Ethics, Theory and the Meaning of Life

By Saad Muhammad Ismail

Abstract: The debates in Normative Ethics deal broadly with various modalities of morality.
Whatever normative principles one decide to base her/his ethics on, there is always the
question of 'Purpose that must be confronted. The question of how to be moral is preceded by
and to a significant extent even dominated by why be moral? And inextricably tied to this is
the deeper and most fundamental question of why be - anything at all?
This paper aims to explore the relation of ethics to the question of the meaning of life, chiefly
focusing on cues furnished by 'The Nichomachean Ethics' of Aristotle. Certain intersections
of Theory/Literary Theory are explored. The writings of the Literary Theorist, Terry Eagleton
are closely read and dialogued with. All with the aim of probing: What is the meaning of life?
And what does said discussion entail for the pursuit of 'The Good Life?

Key Words: Virtue Ethics, Aristotle, Meaning of Life, Theory

1. The Imperative of Meaning

One could choose to maintain utilitarian allegiances, or one could be an Emotivist, or even
both. One could follow in the footsteps of Kant and hold to a supreme categorical imperative
or one could choose not to. These are indeed questions of vital significance in normative
ethics, and this type of moral reasoning has its value. However, it can easily be seen that none
of the most important debates in this arena touch sufficiently upon the question of Why be
ethical in the first place? And none, consequently, addresses sufficiently the question of why
be anything at all? In other words, we aim here to ask ourselves, what purpose is there in
being good? And by implication, what purpose is there in being itself? What is the meaning
of life?
Our exploration of this question will be focused chiefly on discussions from the field of
Literary Theory, with close readings of the work of Terry Eagleton.

2. The Meaning of Meaning

When we ask What is the Meaning of Life?, we are to look not only at what does Life
mean an issue we shall explore shortly- but also, and preliminarily, at what does Meaning
mean?
As literary theorist Terry Eagleton elaborates, the term Meaning can be used in three ways:
i) to intend something or to have it in mind
ii) to signify, and
iii) both as, to intend to signify something
Eagleton emphasizes the importance of maintaining this distinction between meaning as a
given signification and meaning as an act which intends to signify something1.
These two different senses of meaning are sometimes referred to by students of language
as meaning as act and meaning as structure. As far as the latter case goes, the meaning of a
word is a function of a linguistic structure so that the word fish gets its meaning by the
place it has in a system of language, the relations it has with other words within this system,
and so on. If, then, life has a meaning, it may be one which we ourselves actively give it,
along the lines of investing a set of black marks on a page with some sort of sense; or it may
be a meaning which it has anyway despite our own activity, which is rather more parallel to
the idea of meaning as structure or function.2
However, we mustnt press this distinction too far, warns Eagleton, since the two forms of
meaning may not be so separate after all. Their relationship is akin to the chicken-and-egg
conundrum. Fish means a scaly aquatic creature, but only because this is the way the word
has been used by countless number of English-language speakers. Conversely, however, I
can only use the word fish to refer to scaly aquatic creatures because this is what the word
signifies within the structure of my language3
From the foregoing discussion, we may glean thus that both the act and structure of a
phenomenon need not be viewed in opposition to each other. Let us now extend this analogy
to the phenomenon of life as we encounter it as Creation. The structure of creation and the
act of creation are two distinct, yet intertwined dimensions of the phenomenon. We may be
co-creators of the meaning of Life, but our lives are also creations. Our destiny may be as
inescapable as our freedom.
Thus our discussion encroaches into the depths of Theology which has to be central to our
project of exploring such a fundamental question as that of the meaning of it all. Theology
has classically been the repository of serious metaphysics, and thus is not to be insouciantly
shrugged off by the religiously ambivalent. Much modern-day theorists realize as much,
despite their apparent atheism. (Slavoj Zizek and Terry Eagleton, for instance are two modern
Marxists who acknowledge that we risk not taking Theology seriously only at our own peril).
We will however touch only briefly on the theological implications of the present discussion,
due to the limited scope of this paper.
Interestingly, Eagleton can be read as betraying his own observation on the relation between
the act and structure of meaning. At one point he remarks: The idea that the world is
either given meaning by God, or is utterly random and absurd, is a false antithesis. His
argument does hold water, however, but only against the kind of dualistic theology that pits
God the ground of Being itself against Being. For the intentionality inherent in the act of
creation, need not be seen as external to and distinct from the innate structure of creation.
Thus the meaning of the world is grounded not in a chance decision by an arbitrary deity, but
in the very metaphysical structure overlying and underpinning the existence of the world. A
metaphysical structure of reality that sees God as nothing less than the deepest and highest
Reality the Absolute reality upon which is grounded all contingent reality.
Thus the world is given meaning not by a post-production handout released by its Producer,
but by an unmistakable in-built script. This much is granted even by Eagleton: It is possible,
then, to believe that there is a significant narrative embedded in reality, even though it has no
superhuman source.
To his credit, Eagleton appreciates such nuances as he acknowledges the religious
fundamentalist from the religiously enlightened: Religious fundamentalism is the neurotic
anxiety that without a Meaning of meanings, there is no meaning at all. It is simply the flip
side of nihilism. Underlying this assumption is the house-of-cards view of life: flick away the
one at the bottom, and the whole fragile structure comes fluttering down. Someone who
thinks this way is simply the prisoner of a metaphor. In fact, a great many believers reject this
view. No sensitive, intelligent religious believer imagines that non-believers are bound to be
mired in total absurdity. Nor are they bound to believe that because there is a God, the
meaning of life becomes luminously clear. On the contrary, some of those with religious faith
believe that Gods presence makes the world more mysteriously unfathomable, not less. If he
does have a purpose, it is remarkably impenetrable. God is not in that sense the answer to a
problem. He tends to thicken things rather than render them self-evident4
We shall shift our discussion from theology for now, and attempt to problematize the issue
further from another angle.

3. Reception Theory
The history of modern literary theory can be roughly envisaged to unfold in the following
three stages: a preoccupation with the author (Romanticism and the nineteenth century); an
exclusive concern with the text (New Criticism); and a marked shift of attention to the reader
over recent years5 .Reception theory is part of the third development and establishes the role
of the reader as indispensable to literature.
Understanding this relationship between the Text and the Reader can shed light on our
preceding discussion about the relationship between Inherent and Constructed meanings.
Does the meaning of a text lie already inherent within it, of which we are merely passive
recipients? Or is it we, the readers, who actively create meaning by giving voice to a silent
text?
One of the gains of Reception theory is that it has almost unequivocally established the role
of the reader in the creative process that is literature. It has definitively disabused us of the
idea that the meaning of a work of art can ever be independent of its recipients. That any
artwork has no unimpeachably definite meaning affixed by an authority as, say the author -
but rather a variety of meanings that ensue from the dynamic interplay of the artwork/text, the
recipient/reader, political authority, and the sub-political play of power and desire.
However, one must be careful not to fall into nihilistic moods of feeling no meaning at all. As
Eagleton admonishes:
To acknowledge that King Lear has more than one meaning is not to claim that it can mean
anything at all. Theorists do not hold that anything can mean anything; it is just that their
reasons why it cannot differ somewhat from other accounts. It is only authoritarians who fear
that the only alternative to their own beliefs is no beliefs at all, or any belief you like. Like
anarchists, they see chaos all around them; it is just that the anarchist regards this chaos as
creative, whereas they regard it as menacing. The authoritarian is just the mirror-image of the
nihilist. Whereas true meaning is neither carved in stone nor a free-for-all, neither absolutist
nor laissez-faire. You have to be able to pick out features of the work of art which will
support your interpretation of it. But there are many different such features, interpretable in
different ways; and what counts as a feature is itself open to argument...6
From the foregoing discussion, one gathers the view that our role in the creative process is as
co-creators in as much as we are creators and not as omnipotent architects, possessing
sovereign autonomy without having to run up against forces that flagrantly resist our
dominion. We may likewise see our place in life as free agents exercising our relative
freedom within the predestined arena of existence. We have the power to make what we want
of life, but within the limitations that are intrinsic to our situation. The meaning of life is both
inherent in life and ascribed to life. We return thus to our recurring refrain: Meaning is a
function of both structure and act.

4. Ignorance and Inherence

We have so far invoked repeatedly the idea of an inherent structure/property of life. We
shall now explore what that might actually be? We want to ask: What does life say about its
own meaning? What might we hear it as telling us? Or to put it differently, what is inscribed
within the fabric of life that may be of instruction to us? Who is to say that the proverbial
script of this inscription will be legible to us even if it exists?
It is possible that life could have an inherent meaning in the sense of one which none of us
knows anything about one quite different from the various meanings we fashion from it in
our individual lives. Sigmund Freud, for example, came to believe that the meaning of life
was death that the whole effort of Eros or the life-instincts was to return to a condition of
death-like stasis, where the ego could no longer be harmed. If this is true (and of course it
may not be), then it follows that it was true before Freud discovered the fact, and that it is
true right now even for those who do not recognize it. Our drives and desires may form a
pattern of which we are unconscious, yet which fundamentally determines the meaning of our
existence...7

It is even conceivable that not knowing the meaning of life is part of the meaning of life,
rather as not counting how many words I am uttering when I give an after-dinner speech
helps me to give an after-dinner speech. Perhaps life is kept going by our ignorance of its
fundamental meaning, as capitalism is for Karl Marx. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
thought something of the kind, and so in a sense did Sigmund Freud. For the Nietzsche of
The Birth of Tragedy, the true meaning of life is too terrible for us to cope with, which is why
we need our consoling illusions if we are to carry on. What we call life is just a necessary
fiction. 'Without a huge admixture of fantasy, reality would grind to a halt.8

The meaning of life may be inherently elusive. But its elusive nature does not necessarily
entail a lack of intentionality, as is seen in Schopenhauers vision.

In Schopenhauers view, the whole of reality (and not just human life) is the passing product
of what he terms the Will. The Will, which is a voracious, implacable force, has a kind of
intentionality about it; but if it generates everything there is, it is for no more reputable reason
than to keep itself in business. By reproducing reality, the Will serves to reproduce itself,
though to absolutely no purpose. So there is indeed an essence or central dynamic to life; but
it is a horrific rather than an exalted truth, one which gives birth to havoc, chaos, and
perpetual misery.9

Given such a scenario, one might as well reconsider ones laborious search for the meaning
of life itself. Why are we so certain that realizing the meaning of life will only add value to
our lives? How can we be so sure that post-realization, our lives would be better and not
worse? After all, men and women have lived superlative lives without apparently being in
possession of this secret. Or perhaps they were in possession of the secret of life all along
without knowing it. Maybe the meaning of life is something I am doing right now, as simple
as breathing, without the faintest awareness of it. What if it is elusive not because it is
concealed, but because it is too close to the eyeball to have a clear view of? Perhaps the
meaning of life is not some goal to be pursued, or some chunk of truth to be dredged up, but
something which is articulated in the act of living itself, or perhaps in a certain way of living.
The meaning of a narrative, after all, is not just the end of it, in either sense of the word, but
the process of narration itself.10

Perhaps it makes more sense to speak not of the meaning of life but of the choice between
meaning and life. Perhaps in an existentialist sense, it is the fact of being committed rather
than the exact content of our commitments, which is the key to an authentic existence.11
Perhaps what we believe is less important than the sheer act of our faith. To live with faith
any old faith, perhaps is to infuse ones life with significance. On this view, the meaning of
life is a question of the style in which you live it, not of its actual content.11

Wittgenstein puts the argument to rest: If anyone should think he has solved the problem of
life, and feel like telling himself that everything is quite easy now, he can see that he is wrong
just by recalling that there was a time when this solution had not been discovered; but it
must have been possible to live then too and the solution which has now been discovered
seems fortuitous in relation to how things were then.

We shall return to the implications of this realization shortly. For now, we will continue our
explorations of the idea of Inherence.

5. Inherence as Immanence

Eagleton comments: There may thus be a meaning to life which we are (or were) all entirely
ignorant of, yet which was not put there by some supra-human force like God or the Zeitgeist.
To put the point a little more technically: immanence does not necessarily imply
transcendence. A meaning to life put there by God, and one conjured up by ourselves, may
not be the only possibilities.12

A more sophisticated theology however would take issue as touched upon in an earlier
section of this paper. We would take this opportunity to flesh out a few more theological
implications here. As elaborated earlier, the structure of Gods creation need not be seen in
opposition to the act of Gods creation. In other words, intention need not be seen as
externally imposed, but rather as internally inherent. On this view then, Transcendence is
seen not as a distinct function from Immanence, but only as the flipside of it. Such
theological implications, though not explicit in Eagletons account, can be sensed implicitly
in his remarks on certain occasions. The following paragraph can be read as a commentary on
the mystical equivalence of the functions of Immanence and Transcendence:

The distinction between inherent (read Immanence) and ascribed (read

Transcendence) is useful enough for some purposes, but in other ways is ripe for dismantling.
For one thing, quite a few so-called inherent meanings, like pagan notions of Destiny, the
Christian pattern of redemption, or Hegels Idea, involve people making sense of their own
lives. On this view, men and women are not just the puppets of some grandiose Truth, as they
are for Schopenhauer. There is such a Truth in these cases; but without men and womens
active participation in it, it will not unfold. It is part of Oedipuss tragic fate that he actively,
if blindly, helps to bring on his own catastrophe. For Christian faith, the kingdom of God will
not arrive unless human beings co-operate in its creation, even though the fact that they do
this is already reckoned into the very idea of the kingdom. For Hegel, Reason realizes itself in
history only through the genuinely free actions of individuals; indeed, it is at its most real
when they are at their most free. All of these grand narratives dismantle the distinction
between freedom and necessity between forging your own meanings and being receptive to
one already installed in the world.13
It would not hurt our case to see much theological import in this last sentence.

4. From Modernism to Postmodernism

As postmodernism proclaimed the Death of the Author with triumph, modern man became
further distanced from Nietzsches wailing cry for the Death of God. This is no mere change
of words or even momentary moods. This shift represents a more comprehensive
transformation of culture as a whole.
Modernist writers and playwrights were operating against the background of a world that was
once full of meaning. Thus Chekov or Beckett are seen reflecting the tragic sense of loss that
the possibility of meaninglessness portends. The typical modernist work of art is still
haunted by the memory of an orderly universe, and so is nostalgic enough to feel the eclipse
of meaning as an anguish, a scandal, an intolerable deprivation. This is why such works so
often turn around a central absence, some cryptic gap or silence which marks the spot through
which sense-making has leaked away.14
Postmodernism, by contrast, is not really old enough to recall a time when there was truth,
meaning, and reality, and treats such fond delusions with the brusque impatience of youth.
There is no point in pining for depths that never existed. The fact that they seem to have
vanished does not mean that life is superficial, since you can only have surfaces if you have
depths to contrast with them.14

What was never meaningful to begin with, cannot be meaningless now. Life has not been
drained of meaning because it was never full of it in the first place. There is no sense of loss
for what was never there. Thus the nausea of a Sartre is nothing but misplaced emotion.
Angst is just the flip side of faith. The nihilist, just a disillusioned metaphysician.15

Pushed further however, postmodernism offers salvation too because it is too indefinite to
allow damnation. If the world is indeterminate, then despair is not possible. An ambiguous
reality must surely leave room for hope Even bleakness cannot be absolute in a world
without absolutes.16.On this view, life is not meaningful, but neither is it meaningless. To
claim gloomily that existence is bereft of meaning is to remain a prisoner of the illusion that
it might have meaning.17

Meaning ultimately may not be absolute at least inasmuch as it is a negotiated construct.

Though meaning may be inherent, it is only ever negotiated through an ascribing subject.
Thus meaning is never static, but the always result of a dynamic relationship between the
text and the reader, between life and the subject. Meaning, to be sure, is something people
do; but they do it in dialogue with a determinate world whose laws they did not invent, and if
their meanings are to be valid, they must respect this worlds grain and texture.18

When we had made mention earlier of human beings being co-creators of their own meaning,
we had cautioned against delusions of omnipotence. To be sure, human beings are self-
determining but only on the basis of a deeper dependency upon Nature, the world, and each
other. And whatever meaning I may forge for my own life is constrained from the inside by
this dependency. We cannot start from scratch. It is not a matter of clearing away God-given
meanings in order to hammer out our own, as Nietzsche seemed to imagine. For we are
already plunged deep in the midst of meaning, wherever it is we happen to find ourselves. We
are woven through by the meanings of others meanings which we never got to choose, yet
which provide the matrix within which we come to make sense of ourselves and the world. In
this sense, if not in every sense, the idea that I can determine the meaning of my own life is
an illusion.19
Not just the context of my community, but my biology too shapes the meaning of my life to a
significant extent. As Alasdair MacIntyre observes: Human identity is primarily, even if not
only, bodily and therefore animal identity.20 Our identity, our style of reasoning and thus our
sense of meaning in life is intimately tied to our animality. We shall explore just what this
entails for our present discussion, shortly.

5. Meanings of Lives?
Thus far, we have invoked the term life much too often to be excused an elaboration. We
have spoken of the inherent structure/property of life. Now we shall focus our attention to
elaborating the same.
Does it even make sense to speak of life in the generic singular? After all, different people
may lead different lives, not to speak of the different lives a single person lives. From birth,
childhood to old age and death. Everything significant and everything trivial that occurs over
a life span. Is it really sensible to stack it all up under a single pile when asking about the
meaning of life? Do we mean to enquire what it all adds up to? Even the most trivial
moments? Or perhaps we mean to know what it all boils down to? Only the most essential
events of significance.
Is it then possible to speak of human life in universal terms? Surely human beings share
some common life traits belonging as they do to the same natural species. One might also
coherently speak of a universal human condition, now more than ever given globalization.
It is transnational capitalism which has helped to forge humanity into one. What we now at
least have in common is the will to survive in the face of the various threats to our existence
which loom up on every side. There is a sense in which those who deny the reality of the
human condition also deny global warming. Nothing ought to unite the species as effectively
as the possibility of its extinction. In death, at least, we come together.
If the meaning of life lies in the common goal of human beings, then there seems no doubt
about what that is. What everyone strives for is happiness.21 But before we strive to elaborate
on the topic, we would like to provide some context to the imminent discussion.
6. The First Teacher 22
Aristotle has been endearingly known as the First Teacher (Al Muallim al Awwal) by
Muslim philosophers for over a millennium. In our estimation, this is an apt accolade for a
teacher whose ethics might still hold great relevance in our times, and Alasdair MacIntyres
contemporary revival of the Aristotelean tradition is an outstanding testimony to the same.
MacIntyre posed the choice for which After Virtue is well known: Nietzsche or Aristotle.
These are the two genuine theoretical alternatives available to us. If we do not want, with
Nietzsche, to consider all moral judgments, whatever their purported objectivity, as disguised
expressions of subjective will, we have to ask ourselves, Was it right in the first place to
reject Aristotle? . . . Can Aristotles ethics, or something very like it, after all be vindicated?
We shall attempt here to draw out indications from Aristotelean Ethics for a meaningful life.
To return to where we left off: Happiness seems to be the common goal of human lives. And
that is certainly also the Aristotelean diagnosis. However, in the prescription of the first
teacher, happiness is quite a unique term, much unlike popular ideas of an upbeat mood.
Aristotles Eudemonia, though commonly (mis)translated as happiness, connotes a deeper
and more comprehensive way of life. Better translated as flourishing, Eudemonia is more
than a fleeting state of mind, it is what we might call a state of soul, an innate disposition to
behave in certain ways. As Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked, the best image of the soul is
the body. If you want to observe someones spirit, look at what they do. Happiness for
Aristotle is attained by virtue, and virtue is above all a social practice rather than an attitude
of mind. Happiness is part of a practical way of life, not some private inner contentment.23
Its not a property of a moment or an experience but an evaluative property of a life as a
whole.
Aristotles assessment of flourishing (/happiness) is based on evaluating 3 dimensions:
a. Virtue/excellence (arte): for e.g. a doctors arte lies in her professional skill of
treating.
b. Practical Wisdom (phronesis): for e.g. knowing how or why to act virtuously
c. Moral Strength: which involves both knowing the right thing to do and setting aside
overriding desires that might prevent us from doing it.
In Aristotles view the above 3 dimensions are indispensable to flourishingbut it also
requires a larger context that includes material goods and friendship.
The Nicomachean Ethics begins with a kind of definition of the good as that at which
something aims. Aristotle then points out that some of our activities have ends, and some are
ends in themselves. Where there is a product beyond the activity, the activity is the goal and
is more important than the product. He continues by telling us that there isnt one idea of
good; there are different goods corresponding to different activities and domains, and
sometimes, these things are grouped together. In cases of hierarchical goods, the highest is
the most important one, and the others are subordinate. If the hierarchy were infinite, then all
of our actions and our lives would be pointless, but Aristotle concludes that there must be a
highest good. The question then is: What is the highest good of all? What is it for the sake of
which we do everything else?
Flourishing/Happiness is one such term that seems to fit the bill. It is not a means to
something else, as money or power are. It is more like wanting to be respected. Desiring it
just seems to be part of our nature. It seems to be what might be termed a foundational
term24
However, one must not mistake instrumentality of goods for their inferiority. Eagleton takes
the example of freedom which, at least in some definitions of it, is instrumental, yet most
people agree on its preciousness.25
Self-sufficiency is another criterion Aristotle holds to classify goods. It may be defined as
that which taken by itself makes life something desirable and deficient in nothing.
Happiness (/Flourishing) is self-sufficient in its ability to make life worth living, and it is the
most desirable good: it is not counted as one good thing among many others.26
What exactly constitutes Happiness? In Aristotles view goodness of an entity is tied to its
function. And the proper function of human beings according to Aristotle is grounded in his
biological cosmology: Where the anima/soul of human beings in uniquely rational (apart
from its vegetative, locomotive and appetitive nature common to lower beings). Aristotle
says, The function of man is an activity of the soul which follows or implies a rational
principle. Further, the function of something is always the function of an excellent example
of that thing. Given that the best person is the person with the most virtue, then the function
of a human being is rational activity in accordance with human virtue. Thus, to be happy is to
lead a life fulfilling that function.
This begs the question: What is virtue and how do we act in accordance with it?
Aristotle argues that virtue is something we acquire by habit. The word habit in Greek is
ethike, from which we get ethics. In support of this position Aristotle offers the same
causes argument, among others.
Aristotle also sees virtue as a mean between two extreme vices. Not as crude as it may
appear, Aristotles conception of the mean accommodates much nuances. For instance, the
mean might be different for different people. Thus, achieving a virtue is a kind of art that
requires judgment and expertise.
Virtue alone isnt enough for happiness. What were looking for is activity in accordance with
virtue, and activity requires choice, which in turn, requires wisdom. We might wonder, isnt
Aristotles practical wisdom just another virtue? The answer is no, because practical wisdom
is not a mean; you cant have too much of it. Further, practical wisdom can serve vice as well
as virtue. But virtue and practical wisdom arent enough for happiness either; we also need
the dimension of moral strength.
It also requires two types of external supports: material goods, such as sufficient wealth to
supply your needs and to keep you healthy, and social goods, meaning membership in a
society. This is why Aristotle sees ethics and politics as intimately bound together. Happiness
is thus also an institutional affair.
Also for Aristotle, friendshipin a broad sense of connectedness to othersis absolutely
essential to a meaningful life and is what holds societies and states together. Our mutual
commitments give us reason to work for the common good and to contribute to our society.
Virtue too, as we have seen, is a social practice. Thus the art of flourishing cannot be
pursued in isolation.
Alasdair MacIntyre adds the prefix Dependent to Aritotles conception of human beings as
Rational Animals. This adds a fundamental dimension to the human equation that most
enlightenment philosophers would have found hard to accept, given the fact that most of
them philosophized as if human beings lacked bellies and genitals. The body sets its own
limits and dependencies that we need to be conscious of.
Besides, to be conscious of our limits, which death throws into unforgiving relief, is also to
be conscious of the way we are dependent on and constrained by others. When St Paul
comments that we die every moment, part of what he has in mind is perhaps the fact that we
can only live well by buckling the self to the needs of others, in a kind of little death, or petit
mort. In doing so, we rehearse and prefigure that final self-abnegation which is death. In this
way, death in the sense of a ceaseless dying to self is the source of the good life. If this
sounds unpleasantly slavish and self-denying, it is only because we forget that if others do
this as well, the result is a form of reciprocal service which provides the context for each self
to flourish. The traditional name for this reciprocity is love.27 And it is best expressed
between equals, where it is less likely to be little more than disguised pity.

Love too, can be seen to be another foundational term, as was Happiness/Flourishing.

What we have called love is the way we can reconcile our search for individual fulfilment
with the fact that we are social animals. For love means creating for another the space in
which he might flourish, at the same time as he does this for you. The fulfilment of each
becomes the ground for the fulfilment of the other. When we realize our natures in this way,
we are at our best. This is partly because to fulfil oneself in ways which allow others to do so
as well rules out murder, exploitation, torture, selfishness, and the like. In damaging others,
we are in the long run damaging our own fulfilment, which depends on the freedom of others
to have a hand in it. And since there can be no true reciprocity except among equals,
oppression and inequality are in the long run self-thwarting as well. All this is at odds with
the liberal model of society, for which it is enough if my uniquely individual flourishing is
protected from interference by anothers. The other is not primarily what brings me into
being, but a potential threat to my being. And this, for all his celebrated belief that humans
are political animals, is also true of Aristotle. He does not regard virtue or well-being as
inherently relational. It is true that in his view other people are pretty essential to ones own
flourishing, and that the solitary life is one fit only for gods and beasts. Yet Aristotelian man,
as Alasdair MacIntyre has observed, is a stranger to love. 28
Notes:
1. Eagleton, T. 2008, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University
Press, p.35
2. Ibid. p. 35
3. Ibid, p. 35
4. Ibid, p. 45
5. Eagleton, T. 2008, Literary Theory An Introduction, Wiley Blackwell, p.64
6. Eagleton, T. 2004, After Theory, Penguin Books, p. 96)
7. Eagleton, T. 2008, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University
Press, p.66
8. Ibid, p.6
9. Ibid, p.48
10. Ibid, p.50
11. Ibid, p.53
12. Ibid, p.66
13. Ibid, p.70 (parenthesis mine)
14. Ibid, p.58
15. Ibid
16. Ibid, p.61
17. Ibid, p.64
18. Ibid, p.71
19. Ibid, p.76
20. MacIntyre, A. 1998, Dependent Rational Animals, London, p.8
21. Eagleton, T. 2008, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University
Press, p.80-81
22. Section Credit: Much acknowledgement to the lectures of Professor Jay L. Garfield,
Smith College
23. Eagleton, T. 2008, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University
Press, p.81-83
24. Ibid, p.81
25. Ibid, p.88
26. Aristotle, 2004, The Nichomachean Ethics, Penguin Books; Book 1, Section 7
27. Eagleton, T. 2008, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University
Press, p.91
28. Ibid, p.97