Position

Divine Purpose

A life is meaningful insofar as it fulfils a purpose assigned by God, so meaning is conferred from outside and cannot be manufactured within a finite life.

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Classification

Position level
specific
Domains
Ethics

Overview

On this account meaning is not the sort of thing a person can supply for themselves. It requires a purpose that comes from beyond the human, and a life acquires meaning by standing in the right relation to it.

Tolstoy set out the reasoning in its most uncompromising form: if death annihilates everything a person builds, then nothing done inside a finite life can carry meaning, and the question becomes whether there is anything outside that life to give it any. The position accepts that conditional and answers that there is.

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References