ABSTRACT
Human beings are hungry for significance. It is intolerable that life should consist merely of one darn thing after another. We want there to be a sense of direction; we would like our lives to constitute an intelligible journey rather than being an aimless drift.2 If the argument at the end of the last chapter is sound, to be truly meaningful that journey must reflect not just any old purposes or projects we happen to adopt, but those that are genuinely worthwhile. We cannot bestow meaning on our lives just by floundering after individual gratification, nor can we create value merely by our own insistent choices, made without regard for the conditions of our (interdependent) flourishing as human beings. A worthwhile life will be one that possesses genuine value – value linked to our human nature and the pursuit of what is objectively conducive to the flowering of that nature. For the theist, the
journey that meets these conditions will be the journey of the individual soul towards God; others may construe the journey in less metaphysical terms – as a journey towards enlightenment, or as a quest to realise what is best and noblest in our nature. These ways of characterising the journey all converge on the premise that there are objective values.3 To put the matter somewhat grandly, a meaningful life will be one oriented as far as possible towards truth and beauty and goodness, or at least by a sense of striving towards those ideals.
