Journal of Philosophy of Life

An international peer-reviewed open access journal dedicated to the philosophy of life, death, and nature, supported by the Research Institute for Environmental Philosophy and Philosophical Anthropology, Osaka Prefecture University


 

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: Metz on the Pure Part-Life View of Meaning

Hasko Von Kriegstein

Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.5, No.3 (October 2015):1-18

 

Abstract

According to the pure part-life view the meaning in our lives is always borne by particular parts of our lives. The aim of this paper is to show that Thaddeus Metz’s rejection of this view is too quick. Given that meaning is a value that often depends on relational rather than intrinsic properties a pure part-life view can accommodate many of the intuitions that move Metz towards a mixed view. According to this mixed view some meaning is borne by parts of our lives and some by our lives as a whole. The arguments in this paper suggest, however, that even if a pure part-life view is to be rejected, a mixed view that incorporates a whole-life aspect is not going to be any more plausible.

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