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What's It All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life

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I once thought that perhaps Will Durant's book was the best introduction to philosophy, and then I thought "Sophie's World" was. Now both of those books are well worth your time if you intend to get a peek at the Western philosophical tradition.

However, I think this is the best introduction to philosophy, not merely as what philosophers think about, but as thought about meaningful stuff.

Baggini's arguments are concise to the point of dismissive, so anytime you disagree you'll long for a consideration of your objections, but he moves along briskly from one issue to the next. Even though I disagree with about 1/4 of his opinions, so I understand the feeling, I think he's got the picture in sharp focus; someone who believes (like, say, Cottingham) that religion is key to meaningful life will probably be too frustrated by this book to finish it. For a longer consideration and rejection of the theistic POV, I suppose you've got to go to Sartre.

Anyway, the point of my review is that, if you're a layperson (like me) who's interested in thinking about the meaning of life (and stuff) (like me) then this is a very good book for you. Even if you disagree with his conclusion, everyone recommends the process of thinking through your adversaries' positions. Baggini and I both went through Cottingham, and he through several others as well, for instance.

Another good feature of the text is that if you move on to other modern philosophy books, directed at the philosophy crowd rather than at laypeople, you'll find that this book has prepared you for the arguments you encounter.

A difficulty of reviewing this book is that, frankly, it has to be read to be appreciated. No concise summary is possible. Except, the meaning of life is, like, to live. You want to see it discussed intelligently?

Then I highly recommend this book.

As it turns out, Baggini might have been better off calling this book "What's it not About?" He spends about 95% of the book examining about ten of the major philosophies surrounding the meaning of life - helping others, being happy, Carpe Diem, being successful, and advancing the species among them. Using logic, he convincingly dismisses each of these concepts as inadequate for defining the meaning of life while lifting a couple valuable points from each philosophy.

As he sets up and knocks down each philosophy, a sense of anticipation grows - you feel like you're building up to a final payoff of Baggini making the meaning of life clear to you. Of course, if it were that simple, or Baggini that brilliant, you wouldn't need to read this review to get a sense for this book. Either you wouldn't need to read it, or Baggini would be more famous than Plato.

As you might expect, Baggini gives a more complicated - and simple - description of the meaning of life that is somehow meaningful despite not being what you were expecting.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in philosophy or just a curiosity about the topic.

I recently finished an eye-opening 8-week course at my church's School of Theology entitled "The Meaning of Life." Each class consisted of an animated Sunday afternoon two-hour round-table discussion about the topic. I stumbled across "What's It All About?" after the first session, and found it a helpful addition to the class.

The author focuses on six possible answers to the central question, "What is the meaning of life?" They are: 1) helping others, 2) serving humanity, 3) being happy, 4) becoming successful, 5) enjoying each day as if it were your last, and 6) freeing your mind. I was intrigued with his diagnoses of the motivations people bring to these answers. In addition, his assertion that the answers can (and usually must) be combined with each other made sense. However, Mr. Baggini suggests that the question, "what's the meaning of life?" may be invalid, since there's no way to know if life itself has meaning or not. To that quandary, he responds, "[life] means something to us (p. 166)." Therefore, a better question would be, "How can or does life mean something to us (ibid.)?" Sounds reasonable to me.

Mr. Baggini is not religious, so he doesn't believe in spiritual realities outside of the physical universe. But unlike some others who share his beliefs (or lack thereof), he's not condescending or demeaning towards people of faith. As a Christian, I've seen some serious negativity from non-believers (cough*Sam Harris*cough), and it was refreshing to read a book that didn't try to blast my faith out of the water and make me feel stupid. Indeed, after reading "What's It All About?" I felt like the author respected my spirituality. That challenged me to critically evaluate my own Christian-based motivations, and to also apply grace to other folks with different strokes.

Given my above statement, it's ironic that the book's biggest flaw is Mr. Baggini's missteps concerning some key Biblical passages. For example, he writes that Abraham could've fallen back on the Ten Commandments as an excuse to avoid sacrificing Isaac (p. 49). However, the Ten Commandments weren't in existence until much later in history, so that point is not valid. Also, he takes the position that the resurrected Jesus humiliated the doubting apostle Thomas by having him touch His wounds (p. 45). However, I and other Christians consider Jesus' actions as meeting Thomas where he was, vs. an attempt by Christ to denigrate His skeptical disciple. Christ knew that most who believed in Him would be forced to do so by faith, which in this rationalistic age is a lot tougher to maintain without a Thomasian experience.

Despite the above issues, "What's It All About" is a well-written and thought-provoking discussion of a central human question. Recommended.

According to Jean-Paul Sartre: ''Purpose and meaning are not built in to human life, we ourselves are responsible for fashioning our own purposes. It is not that life has no meaning, but that it has no predetermined meaning.''

Which to many might ring a bit hollow: ''Ok, we can't see any meaning out there, so we are just going to make one up for ourselves....'' Really, is a made-up meaning a real meaning at all?

Yes, according to Baggini, assigned purposes are not inferior to predetermined purposes! He thinks that we should ''grow up'' and accept that there is not some hidden or secret purpose that we have not yet discovered.
Instead, our decision making should be based on what is out in the open for everyone to see: ''The whole problem of lifes meaning is not that we lack any particular piece of secret information ... It is rather to be solved by thinking about the issues on which the evidence remains silent....''

So what could life's purpose then be? Some might claim that life is all about having a good material standard of living or becoming successful someday in the future. Others claim that life is about helping others, serving humanity, being happy, enjoying each day or freeing the mind. According to Baggini there might be some truth in these answers - but not the whole truth.
The rest of the book (an entertaining and thought provoking journey) walks us through some of these ideas that people have (on lifes purpose). Trying not to be dogmatic, he doesn't reject anything completely, but does point out weak spots in a lot of the reasoning. In the end the reader should decide for himself, as long as he makes a ''Moral'' and ''Ethical'' choice....

In the end the reader should not think that he will really ever be any wiser. Indeed, we might end up wanting more knowledge and more input.
But Baggini doesn't think it will change much. Instead we should ''confront and accept the limits of human understanding'' - Thats the mature approach according to Baggini. And with that Baggini closes the book.

At least this reader isn't completely satisfied with this....
Well, well - maybe we don't know anything, and maybe we are really reptiles from Tau Ceti inside some virtual reality gear that makes us think that we are earthlings - Then surely the Buddhist are wise to state that reality is a fuzzy thing, and that we should keep working to improve our minds - maybe there might even be some purpose in that. And surely Baggini will agree that it will be ok for us to decide our own purpose, as long as we don't hurt anyone else in the process.

-Simon

A fulfilling feeling that I got when reading Baggini's "What's It All About?" was `I never thought of that!'; if you are a layman (like myself) who are interested in thinking about meaning of life, then this is a good book that provides a useful starting point for such thinking. Baggini has concisely introduced various perspectives in examining `the meaning of life'. His analysis is coherent and he is honest about his personal point of view. Although I do not agree on all his viewpoints (e.g. His belief that Buddhism's framework to be inadequate and not worth examining), I do understand the rationale of his perspective and appreciate his `rationalist-humanistic' approach.

With this book Julian Baggini continues to qualify himself as a contemporary successor of Bertrand Russell. In a clear and entertaining prose he shows us the contribution philosophy and philosophers can make, if we look for the meaning of (our personal) life. Baggini blows metaphysical fog away but doesn't oversimplify. Let me mention especially chapter 4 "Here to help", where he discusses the proper place altruism may have in a meaningful life. "If the meaning of life is to help others, then only those doing the helping can lead meaningful lifes. The people being helped are thus mere instruments to the end of giving purpose to the altruists." (p. 65) Baggini doesn't deny the importance of altruism but emphasizes that altruism makes sense in defending values which go beyond itself. "Becoming a contender" (chapter 7) is an extraordinary good read too. Here Baggini follows more or less the old bumper sticker saying "Life's a mountain not a beach" but pleads for not choosing a mountain of exaggerated height in relation to your personal capacities. "To raise a happy family, or live your life pursuing your passion, no matter which recognition you get, should be seen as a success." (p. 123) That's a good example for the overall line of differentiated common sense the book follows. In criticizing the promises of ideological and religious beliefs (see especially chapter 9 "Lose your self") there is also a strong democratic and egalitarian commitment in the book: you don't need (or even more: beware of) any guru or esoteric knowledge to find the meaning of your life - just look and struggle yourself.

Overall I liked the book very much especially since is was my first on my Kindle! I'm often preoccupied with what life is all about and I was very excited when I found something accessible and comprehensive from a professional philosopher with a 360 degree view on the issue. I found the first few chapters very satisfying but as the book went on, I sometimes struggled to keep up with the author and sometimes a little bored (the chapter on Carpe Diem is kind of boring). One of the problems with the author's style is that he's slightly repetitive. Once you struggle through a paragraph, often the next one reiterates the same idea, and takes just as much time to understand. Again, the section on Carpe Diem is a good example. I would love this book to be a bit less wordy.

The conclusion that meaning of life could be found in finding a satisfying activity that will last a lifetime is just OK. It could work for a lot of people but many others would still be left overboard. True, just because not everybody can be happy doesn't mean that the author's conclusion is wrong, but I would have enjoyed the book much more if I saw some acknowledgment that life can really, well, suck and there could be nothing we could do about it. That would make the discussion more honest. One just needs to think about the great number of those sick, oppressed, tortured (right this moment), deeply depressed, unjustly imprisoned, etc. Their suffering might be too all-consuming to think about anything but putting an end to it. Can they find a meaning to their lives?

I think it would be more honest if we said that there is a tremendous degree of chance and luck involved in our ability to make our lives bearable. We might know the recipe for a good life but our brain constitution could be such that implementing the plan would be anatomically/neurologically impossible. Even if some of us do find a way to get enjoyment out of our lives, it hardly has any significance after our death, because that enjoyment (or any other emotion for that matter) doesn't transcend our being.

Death erases all signs of our lives as Marcus Aurelius kept telling himself in his "Meditations". Our feeling of enjoyment is just a function of our brain (made possible by our dopamine based reward system) and so just another animalistic function that stops working the minute we are dead. How we felt during our lives has zero significance. Except our brains make us feel better when we do something that they think is good for us. A hard question for me is: if it doesn't matter how we feel during our lives, why not just enjoy our lives since it feels better (i.e. generates dopamine)? It sure is an enticing proposition but strangely enough, hurting gives its own pleasure. In the end, happy or unhappy doesn't change anything after our death and in that sense Camus' question "Why not commit suicide?" still stands -- at least for those whose suffering is hard to bear.

In my opinion, the best take on life, its meaning or lack thereof was given by Schopenhauer despite all the criticism his philosophy has received. Yes, his philosophy is pessimistic, but just because it is pessimistic doesn't make it wrong.

In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the computer Deep Thought is asked "What's the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?" After ruminating on it for millions of years, the computer responds: "42." Deep Thought is infallible, so there's no doubt that the answer is correct. The problem is that it doesn't fit the question very well--which means that the question needs to be rethought. The moral? Unless you ask the right questions, you won't understand an answer if it bites you on the kneecap.

Julian Baggini's What's It All About? takes the importance of asking the right questions as its starting point. Ironically, the title question probably isn't the one to ask, precisely because, like the question asked Deep Thought, it's just too abstract. Baggini is convinced that one won't find THE meaning of life, either by examining origins (chpt 1) or by focusing on ultimate purpose (chpts 2 & 3). Meaning isn't about discovering a big secret, but about "thinking about issues on which the evidence remains silent" (p. 3), and it's those issues that are the heart of Baggini's treatment.

Consequently, his approach is what he calls "deflationary." He demythologizes the Big Question into a series of smaller ones that deal not with THE meaning but with a variety of meanings that emerge from the experience of living. For at the end of the day, Baggini argues, what makes life meaningful is the simple (but not easy) recognition that it's worth living (p. 177).

Baggini argues that elements of meaning arise in moments of happiness, service to others, gratitude for the present moment, and achieving goals, although he also examines each of these to philosophic scrutiny to eliminate common misunderstandings of them and, even more commonly, the tendency to reduce meaning to any one of them (chpts 4-9). He approaches the issue from a naturalistic and humanistic perspective, which forestalls the possibility of convenient deus ex machina accounts of deep meaning--or, in other words, which forestalls asking what Baggini considers to be the wrong question.

Baggini, who has demonstrated his acuity in several books now, provides some equally sharp reasoning in this one. But for all his individual insights, What's It All About? somehow never seems to quite get off the ground. Baggini's good at spelling out what he considers to be false starts, but much less vague about the alternatives to them. It simply isn't terribly illuminating to conclude that life is meaningful to the extent that we recognize it's worth living. One need not insist on asking huge questions that will only result eventually in a cryptic "42." But by the same token, one need not so deflate the question that the only response which fits it is a tiny one indeed.

This is a good book for a reader who is not an expert of philosophy. One hears a lot of answers/maxims/directives/mottos when one asks about life's purpose. And on the surface a lot of these answers sound logical. Baggini digs deeper behind these answers and analyzes in what ways a particular motto/directive makes sense and in what ways it does not. Baggini stresses the point that a lot of the simple mottos that are thrown around e.g "sieze the day", "always strive towards your goals", "just try to be happy", "helping others is the greatest virtue" could mean different things to different people. And some of the inferences that could be drawn from these mottos just do not make sense. Hence one should be careful about latching on to catch phrases like these without fully understanding what it entails.

Baggini does not pre-suppose any deep philosophical knowledge on the part of the readers. So, he explains any philosophical concepts that he brings up. In this way, the book is also a good introduction to philosophy. As other reviewers and even Baggini himself have mentioned, Baggini provides no clearcut prescription but a framework which can be used to live a meaningful and purposeful life. Baggini discusses and identifies a number of components of the purposeful life, but it is up to the readers to work out the specifics and to bring it to fruition. I find this approach very hopeful and motivating although I can understand that it can also feel daunting.

For someone who is already well versed in philosophy, this book might not be a satisfying read. Baggini does not spend more than a couple of pages (small pages and large print!) on any of the philosophical concepts/theories that he introduces. But for the layperson looking to read her first book on the meaning/purpose of life, this book is great.

If you ever wondered what is the meaning of life, or simply like philosophy, I think you'll like this book. It discusses many views on the subject in a interesting manner (playing the devil's advocate). I like the feeling of "I would never have thought of that!" that the book gives.
Also, even if you don't find the meaning of life, you can find known ways of having a frustrated life (and maybe avoid them).