that there is a difference, though he provides little defense. Thaddeus Metz, “Recent Work on the Meaning of Life,” Ethics 112 (2002): 781–814, p. 788, n. 10, also briefly notes the distinction. David Blumenfeld, “Living Life Over Again,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79.2 (2009): 357–386, p. 8, n. 2, notes the distinction but does not develop a theory of worth. Susan Haack, “Worthwhile Lives,” Free Inquiry 22.1 (2002): 50–51, proposes that we abandon the concept of meaning for worth. She does not explain the conceptual difference. Richard Wollheim, The Thread of Life (1984, New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 444–448, proposes a distinction between a life worth living and a worthwhile life. His distinction closely tracks that between welfare and meaning. Albert Camus, The Plague The Fall Exile and the Kingdom and Selected Essays (Trans.) Justin O’Brien (2004, New York: Everyman’s Library), p. 533, appears to distinguish between meaning and worth: “people have pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life leads necessarily to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments.” But he says very little about worth.

  7. Stephen Darwall, Welfare and Rational Care (2002, Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 26 and 109 n. 5, suggests that a life having worth is an estimable life. He draws the contrast as one between welfare and perfectionist value. Thomas Hurka, Virtue, Vice, and Value (2001, Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 7, defends a similar distinction.

  8. Any plausible theory of worth will look like an objective list theory of well-being. Some of the more influential defenses of objective list theory of well-being (not worth) include: David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (1989, New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 221–236; Brad Hooker, “Does Moral Virtue Constitute a Benefit to the Agent?,” in Roger Crisp (Ed.), How Should One Live? (1996, Oxford: Oxford University Press); Robert Nozick, “Happiness,” in his The Examined Life (1989, New York: Simon and Schuster); and Thomas Scanlon, “Value, Desire, and the Quality of Life,” in Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Eds.), The Quality of Life (1993, Oxford: Clarendon Press).

  9. Camus (2004); Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation (1969); Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in Walter Kaufmann (Trans.), The Portable Nietzsche (1977, New York: Penguin Books); Cicero, On Old Age, (Trans.) W. A. Falconer (1923, Cambridge: Harvard University Press); David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Richard H. Popkin (Ed.) (1998, Indianapolis: Hackett); and Bernard Williams, “Resenting One’s Own Existence,” in his Making Sense of Humanity (1995, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

  10. Brooke Alan Trisel, “Judging Life and Its Value,” Sorities 18 (2007): 60–75, considers an overlapping set of tests.

  11. Camus (2004, p. 495).

  12. William James, “Is Life Worth Living?,” International Journal of Ethics 6.1 (1895): 1–24, p. 5 notes the same.

  13. Camus (2004, p. 499).

  14. Camus (2004, p. 541).

  15. Camus (2004, p. 536).

  16. Colin Wilson, Anti-Sartre, with an Essay on Camus (1981, San Bernardino: Borgo Press), pp. 9–11 and 55–57, argues that Camus’s examples of absurdity are simply confused. Although Robert Solomon, Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre (2006, Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 38, agrees that Camus’s arguments are “ultimately incoherent,” he (ch. 2) defends Camus’s project as one of getting us to see the value of passionate engagement.

    Julian Young, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life (2003, New York: Routledge), ch. 12, argues that Camus’s value skepticism is limited to a denial of grand narrative meaning. If so, Camus’s project is a response to what Eric Wielenberg, Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe (2005, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 16, calls the “final outcome argument”—that human lives have no value if the ultimate outcome of the universe is a cold, entropic, lifeless collection of distantly spaced rocks.

    For criticisms of the final outcome argument see: Paul Edwards, “The Meaning and Value of Life,” in E.D. Klemke and Steven M. Cahn (Eds.), The Meaning of Life (2008, New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 121–122); Wielenberg (2005, ch. 1, especially pp. 29–31); Aaron Smuts, “‘It’s a Wonderful Life’: Pottersville and the Meaning of Life,” Film and Philosophy 16 (2012): 15–33; and Aaron Smuts, “The Good Cause Account of the Meaning of Life,” Southern Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming).

  17. Hume (1998, pp. 61–62). Baier (1988, p. 49) and Trisel (2007, p. 67) also note the problem, though none mention Hume.

  18. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark (1992, New York: Washington Square Press), p. 129 [3.1.84–91].

  19. Baier (1988, p. 50) notes the same worry.

  20. Schopenhauer (1969, W1, pp. 283–284).

  21. Schopenhauer (1969, W1, p. 324).

  22. Nietzsche (1977, ‘The Gay Science’, Section 341).

  23. Rather than a test for minimal worth, Clarke (1990, pp. 251–252) argues that the affirmation is “an ideal for human beings.”

  24. Baier (1988, p. 49) proposes a single-repetition test. Trisel (2007, p. 72) aptly calls it “unirecurrence.”

  25. Blumenfeld (2009, p. 378) agrees that the recurrence test is not a good test for whether a life is worth living.

  26. John Martin Fischer, “Contribution on Martha Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LIX.3 (1999): 787–792, suggests that amnesia might be a solution to the putative problems with immortality. Aaron Smuts, “Immortality and Significance,” Philosophy and Literature 35.1 (2011): 134–149, raises a similar objection to Fischer. Trisel (2007, p. 71) suggests that forgetting may allow for novelty upon repetition.

  27. Thomas Hurka, “Games and the Good,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 80 (2006): 217–235, provides a compelling theory of achievement value.

  28. Following Maudemarie Clarke, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 269, Trisel (2007, pp. 70–72) evaluates the recurrence test assuming that one would remember one’s former lives.

  29. Ivan Soll, “Reflections on Recurrence,” in Robert Solomon (Ed.), Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays (1973, Garden City; Doubleday), pp. 339–342. Michael Tanner, Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction (1994, New York: Oxford University Press), p. 62, raises the same worry. Lucretius, The Nature of Things (Trans.) A.E. Stallings (2007, New York: Penguin Books), pp. 97–98, III. 848–862, notes the same about past lives.

    To solve Soll’s problem, Clarke (1990, pp. 266–270) asks us to ignore the incoherence of a literal reading and to adopt an “unrealistic or uncritical” view of the test. Clarke (1990, ch. 8) also provides an excellent survey of the literature on the topic. For a more recent overview of the secondary literature on eternal recurrence, see Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (2006, Harvard University Press), ch. 5.

  30. Cicero (1923, p. 95; De Senectute xxiii, 82–84).

  31. Hume (1998, p. 62).

  32. Bernard Williams, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,” in his Problems of the Self (1993, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 92.

  33. Lucretius (2007, p. 92, III. 670–680).

  34. Cicero (1923, pp. 97–99; De Senectute xxiii, 84–85).

  35. Walter Kaufmann, “Death,” in his Faith of a Heretic (1961, New York: Double Day), p. 386.

  36. Kaufmann (1961, p. 381) and Walter Kaufmann, “Death Without Dread,” in his Existentialism, Religion, and Death: Thirteen Essays (1976, New York: Meridian), p. 231.

  37. Williams (1995, p. 228).

  38. Trisel (2007, pp. 67–68 and 75) defends a similar test: “one can imagine whether one would have chosen to live the life that one is living, taking into account everything that one has experienced.”

  39. Job (3.3–3.11).

  40. Saul Smilansky, “Preferring Not to Have Been Born,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75.2 (1997): 241–247.

  41. Baier (1988, p. 50) seemingly comes to the opposite conclusion.

  42. Blumenfeld (2009, p. 383) suggests the idea of a caretaker for determining whether it would be good to repeat one’s life.

  43. Jerrold Levinson, “Intrinsic Value and the Notion of a Life,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62.4 (2004): 319–329, p. 327, notes the difficulty in specifying the scope of what falls under the concept of a life.

  44. Job (11.18–19).

  45. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1097b. Similarly, Thomas Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (1998, Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p. 112, suggests that the choiceworthiness of a life depends on its welfare value and worthiness.

  46. Blumenfeld (2009, p. 386 n. 36).

  47. Smilansky (1997, p. 241). James Yeates, “Quality Time: Temporal and Other Aspects of Ethical Principles Based on a ‘Life Worth Living’,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25.4 (2012): 607–624, p. 608, presents a subjective theory. Since he is only concerned with animals, he sees worth as a matter of welfare.

  48. Feldman (2006, pp. 9–10) and Ben Bradley, Well-Being and Death (2009, Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 2–3, discuss the test. Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (1999, New York: Oxford University Press), p. 97, proposes a similar test. Feldman (2011, pp. 164–170) backs off the crib test in favor of triangulation: the concept of welfare is central to our notions of altruism, self-interest, benefit, and quality of life.

  49. Bradley (2009, p. 3).

  50. It is fairly common to motivate the concern this way. See: Frankl (2006, p. 117); Thaddeus Metz, “The Concept of a Meaningful Life,” American Philosophical Quarterly 38.2 (2001): 137–153, p. 147; Wolf (2010, p. 8); and Wielenberg (2005). In contrast, L.W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (1996, New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 22 and 24, uses a deathbed test to raise thoughts about welfare.

  51. As with all subjective tests, Trisel’s (2007, pp. 67–68 and 75) first-person version suffers from the relativity problem. So does Baier’s (1988, p. 49) subjective test.

  52. Plato, “Myth of Er” (Republic 10.614–10.621).

  53. Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, (1959, Boston: Beacon Press), p. 134.

  54. Smuts (2012 and forthcoming) discusses the significance of Frankl’s medical ape for the meaning of life.

  55. Wolf (1997 and 2010).

  56. F.M. Kamm, “Rescuing Ivan Ilych: How We Live and How We Die,” Ethics 113 (2003): 202–233.

  57. Yeates (2012).

  58. I thank Antony Aumann, Chris Grau, and an anonymous referee for feedback on a previous version of this paper. And I thank Heidi Bollich for reading over a few drafts.

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    Aaron Smuts

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Smuts, A. Five Tests for What Makes a Life Worth Living. J Value Inquiry 47, 439–459 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-013-9393-x

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