Adler on the purpose of our life

By Alex P. Vidal

“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” —Sholom Aleicem

A curious reader once asked famous psychologist and author, Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, about the purpose of life.

“It seems to me that the most important question of all is the purpose of life,” the reader suggested. “What are we doing here on earth? What is our destiny? How do various thinkers approach this most urgent and baffling of all questions?”

Adler’s answer: “Let us begin by asking the purpose of the question about the purpose of life. What do men have in mind when they ask this question? Asking it is a peculiarly human phenomenon. Other creatures just exist and go on unquestioningly to pursue their natural ends–to be a tree or a bird or a stone. It is man’s peculiar misery or glory that he perennially poses the question of the purpose of his own existence.”

Adler added: “What, then, are men who ask this question trying to discover? Are they asking about the destiny appointed by God for man to achieve through his earthly existence? Does man have an ultimate goal beyond the sphere of the temporal experience? And if so, what must he do to attain it? The Christian doctrine of the Kingdom of God as man’s ultimate destiny is one of the answers to the question.”

 

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“Or are men asking whether human life can be made significant on earth by achieving all the perfections of which it is capable? In the philosophy of Aristotle, each kind of creature tends toward the perfection of its own nature. Thus, for man, the goal–the purpose–of life is to achieve the virtues that constitute happiness,” he explained further.

“As against these theological and philosophical ideas of human destiny, our question may arise from a conviction of the purposelessness of the physical universe as a whole. We look out on the world around us and see nothing but a whirl of atoms in a meaningless void. Whether we see the physical world as chaotic and ‘chancy’ or as an orderly cosmos, human life may still seem meaningless and valueless.

“The pattern of material events is no answer to the questing human heart and mind. All of science remains silent when man asks, ‘What am I doing here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the purpose of my life?’

“Many modern thinkers, faced with this urgent and disturbing questions, reject the traditional theological and philosophical views of the purpose and meaning of human life. They assert that men can and must set their own goals, and find meaning in the creation and transformation of their own nature.

“In their view, a man who is truly human must live for some transcendent goal that he sets himself. If he does not do this, he must be engulfed in overwhelming despair at the meaninglessness of life.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)