James Tartaglia j.tartaglia@keele.ac.uk
Transculturalism and the Meaning of Life
Tartaglia
Authors
Abstract
I begin by introducing the standoff between the transculturalist aim of moving beyond cultural inheritances, and the worry that this project is itself a product of cultural inheritances. I argue that this is rooted in concerns about the meaning of life, and in particular, the prospect of nihilism. I then distinguish two diametrically opposed humanistic responses to nihilism, post-Nietzschean rejections of objective truth, and the moral objectivism favoured by some analytic philosophers, claiming that both attempt, in different ways, to break down the distinction between description and evaluation. I argue that the evaluative sense of a “meaningful life” favoured by moral objectivists cannot track objective meaningfulness in human lives, and that there are manifest dangers to treating social meaning judgements as a secular substitute for the meaning of life. I then conclude that the problems of the post-Nietzscheans and moral objectivists can be avoided, and the transculturalist standoff alleviated, if we recognise that nihilism is descriptive, and maintain a principled distinction between description and evaluation
Citation
Tartaglia. (2016). Transculturalism and the Meaning of Life. Humanities, https://doi.org/10.3390/h5020025
Acceptance Date | Apr 22, 2016 |
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Publication Date | Apr 26, 2016 |
Journal | Humanities |
Publisher | MDPI |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.3390/h5020025 |
Keywords | transculturalism, meaning of life, meaning in life, humanism, description and evaluation, moral objectivism, Nietzsche |
Publisher URL | https://doi.org/10.3390/h5020025 |
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Publisher Licence URL
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