Perspective on Wolf’s article

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.