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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2066 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 9, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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What is the meaning of life in at most 3 sentences?

My (provisional) answer: Do right by your family and friends. Enjoy your life. Leave the world better as a result of your existence.

Heidegger, I think, clarifies this: "Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself. That which can be articulated in disclosure that understands we call meaning. The concept of meaning includes the formal framework of what necessarily belongs to what interpretation that understands articulates. Meaning, structured by fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, is the upon which of the project in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something. Insofar as understanding and interpretation constitute the existential condition of the being of the there, meaning must be conceived as the formal, existential framework of the disclosedness belonging to understanding. Meaning is an existential to Dasein, not a property which is attached to beings, which lies 'behind' them or floats somewhere as a 'realm between'. Only Dasein 'has' meaning in that the disclosedness of being-in-the-world can be 'fulfilled' through the beings discoverable in it. Thus only Dasein can be meaningful or meaningless."

To put it into three sentences: Meaning is something we always have and create as we live in the world. The concept of meaning is the reflexive self-understanding of our primal and direct relationship to the world around us, and, as such, can neither be absent from, created artificially by, or inhabited directly by Dasein (us). Meaning is fundamentally a secondary concept which we use to understand who and what we are and, while it's an important one, is not itself what we actually care about, and so a fixation on the meaning of life is at best only a way to get to life itself.

(apologies for any typoes in the quote, I typed from the book rather than looking for a pdf)

Well that makes me feel bett r t about my 5 clauses!

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