An Introduction to Narrative Values

In the second half of this course, we were introduced into an intriguing way of viewing lives and their meaning. In his book, A Significant Life, Todd May proposes what he calls Narrative Values, in an effort to assess the meaning in someone’s life. Narrative values require us to think of lives as overall trajectories or stories, as opposed to a summation of smaller events. Rather than assessing the meaning of lives by their participation and success in projects, narrative values are used to assess meaning as if the person were a character in a story. Narrative values themselves are common themes which can be exhibited in the overall trajectory of someone’s life. May goes on to say that not any theme can be a narrative value, and he provides a few examples of narrative values.

Examples:

May claims that there are only certain themes in life which qualify as narrative values. May believes that while honesty, fairness, or kindness are good values of morality, he does not believe that a life characterized by these themes will receive meaning from that characterization. He constructs this belief in the presumption that nonmoral lives, ones which are neither morally good or bad, can be meaningful, such as the lives of athletes or artists. These people do not need to exemplify strong moral values to be considered as having meaningful lives. By separating the need for morality in leading a meaningful life, the pursuit of meaning becomes possible for people who do not live exceptionally moral lives. This does not mean that there is no relationship between morality and meaning. On the contrary, May believes that severe immorality, evil, can actually detract or take away meaning from a person’s life, even if they exhibit narrative values. Meaning is derived from narrative values since the person is subjectively engaged in the objective values of steadfastness, courage, sincerity, or whatever value it is that characterizes that person’s life. If a person is engaged in narrative values for immoral causes such as torture, genocide, or exploitation, the narrative values do not lend the life meaning. Immoral lives have the capacity to exhibit narrative values such as intensity or creativity, but if the narrative values of their lives are expressed toward immoral ends, they actually work to detract meaning rather than add meaning. Simply put, the life of an immoral person such as Adolf Hitler would exhibit narrative values of intensity, steadfastness and creativity. These are undeniable observations about the way he lived his life, but the question about whether he lived a meaningful life does not solely lie in his expression of these narrative values. Since he exhibited these narrative values in the pursuit of his highly immoral acts of imprisonment and genocide, his life is not meaningful. Since he used the narrative values in immoral actions, the potential meaning of his life is taken away. May’s construct of narrative values is unique with this sort of asymmetrical relationship between morality and meaning.