Reaction Paper on Life and Love
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Refareal, Geraldine Arosa
2012-35524
University of the Philippines, Diliman
Philosophy 10: Approaches to Philosophy
October 8, 2012
Life is meaningful
If life was not meaningful, I guess every person I know would be dead by now. Yes, life is meaningful, considering how much I am a negativist and not really the one to put this idea into light. After this course, it made me realize that life is meaningful in spite of all the mishaps, of all the problems, of all the emotional nonsense and slashed wrists, and all that I-hate-myself-and-I-should-just-go-kill-myself moments. How everyday, I see life so blandly; it is a good change to realize just how much of life I was missing and wanting to get back.
Philosophers sought to seek the meaning of life: “Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good.”1 It was evident that for different philosophers, there were different meanings of life and there are different methods to achieve it. Some find the meaning in their lives on how they live it–according to function–or how they can benefit the greater good–utilitarian. Although their answers are based from different perspectives, it is true that for all these answers, there is one goal and that is to find the importance of ones life in the end.
“The rational knowledge brought me to the recognition that life was meaningless,–my life stopped, and I wanted to destroy myself,” Tolstoy, in My Confession, tells the people how he had come across lifes meaninglessness. He thought this because human life was unimportant to the whole scheme of things. Everyday people live and die, and it does not have a large effect. He realized that people were insignificant to the plan of the universe.
Thaddeus Metz, “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University. 29 Aug 2008/3 Oct 2012.
Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, the Experience of Philosophy (USA: University Press, 2001), 576.
But after this he also said:
In order that all humanity may be able to live, in order that they may continue living, giving a meaning to life, they, those billions, must have another, a real knowledge of faith, for not the fact that I, with Solomon and Schopenhauer, did not kill myself convinced me of the existence of faith, but that these billions had lived and had borne us, me and Solomon, on the waves of life.1
He came to the previous conclusion only to find out that he would contradict it in the end. He found out that he gave his life its own meaning in the end. Because life is meaningless, man must strive to make it meaningful. We give the meaning to ourselves; we are not defined by what we are, but by whom we choose to become and to what lengths will we go to give our life meaning. Moreover, if life were meaningless, as I stated earlier, are we not better off dead?
Amidst the hopelessness and meaninglessness, Tolstoy looked around his society and observed that people lived on despite this. They had faith; faith that someday they will realize their meaning, and for the meanwhile, they must live and build up this meaning. They had faith in humanity and faith in one almighty being. How can he say that life has no meaning now, now that he sees humanity living with so much hope that their life is meaningful?
“It is impossible to exist without passion, unless we understand the word “exist” in the loose sense of a so-called existence. Every Greek thinker was therefore essentially a passionate thinker.”2 Søren Kierkegaard, a renowned existentialist says of existence as being defined by how passionate we are. The more passionate we are about life, the more we exist, and the more we realize its meaning.
Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, the Experience of Philosophy (USA: University Press, 2001), 577.
Douglas F. Soccio, the Archetypes of Wisdom: an Introduction to Philosophy, 7th edition (USA, Wadsworth, CENGAGE Learning, 2010), 407.
Love makes life meaningful
But of all the things that made life meaningful, I think that the best reason would be love; because love entails happiness. According to Aristotle, we must have a kind of happiness that will let us fully realize our existence and that is Eudaimonia. “Eudaimonia implies being
really alive rather than just existing: fully aware, vital, alert.”1 Love is always associated with happiness and that, I believe, comprises how eudaimonia feels like. Many people believe they have found their meaning because of love, which is what I learned through Wagas.
Wagas is such a revelation. It relates the stories of people who may equally concur with me that life is meaningful because of one common reason alone. It is a book that everyone can relate to at some point in his or her life; may it be that first love, that first break-up, or that true love that will succeed in the end.
One passage reads, “The photographer, despite seeming to be always caught up equipment, or the rules of composition, or technical jargon, lives for those moments where the play of light inspires in him an emotion the he cannot quite grasp fully, an emotion that makes him want to look through the viewfinder, and click that shutter one more time.”2
The author evidently shows how one can realize lifes meaning when they suddenly fall in love. With his camera, a person can grasp the meaning of life through their work, through the lens, through the printed pictures that capture lifes most unforgettable moments. They become in love with what they do, and ultimately, become in love with life because of it. Love gives existence a much deeper meaning.
Douglas F. Soccio, the Archetypes of Wisdom: an Introduction to Philosophy, 7th edition (USA, Wadsworth, CENGAGE Learning, 2010), 168-169.
Khalil Angelo Gamela, “Love and Light,” in Wagas, eds. Bernardo N. Caslib, Jr. and Liway Czarina S. Ruizo (Philippines: Central Book Supply Inc., 2012), 161.
Love makes life meaningful. I have woken up numerous of times thinking, “Why am I still alive?” without reason to live, and sometimes without wanting to, for