The question of the meaning of life is a philosophical and ambiguous one. To answer it, I would like to compare two philosophers’ views, Schopenhauer and Sartre. According to Schopenhauer, the meaning of life for people is happiness; that is, the goal in life is to become happy or satisfied (Leach and Tartaglia 158). In addition, the philosopher introduced such a concept as the will. This will prevent people from becoming pleased because the intention is to continue the human race, not to make the individual happy. Therefore, man can never become satisfied because happiness cannot last for a long time in the present; it is always in the unknown future or the past. On the contrary, the central state of human life is suffering. For example, at the age of 10, a person is happier than he is 30 years from now because he is young and healthy.
However, a person does not feel this happiness because he does not notice how he sees suffering. When a person is having fun, he does not notice how quickly time has passed, but when, for example, he is bored at an unwanted job, time drags on for a very long time. As stated above, Schopenhauer has such a concept as the will to live. The will to live is the force that drives all living things. Its primary will of life is love, and Schopenhauer says that one falls in love with someone more suited to create good offspring, and often such a person is not suited for friendship (Leach and Tartaglia 153). This makes the person even more unhappy. To avoid this unhappiness, one should suppress the will to live. Schopenhauer saw a way out of this situation in asceticism and detachment from the pleasures of life.
The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had even more radical views on the meaning of life. Unlike Schopenhauer, Sartre argued that there is no general concept of the meaning of life and that everyone must create it for themselves (Leach and Tartaglia 127). The eternal human problem of the meaning of life, the meaning of one’s existence, is deeply intimate. Each person’s life is a constant search for the meaning of existence, or reconciliation with its absence, or confidence in one’s own, the only true meaning. For all existentialists, including Sartre, human existence is a unique reality to which no non-human yardstick of cause and effect is applicable. Nothing external has power over man; he is the cause of himself.
In existentialism, man is free, for freedom is existence itself. The foundation of freedom in existentialism is that man creates himself and is responsible for everything he does (Leach and Tartaglia 129). A man by his action creates a particular image, which he chooses, for by choosing himself, he chooses man in general. As Sartre argues, man, by his motion, pushes not only himself but all of humanity into this or that way of life. There is no God, and therefore everything is permitted to man. In other words, man lives in a world where religious hope is dead, and thus man is without higher meaning or grace.
To summarize, I believe that there is a rational basis in each philosopher’s visions, for they are more similar than they appear at first glance. One cannot disagree with Sartre, for indeed, each person is free to create their meaning of life. Nor can we disagree with Schopenhauer, who argues that the meaning of life is to become happy. I see a similarity between these two points of view because the purpose of life is indeed different for everyone. Still, everyone seeks to become satisfied by creating their meaning of life. For me, the importance of life is self-development, and for my friend, the meaning of life is to become a good mother and wife. Our visions are very different, but they invariably agree on one thing: we want to achieve happiness and harmony by giving meaning to our lives.
Work Cited
Leach, Stephen, and James Tartaglia. The meaning of life and the great philosophers. Routledge, 2018. Web.