Objective worth is difficult to specify
The account needs a defensible way to distinguish worthwhile projects from merely popular, prestigious or personally absorbing ones.
Contemporary philosophy · 1952–
Wolf
Wolf locates meaning where subjective attraction meets objective worth: a life must be engaged, but not every engaging project is worth loving.
Susan Wolf is an American philosopher whose work addresses meaning in life, moral responsibility, freedom and the limits of moral sainthood. She argues that a good human life need not maximise impersonal morality and that meaning arises through active engagement with worthwhile projects.
EthicsAgency
The question she enters
The question Wolf enters
Can a project make your life meaningful if it absorbs you completely but is pointless, harmful or based on illusion?
The central move
Join attraction to worth
Wolf rejects both the view that meaning is whatever a person happens to enjoy and the view that objective value alone is enough. Meaning arises when subjective fulfilment is joined to active engagement with projects whose value is not exhausted by the agent's liking for them.
Key ideas
Terms that carry the argument.
- Fitting fulfilment
- The meeting of subjective attraction with a project or relationship that is genuinely worthy of engagement.
- Active engagement
- Energetic involvement in a project rather than passive approval or accidental contact with something valuable.
- Projects of worth
- Activities, relationships or ends whose value is not created solely by the person's current desire.
- Moral saints
- Imagined people whose every motive is morally excellent, used to show that moral perfection may crowd out valuable non-moral excellences.
Where the view strains
Objections and limits.
Meaning and morality can conflict
A deeply meaningful commitment may be partial or risky, leaving unresolved how much moral cost meaningful projects may impose.
Sources and routes
Read the work. Follow the argument.
Primary texts
Where to meet the position.
- Open LibraryMeaning in Life and Why It MattersWebThe account of fitting fulfilment and active engagement in projects of worth.Work-level library catalogue record for Meaning in life and why it matters; select a listed edition on the record. · Bibliographic record with edition, library-location, borrowing or preview links where available; this row is bibliographic or sample-only unless the selected edition states otherwise. Checked Aug 2026.
- JSTORMoral SaintsWebThe argument that maximal moral goodness need not produce the most admirable or desirable human life.The Journal of Philosophy, volume 79, number 8, August 1982, pages 419–439. · Stable journal record; full-text access may depend on an institution or personal account. Checked Aug 2026.
- Open LibraryFreedom Within ReasonWebA reason-sensitive account of responsibility and freedom.Work-level library catalogue record for Freedom within reason; select a listed edition on the record. · Bibliographic record with edition, library-location, borrowing or preview links where available; this row is bibliographic or sample-only unless the selected edition states otherwise. Checked Aug 2026.
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