The Quest for Meaning

by Robert H. Kane

What are true human values? What is worthy of our highest honor and love? What purposes should order our existence? Is there any objective way to tell right from wrong? If life indeed has a meaning, can it be known and stated? What form would that knowledge and statement take? These are fundamental questions. And most of us have surely asked them of ourselves in one way or another.

Such introspection has been going on for millennia, as Professor Robert H. Kane explains. And the devoted search for answers to these questions—for wisdom about the human condition—has shaped cultures around the globe. Yet today, the very possibility of such wisdom is being challenged.

A Challenge from Postmodern Thinkers

"Postmodern" thinkers assert that we can no longer seriously pursue questions of purpose and objective meaning. Others may not go quite as far, but few would deny that a sense of profound uncertainty about basic human values haunts the modern age:

Our world appears to be a place of waning moral innocence.
Discord and confusion over both beliefs and behavior seem to be on the rise.
Fewer and fewer convictions are held in common.
Our public discourse suffers increasing fragmentation as subjectivism and relativism gain ground.
How and why have we come to this?

Is the postmodernist challenge correct? Do questions about objective values mark the limits of a dream that is now all dreamed out? Are we hopelessly trapped within our own partial and relative perspectives, doomed never to discover what is authentically true and good? Or is it still possible to aspire toward objective standards of meaning in a way that takes into account the realities of pluralism?

And even if the need for a common ground is granted, must we not ask whose morality will be represented? Is there an ethics that we can all agree on without stifling pluralism and freedom? What would such an ethics look like?

What Should Guide Your Own Thinking?

Most important, how should you, as a thoughtful person, find your way among the moral puzzles of the modern world and its cacophony of voices and opinions? What criteria should guide your thinking about ethics and your stands on issues of the day?

These are some of the questions you'll tackle as you join Professor Kane in this thought-provoking examination of the problems surrounding ethics in the modern world. The contemporary issues you'll consider include:

conflicts between public and private morality
the degree to which the law should enforce morality
the teaching of values in the schools
the role of religion in public life
the limits of liberty and privacy
individualism versus community
the loss of shared values and the resulting discontent about politics and public discourse.

Professor Kane's approach is as searching and comprehensive as any you could ask for. His lectures range over a rich array of literary, religious, and philosophical sources representing thousands of years of civilization.

Discover the Riches of the Axial Period

You begin with the Axial Period (c. 800-300 B.C.) which the philosopher Karl Jaspers identified as the seedtime of many of the world's great religious and wisdom traditions. Its many bequests to us include:

the Hindu Upanishads
the teachings of Buddha, Zoroaster, and the biblical prophets
the thought of Confucius and Mencius
the founding of philosophic rationalism in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Professor Kane explains that modern thought has completely separated fact from value, and examines the consequences of this divorce. Modern science has especially contributed to this dissolution because it seeks explanations in causes, not intentions.

This threatened the older wisdom traditions and left modern thinkers with the challenge of finding a ground for ethics that could not be reduced to individual preference or social convention. These thinkers included such influential modern philosophers as Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, and John Stuart Mill, as well as more recent figures like John Rawls. They rose to the challenge in a variety of complex and sophisticated ways, seeking a basis for ethics in common human feeling, reason, utility, or the notion of a social contract.

An Indispensable Companion to Contemporary Ethical Debate

These ideas all remain influential today, and are the subject of current debates that Professor Kane explores with great subtlety and insight. For that reason alone, this course is indispensable to anyone who is serious about understanding the shape and origins of our current ethical situation. Reflecting on Plato's prescient criticisms of democracy in the Republic, Professor Kane also asks how our society will fare amid this growing moral debate. Viewed against the larger backdrop of human history and current world events, freedom and democracy appear as exceptional achievements, forged in an era of much great...

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Audiobook, History

Audio

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kane argues that modernity has eroded meaning. In prior times, we had certainty regarding objective, absolute truth. Now we have subjectivity and relativism and this is a problem. We’ve “sundered” fact from value and live valueless lives, stripped of meaning.

Kane is excellent in his examination of various philosophical traditions that have attempted to place value (and meaning) on an objective foundation. In this regard, he looks at Spinoza’s feeling-emotion tradition, Hume’s appeal to human nature, Hobbes and Rawls’ social contract theories, Bentham and Mill’s utilitarian theory, and Kant’s reasoned ethics. Kane then attempts to seam together modern-day thinking with the “wisdom of the ancients.” Here he pulls in MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” with its emphasis on “excellence” and Plato’s views on wisdom, truth, knowledge and the Good. He suggests that there is ample evidence that universal (hence, absolute, objective) values exist and that they are seen in the various formulations of the Golden Rule, the Mosaic commandments and in the Jeffersonian “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In these, we have, he asserts, evidence of objective truth and objective value – about the way things are and the way things ought to be. Kane sets up “The parable of the retreat” in which dogmatists and relativists remove themselves, leaving the discussion to those who are open about finding new grounds for objective truth and value. Kane focuses on the need for love, which includes respect for others, and on our need for glory, which is about MacIntyre’s excellence. This is the least interesting part of these lectures and is not convincing.

Kane repeats a common assertion that Darwinian survival and reproductive goals don’t provide much meaning for who we are. But, when Moses said that “Thou shall not kill,” or lie or steal, why did he say that? Could it be that he saw the disorder and disunity that this would create, compromising the freedom (and interests of) for all, as Hobbes later observed? Interestingly, Kane doesn’t mention the other commandments that do not serve his purposes so well (e.g., “You shall have no other gods before Me,” You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”), but these might illustrate our biologically-driven tribalism. Could it be that the many expressions of the golden rule are universal because they are embedded in our nature as free, biological beings: If each is to be free, then this means that we must respect the freedom of others to avoid the Hobbesian “war of all against all.” In Kane’s reference to the Jeffersonian mantra of life, liberty and happiness, where did these values come from? Life is survival. Liberty is our need to be free to do what we need to do for our survival and happiness. It’s interesting that this freedom to serve the body and its needs is precisely the opposite of what Plato’s truth is about, though this need for freedom that is embedded in our biology may very well be the objective value that Kane is looking for in these lectures. And, by tying our freedom to the freedom of others, we also have the motivation to follow a golden-rule like standard as it’s in our interest to respect the freedom of others.

[Fountain Of Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the OG Great Courses lecturers. I miss when they would intersperse jokes in their courses. This one is worth a re-listen someday.

[Jun · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If there is no God, anything is permitted." Through Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky challenged the atheists' grounding of ethics. This challenge has been haunting the modern era, and I view this lecture series as an attempt of responding to this central question of the modern human. Divided into three parts, the first part of this course traces intellectual roots of the Western civilization to the Axial Period to describe how the sunderings of modernity -- of scientific explanation from purpose, of fact from value, and of theoretical from practical inquiry -- create modern moral confusion by introducing pluralism and uncertainty. The main responses to such moral confusion, i.e. subjectivism (mainly positivism and existentialism) and relativism, are also introduced. The second part describes the project of modernity to address the problem of relativism -- sentimentalist, rationalist, utilitarian, contractarian alternatives in modern ethics -- as well as their criticisms. The third part preaches a pluralism different from postmodernism: the aspiration, or the search, of objective truth as well as of objective value or worth (love and glory), by considering all points of view. Using the framework of moral sphere developed by himself, Professor Kane claimed that this openness to all would not lead to indifference, but rather to determining which is more worthy and to achieving a mosaic of value. In detailing this aspiration and its challenges, a series of moral and social issues are discussed, from traditional commandments, pacifism, the demarcation of public morality and private morality by Liberty-Limiting Principles (including Harm Principle, Offense Principle, Legal Moralism Principle, and Paternalism Principle), to Plato's political and social criticisms of democracy in and their contemporary responses, as well as plurality and secularization as challenges to religion. Most of the lectures themselves are clear and interesting and great learning experiences, but part three is not very well logically structured and it is sometimes not clear what I'm learning this for.

[Timo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd have given this lecture series 4 stars...but the Lecturer went off the rails in the second half with his "objective subjectivity" claims. He breezed past really troubling areas in his theory as though he'd proven them beyond doubt.

That said, I really liked his style, and I thought the first half, the overview of values and ethics, was outstanding. So, I'd recommend it for that. AND had I been able to interact with the professor and discuss his ideas in person, I'm sure I'd find it a profitable and engaging experience. But presented in 12 lectures as though he'd established it was difficult to stick with. But I did. :)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prof Kane says that the main job of all teaching is to bring order out of chaos. And he did some of this in his lessons on ethics, morality, and values—but not entirely. Although, who really could?

For me, the most interesting of Kane’s discussions is that one of the major objectives among ethical theorists (amateurs and professionals) is universalization. There appears to be an innate desire to universalize moral principles by deriving objective moral standards that apply to everyone, everywhere, all the time. It seems to me that this translates to a desire for moral absolutism. Kane uses the example of quantum theory – if it turns out to prove true, it will be true for all people, whether they agree with it or not. Some theorists seem to be enamored with this idea and use the term “vulgar relativism” as a pejorative name for what is really cultural relativism.

Kane asks the question, “How can we get to some universal ethical values without appealing to religious authority or final causes in nature?” He calls this the Project of Modernity in Ethics and identifies four trends in modern ethical theory that search for some sort of universality: The Sentimentalist Option holds that ethics derive from common feelings and sentiments that all humans share. The Rationalist Option contends that there is a common form of reasoning from which ethical principles are derived that all humans could arrive at irrespective of any cultural differences. There is also the Utilitarian Option which attaches to the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. Finally, the Contractarian Option points to the social contract as the fount of ethics.

This is a helpful way of categorizing the methods used to universalize ethics, but each of these has its own set of problems, which for me, renders them unsatisfactory. Perhaps an alternative name for the Project of Modernity in Ethics is the Project of Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

At the end of the day, I find this lecture series helpful, but there is still a lot of chaos in the study of ethics and morality.

[Don Heiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2013 The Teaching Company’s Great Courses released University of Texas Philosophy Professor Robert Kane’s 24 lecture course “Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, and the Modern Experience.” This 12 hour course discuses the conflicts between public and private moral values, school education teachings, shared community values, and religious ideologies from the time of Platonic thought (axial age) to our present time (postmodern age). Kane’s lectures reflect the wisdom of Plato, Saint Augustine, Aristotle, Kant, Kari Jaspers, Claude Strauss, and many more renown philosophy experts. These thought leaders explore cultural anthropology, different human reason motifs, common values of goodness, and the social proclivities that are used by communities to overcome individual and social evils. Kane also explains how values are objective and worthy in the conflict between relativism and collective wisdom. He concludes his course with overviews of the principles that anchor social contracts, universal ethical value sets, and the “human duty to do good.” His Quest for Meaning lectures are very insightful and highly relevant to social principles of love and glory. (L)

[Theo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a Great Courses series that I listened to on Audible. The courses are in easy to listen to 'lectures' (around 40 minutes in length) and the download also comes with a course guide.

The course is structured into three parts:
1) The history of how the Western civilisation experienced a loss of moral innocence and how this led to contemporary confusion over values (Lectures 1-5);
2) How philosophy has attempted to respond to this confusion of values (Lectures 6-12), also called the 'Modern Project', which covers relativism, cultural diversity, human nature, appeal to reason, appeal to utility, and scoial contracts; and
3) Explores ways to renew the 'ancient qust for wisdom and meaning' (lectures 13-24), which covers public and private morality, wisdom, Plato, democracy, religion and morals in a pluralist age.

Personally, I admit I did not fully appreciate the full lecture series and am still re-reading and re-listening to better understand the content; and this in itself is a great indicator of the work doing it's job of making one think about the meaning of life.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosopher Robert Kane, a real heavyweight who died earlier this year, was another enjoyable commute partner. The course seems to be veering all over the place as Kane covers the preliminary material in a 101 style, but the latter half of the course - where he's going back and forth on issues of public/private morality, the future of democracy, objective truth/objective value, virtue, and so on - are presented in an extremely skillful way. His own notions of "libertarian freedom" are threaded throughout the course, and though presented in a compelling way, appear to have been ably contested by "compatibilists" like Daniel Dennett (who also died earlier this year) who have argued that free will and determinism are mutually compatible. Highly recommended.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a better than average Great course, more on the greater side. The professor clearly put a lot of thought, love, and study into this presentation and it shines. It did not blow me away but it definitely impressed me as I'm sure it will you if you find your way to it and are reading this review to determine if this is the right course for you. Just do it, you will extract value and meaning from this one.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent audiobooks that covers the history of the philosophical tradition, specifically as it relates to morality. He goes from the early axial era to modern day, but without much discussion of non-western traditions.

[Zeyad Waleed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed it!

[Roy Kenagy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great courses series. Good review of theories of ethics

[Todd Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these free audio books!

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Groot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series of lectures on the philosophical outlook on values, ethics and morals is the best work in philosophy that I've come across. It is clear, comprehensible and interesting even in a topic I've always found soporific, self-indulgent and often risible. I'm listening to it again, and I almost never do this.

This is from some years ago (1999), but it remains relevant. For an example, it helps to understand the odd and alarming changes in politics today, through an understanding of practice and culture, especially what impels Trumpism. (The term "practice" here comes from philosophy and anthropology, and is similar to the sense of the practice of medicine, say, but extends further to religious, alimentary and all other cultural realms. It is how we practice our lives, with implicit focus on habits, customs, rituals, training, specific knowledge and the other necessities of correctly carrying out a practice.)

In the first part of the 20th century, there was an enthusiasm for relativism, moral and cultural, along with the rise of the blank slate theory of no human nature, and the belief in the perfectibility of mankind through socialism and progressivism. Anthropology, in particular, reveled in how different cultures were so very different.

One of the most enthusiastic of the molders of humanity, the National Socialists of Germany, caused a kerfuffle, however, what with World War II, the holocaust, and their concentration camps. The Nuremberg Trials, in particular, forced many to articulate rationales for condemning those who were, after all, following orders, yet committed atrocities.

It turns out that the search for an overarching system of ethics that allow us to rise above crass relativism (the technical term) has been the focus of Philosophical Ethics for some centuries now. There are four main approaches.

The first is known as the Sentimentalist approach, with its best known adherents being Hume, Adam Smith, and Confucius. It bases its approach on promoting the best sentiments of mankind, such as generosity, desire for honor, and the approval of others, etc., and for suppression of the bad sentiments via rigorous moral education.

The second is known as the Rationalist approach, with Kant as its voice. It seeks to base a universal ethics on an understanding of Practical Reason (in contrast with the Pure or Theoretical Reason of science). Through use of categorical imperatives, it seeks universal ethical principles that must never by violated, such as the dictum that lying is always wrong.

The third is the Utilitarian approach, and is the best known, with proponents such as Bentham and Mill. They use utility, a sort of currency of happiness, to measure and compare outcomes, with a focus on the greatest good for the greatest number. In contrast with the Rationalists, they are consequentialists, flexible in their basic ethical principles.

The fourth approach is the Contractarian, looking at social contracts, and includes Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawles. They seek to come up with rules almost from a game theoretic approach.

But I would say that Trumpism stems from another, fifth, approach, and many of Trump's enthusiasts will recognize its appeal. This is the Communitarian approach, which does not accede to the rejection by the other approaches of what they find most important. The game theory of Utilitarians, the veil of ignorance of the Contractarians, the categorical insistence of the Rationalists, even the optimism of the Sentimentalists, all try to reduce humans to stick figures which are interchangeable with any other human.

But what of our culture, our music, our families, our religion, and all else we treasure most? The Communitarian does not say that one culture is better than any other, but it does allow the people in a culture to declare their own preference for their own culture, and have that be a legitimate philosophical tenet. It does not say that one race is superior, but it encourages the building of a race's culture by allowing, even promoting, freedom of association.

[Justin Tapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I checked out this course because we're at a time when ISIL is beheading people who don't share their view of the truth and using rape and torture as a form of prayer while at the same time, biologist/atheist Richard Dawkins and others are writing that we can be certain that there is no God-- also a clear and exclusive truth claim. Both ISIL and Dawkins believe wholeheartedly that they are correct and all others are wrong, either infidels or idiots. As someone with a Christian worldview, I can respect others' rights ultimately because the Bible, on which I place great authority, says that all men are created in God's image. But to make the case that everyone should respect life like I do would require appeal to some sort of universally-held views.

Over the past few years I've read some books by the New Atheists like Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens along with several other professing atheist physicists and biochemists who are searching for the beginning of the universe or life. I have yet to hear any of them respond with logical consistency to the question of on what basis they make their moral judgments about life if there is no such thing as universal truth, a soul, consequences, etc? If we are just a random collection of molecules who will be spread across the universe, and morality and human rights simply stories we tell ourselves to help us survive in the evolutionary process, then why is my choosing to scatter your (or anyone else's) atoms before you would choose to do so considered any worse than me burning firewood? Tim Keller (The Reason for God) writes that he's never met a moral relativist who is logically consistent.

Dr. Kane's series is his attempt to get at the question given our modern postmodern context. (Dr. Kane's own work, The Significance of Free Will, apparently utilizes physical science and philosophy to defend the incompatibility of free will and determinism.) His walk through the history of philosophy lowers my estimation of Durant's The History of Philosophy, which I recently reviewed. He does a much better job than Durant of showing the practical implications of each philosopher's work (admitting there are differences in the philosophers covered by the two authors). I highly recommend this series as informative and thought-provoking, but with a caveat-- it is deeply unsatisfying in its conclusion. Spoiler alert: His basic conclusion is that we need to keep an open mind and be less confident about what each of us sees as Truth while all striving to find common ground in the hope that we can all agree on at least a few things. Dr. Kane seems to say that if everyone approaches things with an "open mind" it will be enough to eliminate the problem of everyone arguing for his particular truth view. But what happens if we reach a conclusion about the Bible being valid through open-minded investigation? There are certainly some life-long Christian apologists with PhDs in philosophy and other fields who argue they reached their conclusion through open-minded investigation. So, I find the author's comments of "quest" ultimately unsatisfying. 4.5 stars out of 5. If interested in the full review, visit my blog: http://justintapp.blogspot.com/2015/1...

[Yasser Mohammad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this lecture series for the second time and I still like several aspects of it.

Firstly, the four dimensions of value that are proposed by Prof. Kane are nice abstractions that can cover a large portion of thinking in the theory of value. I prefer though to call them levels of attainment or levels of abstraction because dimensions summon to the mind the idea of independent orthogonal axes while in this case higher levels subsume lower ones. The first level is the level of experiential pleasure and pain, the second is the level of goals and the third contains long term defining projects and whole cultures. The abstraction works well for defining the two opposing ideas of dogmatics and post-modern relativists.

I also liked his simple way of distinguishing subjectivity and relativism that usually get confused with one another.

The series also present in simple words most of the main schools of modern ethics starting from the sentimental enlightenment (exemplified by Hume) and the de-ontological principle of Kant as well as the utilitarianism (carefully distinguishing Mill and and Bentham) as well as the two versions of the contracterian ethics and not forgetting the more recent surge of ideas in communiterianism and virtue ethics (where it seems that Prof. Kane have some special affiliations with these last two).


The two parables of the paradise lost and paradise gained in the retreat are well constructed. The main lesson of openness as a method and guide in the ethical quest is well argued for in the series.

Nevertheless, and as expected, the treatment seems in some points just touchy. For example, the problem of when and how can we decide that the moral sphere is broken or about to be broken is not answered convincingly. Prof. Kane insists that in ethics we should start from the easy cases which is perfectly right I think but we should not stop there. It seems that the idea of openness and the moral sphere can be a new way to cast old ethical problem rather than an attempt to solve them which may be the goal of Prof. Kane anyway.

All in all, this lecture series deserves the time and attentive listening.

[John Ledingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the series though Kane lost me on his somewhat unconvincing conclusions regarding the "moral sphere" which to me seems little different from Kane's own imposition of yet another relativistic liberal-democratic ethic upon yet another specific social contract and qualifications like "don't use force until all other options are exhausted" seem abstract and idealist to the point of being basically meaningless in the pragmatics of day in day out social function - perhaps even identical with the supposed ideal m.o. of the present order, though in effect rarely lived up to. I feel similarly skeptical to his locating of 'objective worth' in the abstract so called universals "glory" and "love". Admittedly, I am of the camp of his antagonizing relativists (not really by choice, but a stubborn strain of skepticism that prevents me taking most anything on faith or leaving well enough alone, perhaps an anxiety and a failing.) A review of theories of ethics from Aristotle through Kant especially those of the contractarians - which I am inclined to agree with as a functional basis for everyday ethics - John Rawls - who we looked at briefly in PHIL101 back in the day but I never really made sense of - and Macintyre's postmodern virtue ethics. Kane was a very enjoyable and intelligent lecturer and I would easily listen to another series of his, or pick up any of his in print books given the opportunity. I'm just not convinced of his personal conclusions, and that's alright.

[Shockvalue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I did not always come to the same conclusions that Kane did, I found the lectures interesting and well thought out. The first half starts with lectures about well known philosophers and their take on pluralism and how to 'get at the fundamental truths', noting how each of them fell short of attaining their ultimate goal. Kane then moves forward with his own ideas on how to solve the problems and come to some conclusions on 'what is good for all of us', trying to dismiss the idea that there is no fundamental truth/good/etc. I'm not convinced he was fully successful, but he certainly provided some good insight and topics of thought on the matter.

I liken his philosophy to "Open Source" software in many ways.

[Florian Blümm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most helpful introductions to philosophy I've come across.

Usually philosophy 101 courses start with the classics and just proceed following a strict timeline. You involuntarily get to know a lot of concepts, that later proof to be flawed. Not in this lecture...

Kane achieves a structure by topic and not by timeline and you get a sense of an overarching leitmotif. This is as the title suggests the "quest for meaning" according to different philosophers.

Because of the huge ground covered the lecture sometimes takes too big leaps from one topic to the next and you are sometimes left wondering as to the connection.

Lecturer is a good storyteller, very funny, witty and relatable.

[Laura Gilfillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this lecture series and all the things it gave me to think about. I would like to hear the next series of lectures.

[Ross Anderson]

This course was one part psychology, one part history of classical and ancient thinkers. All moral philosophy, it attempts in a Thomist fashion to synchronize all Chinese, Indian, Mediterranean, and other ancient philosophers into an "axial period" of wisdom, with a predominating theme that having an open mind is not an end unto itself, but a conduit to reach the best objective truth. This was refreshing as it was interesting: John Rawls' veil of ignorance conjectures, Immanuel Kant's warning to treat others as ends unto themselves and not as a means to one's own ends, and Kane's own depiction of moral spheres. This course was not for everyone, but it was a very good rendition of how one can view all of history as a journey toward a better society, if we choose to learn the lessons from our forebears.