class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide .title[ # Analytic philosophy and the meaning of life ] .subtitle[ ## Bertrand Russell ] .date[ ### PHIL 2350 The Meaning of Life - FS23 ] --- # Agenda for this week 1. Video Lecture 1: Bertrand Russell: A Free Man’s Worship 2. Video Lecture 2: Moritz Schlick: On the Meaning of Life 3. Exam ### For next week 1. Two readings only. 2. One commentary on *one* of the readings. 3. One reply to *one* commentary. - Reading 1: John Wisdom: The Meanings of the Questions of Life (pp. 193-196) - Reading 2: Susan Wolf: Meaning in Life (pp. 205-208) --- class: medium-font # About exam Exam 2: Thursday, November 2nd, and Friday, November 3rd. - Two questions (essay prompts). - Each answer is worth 30 points for a total of 60 points. - Topics: - Pessimistic naturalism - Schopenhauer - Camus - The absurd - Taylor - Nagel - Feinberg - Analytic philosophy - Russell - Schlick --- class: medium-font # Questions for this week 1. According to the lecture, what is Bertrand Russell’s view regarding the meaning of life? 2. According to Russell, what are the responses of the savage towards the power of nature? Why are these responses inadequate and do not confer meaning to life? 3. According to Russell, what does it mean to worship our own human ideals? 4. According to the lecture, what is Moritz Schlick’s view regarding the meaning of life? 5. Explain the technical concepts of “work,” “play,” and “youth,” and their relevance to Schlick’s view of the meaning of life. 6. Explain the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value. What does it mean to say that a thing is a means to an end? What does it mean to say that a thing is an end in itself? 7. According to Schlick, why can’t the meaning of life be found in the accomplishment of goals? 8. According to Schick, why can’t the meaning of life be found in pleasure (understood as an end in itself)? --- # Analytic Philosophy A philosophical tradition that emphasizes clarity, precision, and the method of _analysis_ to address philosophical questions and problems. > Analysis: Careful examination and decomposition of concepts into simpler, more understandable components. Main precursors: - Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) - __Bertrand Russell__ (1872-1970) - __Moritz Schlick__ (1882-1936) - Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) - Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) - Willard V. O. Quine (1908-2000) --- # Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) .pull-left.w35[ <img src="assets/russell.jpg" alt="" width="500"/> ] .pull-right.w60[ - British philosopher, logician, writer. - In philosophy, he is best known for his work in mathematical logic. - In the public eye, he is best known for his views regarding humanism, atheism, and freedom of thought. ] --- # Russell's _A Free Man's Worship_ (1903) Main theses: - A fundamental condition of life is being subjected to the crushing power of nature. - True freedom can be found by consciously rejecting nature's power, through creative and intellectual activities. 1. A meaningful life is one that is free from the crushing power of nature. 2. Life is not free from the crushing power of nature when it worships force. 3. Life is free from the crushing power of nature when it worships our own human ideals. 4. Therefore, a life that worships our own human ideals is meaningful. --- ## P1. Power of nature and meaninglessness "A meaningful life is one that is free from the crushing power of nature" can also be understood as "A life subject to the crushing power of nature is not meaningful". - Humans are the product of natural (accidental) causes. - There's no intentionality behind the process that created us. - Death, pain, and irrevocableness of time. - Survival in nature is painful and laborious. - All of human's most valuable achievements and aspirations are destined to extinction. - There's no way to go back to better times. - Two kinds of human responses to this reality: - The _savage's_ response: Worship of force. - The _free man's_ response: Worship of human ideals. --- ## P2. The savage's response: _Worship of force_ - The savage, being oppressed by nature, thinks that __power is worthy of worship__. - Many versions: - "Religion of Moloch" - _Problem_: Nature's force doesn't cease with human sacrifice. - Judeocristian tradition - _Problem_: The world of fact is not harmonious with the world of ideals. - Nietzsche and Carlyle's militarism - _Problem_: Militarism hides a submission into evil. --- ## P3. The free man's response: _Worship of human ideals_ What does it mean _to worship our own human ideals_? Two main attitudes: resignation (acceptance) and creation (action). - __Acceptance:__ See "the world of fact" and recognize our limited condition. - Defy and revolt against this hostile universe - Not with indignation (submission of thought) - ...but with Stoic _resignation_ (submission of _desires_) - __Action:__ Use our characteristically human capacities - Contemplate the world - Critical reflection - Artistic creation - Attainment of knowledge and wisdom - Exert love and charity --- > When, without the bitterness of impotent rebellion, we have learned both to resign ourselves to the outward rule of Fate and to recognize that the nonhuman world is unworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at last so to transform and refashion the unconscious universe, so to transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the world—in the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of death—the insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of a beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of nature. (p. 53) > From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, renunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be—death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity—to feel these things and know them is to conquer them. (p. 54)