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Transculturalism and the Meaning of Life

Tartaglia

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Abstract

I begin by introducing the standoff between the transculturalist aim of moving beyond cultural inheritances, and the worry that this project is itself a product of cultural inheritances. I argue that this is rooted in concerns about the meaning of life, and in particular, the prospect of nihilism. I then distinguish two diametrically opposed humanistic responses to nihilism, post-Nietzschean rejections of objective truth, and the moral objectivism favoured by some analytic philosophers, claiming that both attempt, in different ways, to break down the distinction between description and evaluation. I argue that the evaluative sense of a “meaningful life” favoured by moral objectivists cannot track objective meaningfulness in human lives, and that there are manifest dangers to treating social meaning judgements as a secular substitute for the meaning of life. I then conclude that the problems of the post-Nietzscheans and moral objectivists can be avoided, and the transculturalist standoff alleviated, if we recognise that nihilism is descriptive, and maintain a principled distinction between description and evaluation

Acceptance Date Apr 22, 2016
Publication Date Apr 26, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Humanities
Publisher MDPI
DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/h5020025
Keywords transculturalism, meaning of life, meaning in life, humanism, description and evaluation, moral objectivism, Nietzsche
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.3390/h5020025

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