Reading this book is like listening to a genius who produces a steady stream of insights (sometimes quite profound), but who's unwilling or unable to organize them in a systematic way. This presents a challenge for the reader. In my case, after carefully reading the book (while highlighting), I went right back to the beginning and read it all over again (while taking notes), which is something I've never done before. After my second reading, and a lot of follow-up effort to organize my notes, I feel that I was able to get a handle on the book, and I'll try to summarize my findings in this review.



It seems to me that everything hinges on what we mean by "meaning." Eagleton correctly describes how our unique language ability is what enables us to explore such an abstract question as the meaning of life in the first place, but we have to be careful that we're not misusing language and thereby confusing ourselves. He describes how "meaning" may refer to intention, signifying, or intention to signify. These are useful distinctions, but I don't think they quite hit the nail on the head. Rather, when we say that we want our lives to have meaning, I think that either (a) we want our lives, or elements of our lives, to have importance in an objective and ultimate sense (ie, THE meaning OF life), or (b) we want the personal experience which constitutes our lives, including the structure of that experience as it unfolds across time, to be subjectively satisfying, if not optimal (meaning IN life).



These are two very different things. In the former, we're looking for some sort of ultimate foundation that serves as a source of importance for what we do. Here are some of Eagleton's insights which are relevant to this:



- Maybe parts of lives have ultimate importance, but not our lives as a whole. Or, just the opposite, maybe no parts of our lives can have ultimate importance except in the context of our whole lives, or maybe even some larger context.



- Our biological and sociocultural context may have something to do with what gives our lives ultimate importance.



- Whatever gives our lives ultimate importance may require our active participation in order to be realized.



- There may be something which gives our lives ultimate importance, but maybe few or no people have ever known what it is, or maybe no one will ever know. And maybe our not knowing is even necessary in some way.



- We may already be living our lives in accordance with what gives them ultimate importance without even knowing it.



- Our lives may simply have no ultimate importance. However, as long as we don't know for sure, we can't deny the possibility and there remains hope.



The bottom line is that we don't know what could give our lives ultimate importance, and we can't even imagine anything that would do so, but we can't rule out the possibility. The contemporary scientific picture offers nothing which would do that job, and of course some scientists claim that science actually argues against the possibility of our lives having ultimate importance. And if you survey the thought of the world's religions and philosophies, both past and present, you'll find that they offer a variety of metaphysical pictures and give direction on how to live for the sake of instrumental goals like connecting with God, receiving God's help in this life, going to heaven (and avoiding hell), escaping from the cycle of reincarnation, avoiding suffering, etc., but none of these instrumental goals relates to anything which is ultimately and objectively important either.



Rather, these instrumental goals relate to the second aspect of meaning I described above, which is to improve the subjective experience of our lives, either in this life, a future life (or lives), or both, so it's hard to avoid the unpleasant conclusion that the motive is ultimately selfish. Eagleton offers many useful insights here as well:



- In the pre-modern world, largely unquestioned social norms defined how life was to be lived. Deviance could lead to being ostracized, banished, or executed, so adherence to social norms improved one's life experience, or at least avoided worsening it.



- In the modern world, with the (sometimes disillusioning) breakdown of social norms and increase in relativism, many people have concluded that they are themselves responsible for choosing thoughts and actions which improve the quality of their life experience. The choices made can vary widely from one person to another, and can range from thinking small (postmodernism) to thinking big (ideologies and grand narratives). Some people will find the plurality of potential choices disorienting and undesirable, whereas others will relish such pluralism.



- We often can't predict the effect of our choices of thoughts and actions, so there can be unintended positive and negative effects of those choices with respect to our life experience.



- Somewhat reflexively, the experience of reflecting on how to improve one's life experience can itself be a positive life experience (this is related to the paradoxical idea that the meaning of life is to search for the meaning of life), but such reflection can also go too far and thus be counterproductive.



- We can view our mortality as enhancing our life experience because it makes the time we have more precious, but we're also justified in lamenting what our mortality takes away from us.



- Happiness relates to the quality of our lives over an extended timeframe (possibly our entire lives), whereas pleasure relates to more fleeting moments of quality of life.



- Since capital is only a means to an end, endless accumulation of capital isn't a good formula to improve the quality of one's life experience. At some point, enough is enough.



- One formula to improve the quality of one's life is to be virtuous and creatively realize one's particular faculties in a social context. This gives love a central role.



- The quality of our life experience may not satisfy us, even if we try our best to improve it. Circumstances and luck play a role here.



Overall, I benefitted greatly from this book, but that's partly because of the considerable effort I had to make to grapple with the book. So I can recommend this book, but be prepared to do some grappling yourself.