“What is the Meaning of Life?” Understanding the Question

While the question, “what is the meaning of life?” is vague, philosophers generally think that it can be separated into cosmic or global questions like “What’s it all about?” or “Why does the universe exist?” and individualistic or local questions like “How should I live?” or “What makes a life worthwhile?”

Clearly though when we ask the question we aren’t asking for the linguistic meaning of the word life. Instead, we are asking for the meaning of a fact, event, or phenomena. We are looking for the larger narrative or wider worldview into which life might fit. We want to know why anything exists, whether life has a purpose, why there is pain and suffering, whether it will all turn out well in the end, etc.

Most philosophers think the meaning of life question is about of all these questions or can be thought of as an amalgam of requests (as opposed to a singular one) about life, death, purpose, worth, value, significance, futility, etc. So the amalgam thesis says the question “what is the meaning of life?” is really a marker for a number of these questions.