By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: What about marginal cases, in which the person is – arguably – incapable of loving, such as a miscarried baby, or a person in a ‘persistent vegetative state’? Do these cases fall outside the category of those capable of living meaningfully? Do we…
Category: On Meaning
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #6)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: Are there specific things that are fundamentally necessary for a meaningful life? Some may suggest that experiencing love, or living for a certain minimum amount of time, or having a social life, are bedrock essentials for achieving meaningfulness. Do you think this is…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #5)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: Albert Camus made a famous reading of the Greek myth of Sisyphus in which he characterized human life as fundamentally absurd. The image of a man forced by the gods to push, forever, the same boulder back to the top of the same…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #4)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: This seems to connect with something you touched on earlier, about definition. To define is to make a thing distinct, clear – definite. In boredom, the overwhelming feeling is, as you say, of anxiety, uncertainty. What one lacks is a definiteness about one’s…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #3)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: In your recent paper ‘Boredom and Consciousness’ you suggest that boredom may be as much a solution to the problem of meaninglessness as a cause or symptom. By inhabiting my boredom, I am forced to ask what I really want. Do you think…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #2)
By: Patrick Read the first part of the interview here. Interviewer: That seems like an important distinction, between ‘the meaning’ and the ‘meaningfulness’ of a thing. Yet, why is meaningfulness necessarily important at all? I can imagine a life in which pleasure, or satisfaction, or kindness – a whole array of dispositions – could…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #1)
By: Patrick Interviewer: In daily life we refer to different kinds of meanings: we talk about the meaning of a person’s actions, the meaning of a word, the meaning of life. What sort of meaning that you have in mind as a philosopher? Are these sorts of ‘meanings’ all the same? Patrick: The kind…