Immorality and the Meaning of Life

Does a life need to pass a certain threshold of moral level in order to be meaningful? Could highly immoral people, such as Hitler or Stalin, have meaningful lives? To focus on the relation between immorality and the meaning of life, we may bracket other considerations that complicate the evaluation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of value inquiry Vol. 45; no. 3; pp. 309 - 317
Main Author Landau, Iddo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.11.2011
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Beliefs
Education
Ethics
International Political Economy
Life
Meaning
Morality
Musicians & conductors
Nazi era
Ontology
Philosophy
Public International Law
Quality of life
Studies
New York
United States > US
Immoral Behavior
Subjectivist Theory
Moral Behavior
Mass Murderer
Meaningful Life
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Summary:Does a life need to pass a certain threshold of moral level in order to be meaningful? Could highly immoral people, such as Hitler or Stalin, have meaningful lives? To focus on the relation between immorality and the meaning of life, we may bracket other considerations that complicate the evaluation of the meaningfulness of lives. For example, in the case of Hitler, we may disregard his failure to realize his ends, assume that he took his own life to be meaningful, and ignore that he did not behave immorally all his life. We may then ask if the radical immorality of his life undermines its meaningfulness. Advocates of subjectivist theories of the meaning of life imply that highly immoral lives could be meaningful. Advocates of subjectivist theories do not rely on objective criteria, but take the endorsement of certain beliefs, feelings, or sensations about a persons life to be a sufficient condition for leading a meaningful life.
ISSN:0022-5363
1573-0492
DOI:10.1007/s10790-011-9293-x