The Meanings of Life

I remember being a child, wondering where I would be—wondering who I would be—when the year 2000 arrived. I hoped I would live that long. I hoped I would be in reasonable health. I would not have guessed I would have a white collar job, or that I would live in the United States. I would have laughed if you had told me the new millennium would find me giving a public lecture on the meaning of life. But that is life, unfolding as it does, meaning whatever it means. I am grateful to be here. I also am simply amazed.

Brenda Almond's essay, link below, is an exercise in wisdom, not only a study of it.  (One typo needs mentioning under the circumstances.  Footnote 10 says, "ibid, 264" which appears to refer back to p. 264 of Putnam's "Reason, Truth, and History" but is in fact a quotation from p. 264 of Schmidtz, Rational Choice and Moral Agency, which Almond goes on to cite in footnote 11.)