Meaning in Life

This book develops a subjectivist account of meaning in life and argues that meaning or its absence can only be judged by the way we feel about our lives. Against many philosophers who consider that a life can only be meaningful if it ‘makes a difference’ and contributes something important, this book contends that meaningfulness is not an objective quality of lives, nor is it in some way dependent on such a quality. Meaning is not like truth, which is commonly thought to be an objective quality of propositions. A person cannot feel their life to be meaningful, while in fact it is not, because meaning does not depend on the presence of certain features without which no life can be rightly considered meaningful. The book therefore concludes that many people live a meaningful life. Meaning is not the prerogative of an elite minority. This book will be essential reading for philosophers and postgraduate students researching the meaning of life and is also suitable for use in teaching on philosophy courses at university level. Michael Hauskeller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, and has been Head of the Department of Philosophy since January 2018. Professor Hauskeller has published three previous books with Palgrave Macmillan: Sex and the Posthuman Condition (2014), The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television (ed., 2015), and Mythologies of Transhumanism (2016).