What Makes Life Meaningful? – A Debate (Little Debates about Big Questions)

Can human life be meaningful? What does talk about life’s meaning even mean? What is God’s role, if any, in a meaningful life? These three questions frame this one-of-a-kind debate between two philosophers who have spent most of their professional lives thinking and writing about the topic of life’s meaning. In this wide-ranging scholarly conversation, Professors Thaddeus Metz and Joshua W.Seachris develop and defend their own unique answers to these questions, while responding to each other’s objections in a lively dialog format.Seachris argues that the concept of life’s meaning largely revolves around three interconnected ideas-mattering, purpose, and sense-making; that a meaningful human life involves sufficiently manifesting all three; and that God would importantly enhance the meaningfulness of life on each of these three fronts.Metz instead holds that talk of life’s meaning is about a variety of properties such as meriting pride, transcending one’s animal self, making a contribut