I agreed with many of the points that Wolf made throughout her article. While the article was engaging, it was also very ambiguous at points and got a bit confusing. Starting at the beginning though, I think Wolf was right when she says that people only ask about the meaning of life when they have some sort of concern. As a freshmen in college, I am confused about what exactly I want to do with my life which is why I constantly keep asking myself what purpose will this (what I am doing now) have in the future or how will this affect my life later on. I am therefore constantly questioning the meaning of life and I think this is important even though Wolf disagrees to some extent, because I think it helps in organizing one’s thoughts. I also therefore disagree with Wolf’s point towards the end that the meaning of life doesn’t matter.

Early in the article, Wolf made a point about professional philosophers and their belief that all depends on the existence of god. I really liked the evidence Wolf used throughout the article to defend against this idea. She talked about how thinking changes from person to person and while providing the pessimist view also provided a rebuttal to it by highlighting the significance of an individual.

Wolf also provides a definition for a meaningful life which is “one that is actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged in a project of positive value.” I like that she talked about the weaknesses of this phrase even though it happens to be the best way of describing a meaningful life. She talks about “projects” in a broad sense and the the correlation between being actively engaged and emotional sentiment. I think one thing she left out however was to incorporate the idea of time as in “now” into the definition. Because as she points out through many examples anything can happen in the future and one’s hard work could all be lost (bankruptcy example).

The last point that stood out to me the most was that we wish for both kinds of meaning (meaning of life and in life) to be evoked by the same thought. This point seems valid because individuals often have a tendency to try to hit two birds with one stone.

I agree with some of what Nagel was saying in Chapter 10: The Meaning of Life. His main claim was that life is absurd and meaningless and believing in a God to give life meaning does not make sense. Nagel explains that we view our lives from an objective and subjective perspective. Using the objective perspective, we cannot justify why our life actually matters, so we feel that nothing matters. In the subjective perspective, life seems important and valuable to oneself and other people. Since there is a conflict in the two ways we view our lives, Nagel simply deems our lives absurd.

He says our lives are meaningless because we cannot feel meaningful if our lives are absurd. Using his arguments, I believe that yes, our lives could be meaningless, but it doesn’t matter if we feel happy in the projects we commit ourselves to (which is the main idea of Wolf’s argument). If we feel like we are working towards something that is important and we are important to other people, then we will feel meaningful even if when looking at the “bigger picture” it doesn’t matter.

I think Nagel was spot on with his chapters on death and the meaning of life. Many of the beliefs that he communicated during these two chapters were ones that I held previously and that are on my mind frequently. The idea of his that I probably agree with most is that Death is neither good nor bad. Death is nothingness, which the human mind simply cannot fathom. When you ask the average human to imagine total nothingness, they might imagine just whiteness, which is not nothing. The only possible way to imagine total nothingness is – and Nagel mentioned this – to imagine what things were like before you were born, which is a task that is beginning to reach impossibility for the human mind; how did you feel prior to your existence, when you were essentially dead (this question is a paradox but aids the point)? Thus I believe that death cannot be good or bad because (a) total nothingness can neither be good or bad and (b) something which we cannot wrap our minds around cannot be labeled as “good” or “bad.” I also agree with Nagel’s opinion on the meaning of life. The ideas of existentialism and absurdism are very intriguing to me. I recognize the absurdity of life, that in the end everything will cease to exist, but I also recognize that it up to each individual person is responsible for determining their own purpose in life.

Out of all the concepts that we looked at and read about, I think that one that  convinced me the most would be DIT. But, I will say that I am a Divine Independence Theorist AND a theist. I do believe in God and I would consider myself a pretty religious person but I wholeheartedly believe that a person can be moral and have a good heart whether or not they believe in God. I feel that morality is 100% independent of God. I think that that’s one point that some of the atheist readings that we’ve read should have acknowledged. I think that there are a lot of people who will agree with me, saying that there can be belief in religion and belief in morality  regardless of God. My personal opinion is that a lot of people who believe in God do great things to help the world, such as Mother Teresa, and that non believers also do great things that benefit society, such as Stephen Hawking. Morality is not dependent on God, yet I still do believe in the existence of God and a higher power. I think that God is just used as a guiding source for others and as a backbone for us humans to use in times of desperation. I think that the ideas of DIT, being able to be moral and having us humans evolving and figuring things out on our own is the most convincing topic.

The advantages of cultural relativism is that it is a very tolerant view and fits well with how cultures change, since cultures are constantly developing as our world continues to develop. I think even though cultural relativism is easily seen as a positive outlook and a perspective that is appreciated when regarding other cultures, there are cons associated with this outlook. First of all, I think cultural relativism is self-contradictory. where cultural relativism makes it so that more than one culture is “right”, but saying there are no objective truths seems like an objective truth is actually being made. Also, moral action would not be possible since everything is tolerated, so the reformers, like Martin Luther King, Jr and Jesus, must be wrong since they went against the pre-existing moral values of society. Speaking of a society, how would that be created with no concrete basis of morals, since all morals would be tolerated?

I think Benedict’s arguments put up a good argument for the existence of morality without the need for god. Benedict talks about how a thing that is normal in one culture might be abnormal in a different culture and therefore god does not decide what is objectively moral. If we use the Eskimo example from Rachel’s piece, the concept of infanticide may not make sense to us at all but for them it means survival of the general population in a way. This difference in thinking also provides a good example for the argument against cultural relativism, which is what Rachel’s tries to do throughout the piece. Her argument seems valid because humans have free will which is the ability to decide for oneself what actions are appropriate and what to or not to believe in. Free will also explains for the change in ideas and beliefs over time. The role of women for example has changed over time. Women were at first thought to be child bearers and only in charge of household chores. Today however they have more freedom, work, and can even vote. Because of changes in thinking like this, the idea of cultural relativism is disproved.

Another point I want to make is that although there may not be objective moral values there does seem to exist some objective standards. With the eskimo example of infanticide, although their reason of trying to save the population by killing infants might seem weird and weak to us, if a situation relating to survival arose, we too would take whatever necessary measures to protect ourselves and our families. The idea of survival is therefore an objective standard. Rachel’s article provided murder and lying as potential examples as well.

In my opinion, I think society has more of an impact on morality than much other things.  I think that the way a person acts is dependent on the environment they were raised in and what is acceptable in their society. Just like Rachels mentioned, I think that there is no objective right and wrong and that it all depends on the culture and society that you were raised in.  One thing that might be considered immoral or wrong in one culture could be valued and respected in another. Because of this, I feel that there is no objective right and wrong. You can’t tell someone that their values and how they were raised is wrong. In our minds, we think that our way of life and what we think is considered the right way. It’s just the way we were raised and how we thought. I think that Rachels theory works the best in the case that there is no specific right and wrong and that morality isn’t defined by something that God says because there are many different ideas on God’s existence and which God is the right one to believe. Because of this, I think that society and our cultural environment impacts morality the most, more than I think God’s existence does.

After reading both Bendict’s and Rachels’ opinions on cultural relativism, I can say that I agree and with some aspects of both of their arguments. I actually think that Benedict and Rachels might agree more than what I expected. Rachels concedes that cultures do have different practices that alter views of what is morally right and morally wrong but still believes that there is objective morality. Benedict, similarly, believes in cultural relativism and that what is right and wrong to specific cultures will be based on what is considered normal and abnormal in that culture, but she never explicitly states that objective morality doesn’t exist; she, like Rachels, could believe that one or many of these cultures is “wrong” in their beliefs. One problem I do have with Rachels’ argument is that while he does state that objective morality does exist, he doesn’t back up this claim enough. I believe he only gives on example – excision – that he can defend as “objectively” wrong even though in another culture it is the norm. Somewhat paradoxically, however, Rachels uses what would be considered the “normal” American viewpoint on this issue to defend why this issue is “objectively” immoral. Of course, I agree with his reasoning that this practice is wrong, but perhaps that is only because my morals are based and were created in the same culture as his.