Lesson · 4 min Stretch
What Makes a Life Meaningful?
In one line Susan Wolf argued meaning comes when you love something that is actually worth loving and do something about it.
Camus asked how to live once the universe offers no meaning. Other philosophers asked a narrower question: whatever the cosmos is like, what makes one life more meaningful than another? Answers fall into three groups.
Some say meaning comes from God’s purpose. Others say it is subjective: Richard Taylor imagined the gods giving Sisyphus a burning desire to roll stones, so that his endless task now fulfilled him. Is that enough? Many readers feel something is missing: the task itself should be worth doing.
Susan Wolf’s answer joins the two sides. Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness: when you are gripped by, and active in, something that really is worth caring about. A life spent happily counting blades of grass, an example from John Rawls, fails the second test; a dutiful life of good work you feel nothing for fails the first.
Go deeper
Wolf’s view faces the question of who decides what is objectively worthwhile. She admits there is no formula, and points to relationships, art, learning and helping others as clear cases. Thomas Nagel added that, seen from far enough away, any life can look absurd; the trick is to keep the view from inside while knowing the view from outside.
The weekend coach
Theo works long hours at a job he finds dull, though it pays well and does no harm. On weekends he coaches a children’s football team, which he loves, and which the children and parents value.
Asked where his life feels meaningful, he points to the coaching. On Wolf’s view he is right: there his care meets something worth it. The question for him is whether he can bring a little of that into the rest of the week.
Try this today List two things you care about most. For each, ask whether it would still seem worthwhile to a fair outside observer.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “What Makes a Life Meaningful?.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/what-makes-a-life-meaningful. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Meaning of Life” — Surveys supernaturalist, subjectivist, objectivist and hybrid views.
- Wikipedia, “Susan Wolf” — Covers her view that meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.
- Wikipedia, “Meaning of life” — Gives a broad overview, including Taylor’s Sisyphus and Nagel on the absurd.
- Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (2010) — Her own statement of the view, including the contented Sisyphus.