There are deep connections between education and the question of life's meaning, which derive, ultimately, from the fact that, for human beings, how to live—and therefore, how to raise one's children—is not a given but a question. One might see the meaning of life as constitutive of the meaning of education, and answers to the question of life's meaning might be seen as justifying education. Our focus, however, lies on the contributory relation: our primary purpose is to investigate whether and (...) how education might contribute to children's ability to find meaning in life or at least deal with the question. This issue is not only theoretically interesting —it also has practical urgency. For people have a need for meaning that, if unfulfilled, leads to personal and potentially social crises—a need that often expresses itself first and strongly in adolescence; and there are reasons to have doubts about the contribution of today's traditional formal education system to the meaningfulness of children's lives. We argue for the importance of frameworks of values, as well as for a greater emphasis on the affective dimension of meaning, though we reject pure subjectivism. The underlying purpose of this article, however, is not to argue for a particular comprehensive position, but to persuade philosophers of education of the importance of the issue of life's meaning in thinking about education today. (shrink)

It is necessary that, if the world is divided into nations, conflicts should arise in which there is no strong argument against terrorism or repression. By a strong argument I mean one that would sway all minds not blindly partisan, without moral commitments that are unusual or outlandish in the modern world and with as much aversion to violence as most people have. So I do not here consider, because it is unusual, heroic and absolute pacifism, much as I respect (...) it; on the other hand I do mention Christian moral objections applying specially to terrorism because it seems somewhat outlandish even now to ignore the Christian element in our tradition. (shrink)

One trend in contemporary discussions of the topic, ‘the meaning of life.’ is to emphasize what might be termed its subjective dimension. That is, it is widely recognized that ‘the meaning of life’ is not something that simply could be presented to an individual, regardless of how he/she felt about it. Thus, for example, Karl Britton has written that we could imagine ‘a featureless god who set before men some goal and somehow drove them to pursue it'; while this would (...) constitute a purpose for human life, it would hardly be sufficient to render life meaningful. ‘The goal would seem arbitrary, senseless: and its pursuit burdensome, souldestroying.’ Similarly, R. W. Hepburn has stated that meaningfulness must indispensably involve value judgment. Any set of conditions presented to us, whether by God, nature, or our fellow humans, constitutes a fact about how the world is; what provides meaningfulness to our lives, on the other hand, must be something which we affirm - something we feel ought to be the case. (shrink)