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.
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.
Position on
Rival positions
- Existential Meaning
Question scope: The Meaning of Life
- Existential Nihilism
Question scope: The Meaning of Life
References
- Leo Tolstoy, A Confession (1884, first published in Geneva after the Russian censor suppressed the 1882 printing)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Meaning of Life, §2
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Meaning of Life, §2 'Supernaturalism', on views that make meaning depend on a spiritual realm or God's purpose