Chapter 2

PURPOSE

“If one considers an article of manufacture – as, for example, a book or a paper-knife – one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had a conception of it. . . . Let us say, then, of the paper-knife that its essence – that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition possible – precedes its existence. . . . Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan . . . . Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man . . . .”

- Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism (Sartre 1948:26-28)

            Thinking about a question in the wrong way will render the question unanswerable. People often believe that the question of the meaning of life is a question about the purpose of life. Some people believe that they are born with an inner purpose, and that to discover this inner purpose would be to discover the meaning of their lives. Others believe that events always happen for a reason, even when they do not understand that reason. Many of those who believe in God see a meaningful life as one that fulfils God’s purposes and try to align their own purposes with His. However, many of us no longer believe in hidden inner purposes, unknowable cosmic reasons, or a personal God. Yet we still, mistakenly, conceptualize the search for life’s meaning as a search for life’s purpose.

            The role of function and purpose in the technology of his day influenced Aristotle to apply this purpose-seeking framework to answering the question of how to live:

Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the function of man. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or any artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function. Have the carpenter, then, and the tanner certain functions or activities, and man none? Is he born without a function? Or as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all these? What then can this be? (Aristotle 1953:I.7)

Aristotle’s ancient conceptual framework, a way of thinking that philosophers label “teleological,” is still with us. To make progress, we must, like Sartre in the chapter motto, reject this whole way of thinking about the question of meaning. We must reorient our quest away from searching for a purpose in life and toward discovering how to judge what truly matters.

Purposes: Psychological, Scientific, and Theological

            Without doubt, human beings are purposeful creatures. We have intentions and goals. We formulate and revise our ends in life. We commit ourselves to courses of action and make plans for how to pursue our lives. We understand ourselves through understanding our goals and purposes. We also understand other people in the same terms. We formulate theories about the goals and purposes of others to predict their behavior and to coordinate our actions with theirs. Our everyday understanding of human psychology is irreducibly purposive.

            Nothing is wrong with this view of human psychology. Trouble arises, however, when we attempt to project this way of understanding ourselves onto the cosmos. Our early ancestors, quite plausibly, had a better understanding of themselves and their fellows than they did of the world around of them. So they easily came to project their understanding of human psychology onto the natural world. They saw the world in an animist way. They explained the behavior of the seasons, the weather, and the world about them using the plans and purposes of spirits or gods. As they themselves created artifacts to fulfil their own purposes, so too they understood the origins of the world through the purposes of its creator.

            Only in the last few hundred years have human beings begun to stop projecting their own psychology onto the universe and to throw off this animist world view. The physics of Galileo and Newton and the biology of Darwin have replaced the teleological “science” of Aristotle that had held sway for two millennia. The search for purpose in science is over.

            However, the archaic search for purpose in the universe has left us a legacy in our thinking. People have not yet outgrown its conceptual structure when they think about life. People still equate searching for life’s meaning with searching for life’s purpose. They still conceive the object of their quest to be finding some great purpose with which to align their lives. Aligning their lives with this external purpose, they believe, will endow their lives with meaning.

            The God-fearing search for a cosmic purpose, the purpose for which some universal spirit created them. Two problems face this conception of our quest. One is that no such cosmic purpose exists. The view that the universe is the artifact of an intelligent designer is simply false. The other problem is that, even if there were some cosmic purpose ordained by an intelligent designer, we would still need to evaluate that purpose. We would still need to ask if it is a worthwhile goal. Aligning our lives with an external purpose, even an intelligent designer’s purpose, is not enough to give our lives meaning unless that purpose truly matters. To make this judgment, we have to know the source of what truly matters.

Purpose in Science

            The teleological conceptual framework, in which people seek explanations in terms of purposes, is outdated. It is discredited in just about every other area of science, morality, and political theory. To make progress, we must leave it behind.

            One wrong-headed interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution goes like this: The survival of the fittest leads to progress over time. New species arise which are better than those they surpass. The human species is the culmination of this evolutionary progress. Therefore, the human species is the purpose of evolution. However, this interpretation of evolution is false. Evolution is not going anywhere. Any attempt to see human civilization as the purpose of evolution is scientifically unproductive. Individual organisms succeed each other in various environments, and some individuals are more successful at passing on their genetic material than others. That is it. Change, yes; increased complexity, often; but purpose, no.

            Richard Dawkins, a well-known contemporary defender of Darwin’s theory of evolution and author of The Selfish Gene, writes:

We humans have purpose on the brain. We find it difficult to look at anything without wondering what it is “for,” what the motive for it or the purpose behind it might be. The desire to see purpose everywhere is a natural one in an animal that lives surrounded by machines, works of art, tools and other designed artifacts -- an animal, moreover, whose waking thoughts are dominated by its own goals and aims. Although a car, a tin opener, a screwdriver and a pitchfork all legitimately warrant the “What is it for” question, the mere fact that it is possible to frame a question does not make it legitimate or sensible to do so. . . . Questions can be simply inappropriate, however heartfelt their framing. (Dawkins 1995:81)

Living in a technological world, a world of sophisticated tools for human purposes, human beings will naturally read “purpose” into their interpretation of the world. So projecting this framework onto the world seems natural for them. Nevertheless, the question, “What is the purpose of living?” is not a legitimate, well-framed, or fruitful question.

            Physicists have abandoned explanations that appeal to purpose. The ancients thought that falling bodies always sought their natural place, which was on the surface of the earth. Such teleological explanations got their science nowhere. Modern physics, as we know it today, was able to develop only after it left this sort of explanation behind. Through Galileo and Newton, scientists came to think of motion and the law of gravity in a totally different way.

            Biologists, too, have abandoned explanations that appeal to purpose. We can say, loosely, that the purpose of the heart is to pump blood, but that does not get us very far. The sophisticated therapies of modern medicine depend on a much finer grained knowledge of the physiology and biochemistry of the heart.

            Political thinking, hopefully, has abandoned explanations that appeal to purpose. In totalitarian regimes, an individual is important only insofar as he fulfils a role in society. He has a purpose, which is to contribute to the good of the state. In democratic regimes, an individual is important in herself. She has inherent political rights. Her worth is not just instrumental; it is not that she is important only as she fulfils the purposes of the state. Her worth is intrinsic.

            So, too, we should abandon the search for a purpose when thinking about life’s meaning. Otherwise we will be trapped by reasoning that goes like this: The meaning of life is the purpose of life; life has no purpose; therefore, life has no meaning. We must stop looking for instrumental meaning. Our lives are not resources serving some higher purpose. Instead, we should look for inherent meaning, meaning that is to be found within life itself. We should not think of something as meaningful only if it has a purpose. Instead, we should think of something as meaningful only if it is inherently worthwhile, that is, only if it truly matters.

            Of course this does not yet answer our question. We still have not figured out what it is for something to matter truly. Without knowing that, we still cannot find out what things truly matter, or even whether anything truly matters at all. However, at least we are no longer questing in a fruitless direction.

Purpose in Theology

            In the Jewish/Christian/Moslem tradition, looking for purpose leads ultimately to God, the summum bonum, the alleged answer to all questions. The following passage, which is from the Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III by mediaeval theologian, St.Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), illustrates this reasoning:

. . . it follows that good, as such, is an end. Consequently that which is the supreme good is supremely the end of all. Now there is but one supreme good, namely God. . . . Therefore all things are directed to the highest good, namely God, as their end. (Aquinas 1993:32)

The purpose of human life is supposedly to know God, to praise God, to follow God’s commands, or to fulfil God’s purposes. If we do not believe in God, this line of reasoning continues, then we are in deep trouble. Without God, human life has no purpose and, therefore, no meaning.

            Notice that people whose religious background is polytheistic would be unlikely to look to God’s purposes for an answer. The ancient Greeks, for example, believed in a plethora of gods, fighting, feasting, and mating with each other. The Greek gods were frequently at cross-purposes. So the Greek gods provided no consistent set of purposes that the ancient Greeks could think of as the meaning of life. In this polytheistic tradition, the natural place to look for meaning was inside of human life itself. People appealed to the gods because people thought them powerful, not because people thought their purposes good. They sought the gods’ aid for goals and causes that they already judged worthwhile against human standards. Only in a monotheistic tradition, would God’s purposes appear to be the meaning of life.

            The Godless do not believe in a monotheistic God. We seek another path; any path leading to God is a dead end. To make progress, however, it is not enough just to give up our belief in God. We must also give up the whole purpose-oriented conceptual structure that Aquinas’s reasoning presupposes. Instead of asking what is the purpose of your life, we should ask how to find meaning and value in our lives. Meaning is not something outside of life but something inherent within it.

            In any case, it is not at all clear that appeal to God really answers the question of meaning. Appealing to God’s purposes for the meaning of life only works if God’s purposes really are good. In his essay, “A Free Man’s Worship,” Bertrand Russell, performed an interesting thought experiment. (Russell 1981) Russell asked us to imagine a universe in which God’s purposes were far from benevolent. Growing bored with the endless praise of the angels, God created a solar system in which would evolve creatures with free will. He wanted to see if such creatures would also come to worship Him. When they did, when they freely renounced the pleasures of the world in His name, they lost their entertainment value. So He destroyed their solar system, while at the same time, Russell chillingly imagines, planning to have the play enacted again. Were this story the truth, would any of us seriously worship a God like that?

            If we would not worship a God who created us merely for His own entertainment, then God’s purposes alone are not answers to the question of life’s meaning. Merely fulfilling the purposes of an omnipotent God is not an ethically compelling reason why we should live a particular way.

            If, however, we must assess God’s purposes against some independent standard of good and evil, then God’s purposes are not the source of meaning. Instead, the independent standards, which even God must follow, are the source of meaning. God’s purposes drop out of the equation. The ethical standards that govern even God’s purposes contain the answer to our question. For something to answer the question of meaning, it is not enough that it is simply a purpose, even if it is a purpose of God’s. We must always evaluate purposes as worthwhile or not. The important task is learning how to find which goals are truly worthy.

            The threat of God’s punishment may give us a pragmatic reason for obedience to His purposes. Still, that does not answer our question in any satisfactory way. Punishment makes obedience inescapable, but it does not make it worthy.

            For God to be the answer, He would need somehow to be a self-validating source of purpose. He must both set the standards and follow them. Something about God’s nature must make it that His purposes are valuable ones. A theologian might reason like this: Something is good if it is in accord with God’s commands. God, having ultimate freedom of will, commands His own purposes. Because anything commanded by God is good and because God’s purposes are commanded by God, it follows that God’s purposes are good ones. Nevertheless, this theological argument is circular. A theologian might further appeal to the infinite perfection of God’s infinite nature. However, this is an appeal to something that we, as finite beings, are by definition not able to understand. Such theological answers to life’s meaning, answers that are either circular or incomprehensible, are of little help on our quest. (Nagel 1987:100)

            Whatever our reasons for joining the Godless, we can learn something from the failure of the religious path. The lesson is this: If we abandon the religious answer to the question of life’s meaning, then we must also abandon the whole conceptual framework that underlies it. We should stop searching for the purpose of life. Instead we should search for what truly matters, and then use that knowledge to set our personal goals.

            To abandon the search for a cosmic purpose, and to replace it with the search for what truly matters, is not to become aimless. We can still have worthy goals and ultimate ends in life. They will not be abstract and cosmic in scale, but they can still be goals that truly matter. We will not find one universal purpose for all people; instead we will find a plurality of meanings for particular persons. Our ultimate ends in life will not be something that we receive from an external source. Instead, they will be goals that we discover through reflection on what truly matters for us.