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Religion & Secularism

Meaning in the Executive Suite

Ken Hines doesn’t succumb to corporate propaganda about meaning.

On that fall morning years ago when the eighteen-year-old me first entered a college philosophy classroom, I carried with me a notebook, the assigned texts, and the naïve confidence that somewhere in these lectures or these pages I would find (at last) the meaning of life. I was to be somewhat disappointed. Although the philosophical tradition from Plato to Richard Rorty is brimming with potential answers to the timeless question of life’s meaning, I found those answers to be neither as singular nor as clear cut as I had hoped. If, as we learn in The Republic of Plato and his other dialogues, what we perceive in day-to-day life is a knock-off of ideal Forms that exist in a perfect world, and if knowledge of those Forms is the highest accomplishment one can attain, that certainly points us toward a purpose in life. Aristotle seconds Plato’s priority on intellectual inquiry, and adds that true well-being issues from virtuous action.

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