Debating life’s meaning at a time of existential crisis

If you’ve been wondering about the meaning of life, you’re not alone. Mark Oppenheimer and co.’s new book, Conversations about the Meaning of Life, has some answers from world-renowned experts. Asking “What do Mother Teresa, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the exploration of Mars teach us about the meaning of life?” they discover the answer isn’t 42.

The SA Jewish Report asked him more questions.

What inspired you to bring out this book?

Now is a pivotal moment to engage with life’s biggest question: what’s the meaning of life? So, we approached Professors David Benatar and Thaddeus Metz, world experts in the field. Benatar is professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town. His books include Better Never to Have Been and The Human Predicament. Metz is professor of philosophy at the University of Pretoria. He has often been credited for having helped develop life’s meaning as a distinct field in Anglo-American philosophy over the past 20 years. They have very different views on what makes life meaningful.

Benatar is sceptical. He thinks that if you zoom out and consider each of us as a speck on a pale blue dot in a cold universe, our lives have truly little meaning. Metz takes quite a different view, which is that we can each pursue truth, beauty, and goodness in our lives and find meaning in these.

Why is this book necessary right now?

Now more than any time in the past few decades, humans have had to isolate. With isolation comes reflection about the nature of our existence, and questions about whether this new isolated existence is meaningful at all. Asking what we need to lead meaningful lives is particularly important at a time when we are struggling to find any meaning at all.

This book is a group effort. Explain how it came about and why these particular people are involved.

We (Jason Werbeloff and Mark Oppenheimer), the interviewers in this book, have long-standing friendships with Metz and Benatar, the experts in this field. Jason studied under Metz and Mark under Benatar. We felt that Metz and Benatar were obvious choices for the book because of our personal connections to them, but also because they are so widely published and recognised for their work on meaning.

What did you hope to achieve?

We wanted to write an accessible guide to life’s most important question. And we think that the authors are perhaps the most knowledgeable on earth about this topic.

Who do you wish to appeal to?

Readers of the SA Jewish Report – all four of the authors are Jewish – and Jews have a long history of thinking about life’s deepest questions. More broadly, the book is designed for anyone who has a yearning to know more about what life is about.

At this moment in South Africa, what are the challenges to leading a meaningful life?

Because South Africa was late with its COVID-19 vaccines, we’ve had to suffer a long series of waves that have shut down our lives.

On the one hand, we try to find personal meaning at a time when we’re having to choose between isolation and risking our health. On the other, we also live in a country with enormous political and socioeconomic volatility. So, we’re trying to find meaning in this embroiled landscape.

What do you hope your readers will take home from this book?

The underlying idea of the book is to inspire people to reflect on their lives and take action to lead a meaningful existence. Part of that exercise is to think about the kind of person that you can be and the kinds of activities you can engage in to find meaning: the search for truth, beauty, and goodness. We explore these in some detail so that people can walk away ultimately leading better, richer, more meaningful lives.

The style of the book (interview format) is unusual. Why did you choose it?

Dialogue is helpful because it doesn’t present just one position. Each of the individuals involved in this discussion has a different position on the meaning of life. So it seems more likely that the reader will resonate with at least one of us. The four authors had a chance to argue and respond to one another, and you can really get into the nuts and bolts of each person’s position and stand behind at least one of the speakers. Who knows, perhaps after reading this book, you’ll change your mind.

• Conversations about the Meaning of Life is available on Amazon: http://smarturl.it/MeaningOfLife