جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « Thomas Nigel » در نشریات گروه « فلسفه و کلام »

Talking about the meaning of life and tying ethics and moral living with meaningful life, apart from any belief, has always been in the deep philosophical thought. Nigel made efforts in this field, who has his own intellectual-and-philosophical paradigms in the path of connecting biological ethics and meaningfulness of life. The purpose of the present research is to know the relationship between morality and meaning of life from philosophical perspective.

The used methodological approach is qualitative in which, through the analysis of Nigel works on ethics and the meaning of life, it has been achieved.

Believing in the alternative principle in ethics, Nigel acknowledges the fact that people have equal capacities and no person is superior to another. He considered the motivational foundation of morality in a person to be beyond desire and envisioned a moral action for him. He considers living ethically as a necessary component of the meaningfulness of life, and he believes that in addition to not believing in the world after death, the meaningfulness of this life can be achieved in the framework of biological ethics.

Results showed that due to coexistence, humans can influence each other’s lives and make the life of this world meaningful through moral prepositions, even if they do not believe in the afterlife. If we target the component of ethics and bioethics from our daily relationships and interactions, the life of this world will become an anomic focus and meaning will emerge from our personal and social relationships.

The contemporary analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel, contends that the strong human disposition to harmonize with the universe raises a genuine question as to the relationship of human beings with the whole existence. This question, in his mind, ought to be answered, because answering this question is a path that might lead to an explanation of the meaningfulness of human lives and, subsequently, to the deliverance from the emptiness of life. In search for an answer to the question, Nagel explores the views of Hume, Kant, Sidgwick, Sartre, Nietzsche, Plato, and the shared teachings of religions, coming up with answers none of which he finds satisfactory. Accordingly, he decides that the question has no apposite response and, as a result, life is meaningless. Explicating Nagel's view as well as his critiques of the answers of the philosophers and religions, this article tries to show that: Firstly, one can, having Nagel's pressing question in mind, work out a theory of meaning of life based on the function of human life. Secondly, contrary to what he thinks, some of the philosophical and religious responses are acceptable. Thirdly, although one can explain the function of mankind's life drawing on the favorable philosophical and religious responses, these responses can be of no help in forming a judgement as to the function of each human individual's life; such a judgement is possible only when a full sight of the individual's life is accessible and this happens only after the termination of the individual's life. Finally, even if all philosophical and religious answers to Nagel's question are rejected, one can still defend the meaning of each human being's life. This is because the meaningfulness of each individual's life is not exclusively contingent on answering Nagel's question, rather, it is defensible based on the function of the person's life in relation to some collections that are smaller than the whole existence and possess some valuable objectives.