Desire, Infinity, and the Meaning of Life

Desire, Infinity, and the Meaning of Life 1. Wiggins, Taylor, and Sisyphus In his paper ‘Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life’, In Needs, Values, Truth, Essay III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.92. David Wiggins considers an approach to the question of whether life has any meaning which is to be found in Richard Taylor’s book Good and Evil. Good and Evil (New York, Macmillan, 1970). Taylor begins by presenting ‘a clear image of meaningless existence’, his example being that of Sisyphus who was: (c)ondemned by the gods to roll a stone to the top of the hill, the stone then immediately to roll back down, again to be pushed to the top by Sisyphus, to roll down once more, and so on again and again, forever. We are then asked to consider ‘what would need to be inserted into the meaningless existence so depicted in order to make it not meaningless’, Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life, p.92. and Taylor offers two responses. The first is to suppose that ‘these stones…were assembled [by Sisyphus] at the top of the hill…in a beautiful and enduring temple’ so that ‘his labours would have a point, something would come of them all’. Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life, p.92. The second is for the gods to implant in Sisyphus an impulse to roll stones. In this way, he is led to embrace his mission, and to feel that ‘he has been given an entry into heaven’. Taylor rejects the first option – temple-building for the sake of the temple - not merely because there is no guarantee that the temple will remain standing, but because Sisyphus would be left with nothing to do but to contemplate the fruits of his labour again and again, forever. As he puts it, we are presented with ‘the picture of infinite boredom’, and ‘that which is really worthwhile seems to have slipped away entirely’. He generalizes this verdict to cover the case of any human endeavour, claiming that we are wrong to suppose that they have a point ‘independently of our own deep interests in them’. It is the second option that Taylor favours, that according to which the source of meaning is to be found within the subject rather than in anything outside him. More specifically, the idea is that it is to be found in ‘our own wills, our deep interest in what we find ourselves doing’. To return to Sisyphus, it resides in his impulse or desire to roll stones, again and again, forever. Ditto for all other none stone-rolling activities: they are meaningful because they engage us – we are motivated to do the relevant things. It is in this way, we are told, that ‘an existence that is objectively meaningless…can nevertheless acquire a meaning for him whose existence it is’. Wiggins agrees that a focus upon the impulses or desires of the subject is required if we are to have a satisfactory conception of meaningful existence. That is to say, he accepts that a meaningful existence is one in which the subject has a deep interest in what he does. Likewise, he objects to the idea that the source of such meaning is to be located beyond anything which could engage those interests. However, he takes issue with Taylor’s way of meeting these demands, for he does not believe that meaning can be reduced without remainder to what the individual subject happens to will or to desire. He resists this idea on the grounds that it leaves no scope for distinguishing between good and bad reasons for caring about anything as important, Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life, p.99. and makes a mystery of the fact that at least some of our commitments are viewed in a positive light precisely because we take them to be independently meaningful. Taylor insists upon his position because he takes issue with the idea that anything could be independently meaningful, taking this to be equivalent to the idea that our endeavours have ‘some further point’. Wiggins agrees that they do not have some further point if this is intended to imply that there is a further something beyond anything which could engage us which provides the final arbiter of meaning. He does not think, however, that a rejection of this idea warrants the conclusion that nothing really matters, nor that meaning is reducible to desire or feeling, nor that there cannot be meaningful aims like building for the sake of temples. On the contrary, he believes that such inferences involve a commitment to a framework which misidentifies the phenomenon of meaning. According to this framework, meaning must be some one thing which is either out there and independent of our interests or in the subject and reducible to what he happens to desire. Hence: We bewitch ourselves to think that we are looking for some one thing like the Garden of the Hesperides, the Holy Grail…Then finding nothing like that in the world, no one thing from which all values can be derived and no one focus by which all other concerns can be organized, we console ourselves by looking inwards, but again for some one substitute thing, one thing in us now instead of the world. Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life, p.136. This diagnosis is important, for it suggests not merely that Taylor is looking for meaning in the wrong place (either out there or in here), but that he is implicitly committing to a position which, by his own lights, is unsustainable. He insists that meaning cannot be some further thing which lies beyond anything that could seriously engage us, There is a question to be raised here about the scope of ‘us’. I shall return to this point below. and concludes on this basis that nothing really matters. The implication here is that things could really matter only if there were some further thing - something which we could never find meaningful, which we are right not to find meaningful, but which could somehow show that things are meaningful in themselves. He then falls back on our desires and impulses and draws the conclusion that this is our best surrogate in the face of meaninglessness. Things do not really matter, but it’s ok because we sometimes feel that they do. Wiggins worries that none of this adds up. First, our feeling that things matter becomes empty when placed alongside the claim that they do not, as does the idea that some things matter more than others. Second, the idea that nothing really matters threatens to compromise our willingness to engage with and do anything at all, Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life, p.101. although it would be open to Taylor to claim that the relevant impulses are beyond our control and/or that the activities towards which they are aimed afford satisfaction I shall return to this point below. - what do I care if nothing matters, I enjoy what I’m doing. Third, however, and this is the crucial point, Taylor has given us no reason to accept that nothing really matters, other than to insist that we must reject the conception according to which meaning is to be located in a further something else – something which could never engage us. What is more, he has recommended an alternative which plays into the hands of the offending conception, doing so by insisting that nothing matters. What he should really be saying is that nothing matters in the sense demanded by the position under attack. But it does not follow that nothing matters, for it remains open that things do matter, and that they matter not just because we have a mysterious propensity to feel that they do. Rather, there is - or at least ought to be – scope for allowing that our feeling that things matter is justified. It should go without saying that the justifications to which we might appeal in this context must be capable of engaging us. That is to say, there is no suggestion that we move in the direction of the kind of point rejected by Taylor and Wiggins. The temple is a good case in point. Temple building for the sake of the temple need not be meaningless, and ditto its contemplation. Temples are capable of engaging our interests, even if not the interests of everyone. Boredom is another matter to which I shall return. The kind of point they reject is a final point – one which could never engage our ‘deep interests’. The reference to deep interests is important here. Not just because it permits a certain flexibility into our understanding of what it might be for human existence to have a point, but because it threatens to compromise the idea – implicit in both Taylor and Wiggins – that this point cannot be comprehended in God-involving terms. It compromises this idea in two ways. First, God does engage the deep interests of some, and those who are thus engaged precisely do think that existence has a final point. Of course, it would be open to Taylor and Wiggins to object that such a belief is unfounded. However – and this is the second point – a proper understanding of the claim that existence has a final point in this sense does not imply that our earthly pursuits are meaningless, nor that they are means to a further end, whether that be Wiggins’ Garden of the Hesperides or the Christian’s conception of heaven. These implications are forced upon us only on the assumption that God is on the same level as Taylor’s temple. That is to say, He provides a final resting place which makes for ‘infinite boredom’. Compare Bernard Williams, ‘The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality’, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). I want eventually to challenge this conception of God’s relation to meaning, and to suggest that a proper understanding of this ‘final point’ leads to a position which is consonant with Wiggins’ overall aims. For the most part, however, the terms of my discussion will be theologically neutral, importantly so, given my sympathies towards Wiggins. My choice of protagonists is guided by this focus, and they are Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Levinas. Augustine is conspicuous by his absence, and the reader will be reminded of his claim that our hearts find no peace until they rest in God (Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin, 1961, I, 1). She will see also that his conception of the restless heart exhibits the structure of Hegel’s bad infinity, and that he defends a version of the claim – defended here – that desires are not bad in themselves. There is an interesting question to be raised about what the relation is between the kind of equilibrium Augustine has in mind and that envisaged by Levinas when he insists that the desire for God is insatiable. I discuss some related matters in my unpublished paper “Insatiable Desire”. There will be no attempt to provide an exhaustive account of their positions, my aim being simply to identify a single theme from each thinker to advance the discussion at hand. All three of them are cagey about God, albeit in very different ways. They also provide a picture of meaningless existence and an answer to the question of what it would be for it to be rendered meaningful. For none of them is it a straightforward matter of ‘inserting’ something into it or beyond it – some quantity which leaves everything else the same, and, as far as Schopenhauer is concerned, it’s more a case of subtraction – a subtraction, however, which is intended to have a transformative effect at the level of both self and reality. Such transformation is fundamental to all three thinkers, and with it the idea that if we are going to talk of inserting or adding something to human existence we are going to have to employ a very different model from that which is presupposed by Taylor. I shall argue that the model to be rejected shares the structure of that diagnosed by Wiggins when he bemoans our tendency to suppose that meaning must be some one thing, and that the proposed alternative is consonant with his own preferred aim. The offending structure, I shall now suggest, corresponds to Hegel’s notion of bad infinity. 2. Hegel on Bad Infinity Wayne Martin has argued that the labours of Sisyphus exemplify the structure of bad infinity as Hegel understands that notion. ‘In Defense of Bad Infinity: A Fichtean Response to Hegel’s Differenzschrift’, p.4. This paper is available online at http://private.www.essex.ac.uk~wmartin/BadInfinity.pdf It involves the idea of ‘going on and on and on into an infinitely receding distance…there is no getting to the end of it’. He also uses the example of immortality, referring to Bernard Williams’ reflections on the tedium of an existence which shares this ‘on and on’ structure. Bernard Williams, op.cit. This second example is reminiscent of Taylor’s picture of infinite boredom, the implication being that immortal existence would be no better than staring at a temple for all eternity. For another take on the tedium of immortality see the final chapter of Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (London: Picador, 2005). We are to suppose then that there is something wrong with an existence which shares this structure. We are to suppose also that mortal existence can assume a similar shape. Hegel agrees that there is something deficient about such a structure, namely, that it remains in permanent opposition to genuine infinity. The implication is that this opposition must be transcended if the deficiency is to be rectified. He characterizes the offending structure as follows: (t)he quantum is maintained in perpetual opposition to its beyond. No matter how much the quantum is increased, it shrinks to insignificance…the increase in quantum brings it no nearer to the infinite. Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 288. Cited in Martin op.cit. And: It is tedious to go on and on in the consideration of this infinite progression because the same thing is continually repeated…So we have nothing here but a superficial alternation, which stays forever within the sphere of the finite. Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting, H.S. Harris (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co, 1991), s.94. We are concerned then with a structure which can only ever deliver more of the same, and which is said to stand opposed to that which is truly infinite. Martin uses the example of the number series – no matter how far one goes along it one only ever comes up with a further finite quantity. There is no end to it, and one never finds the infinite along such a path. ‘In Defense of Bad Infinity’, p.6. To suppose that one could is like supposing that one could ‘reach infinity by repeated applications of the rule ‘add one’. ‘In Defense of Bad Infinity’, p.8. Genuine infinity is said to stand in perpetual opposition to an infinity which exemplifies this ‘on and on’ structure, and this, Hegel believes, can lead to the erroneous conclusion that it has to be a qualitatively distinct something else. On this way thinking, it is ‘posited over and against the finite, in a relation wherein they are as qualitatively distinct others’, Science of Logic, 139. it is the ‘negation of finitude’. Encyclopaedia Logic, s.94. Hegel objects that this conception is equally problematic. First, the infinite is ‘reduced to one particular, in addition to which the finite is the other one’, it therefore remains finite. Encyclopaedia Logic, s.95. Second, the perpetual opposition which is said to exist between these two ‘particulars’ makes the second into an unattainable something else – ‘the infinite has to remain absolutely on the other side and the finite on this side’. Encyclopaedia Logic, s.95. Third, and consequently, we are forced back onto the structure of endless progression, our only model for completion being one which could only ever deliver more of the same. For even if, per impossibilia, we could reach the other side – the negation of finitude in this sense still yields a finite quantity. How is this to be related to Sisyphus? His labours, we have been told, exemplify the structure of bad infinity. That is to say, his stone-rolling goes on and on, and there is no getting to the end of it. The further claim – familiar from our previous discussion – is that something needs to be added to give it meaning. Taylor and Wiggins agree that it is no good adding something beyond the activity – something which could never engage him. This, we are to suppose, would simply compound the original problem. Wiggins suggests that it is equally hopeless to inject into Sisyphus a mysterious compulsion to go on rolling, arguing that this solution is on the same level as the previous one. It fails to provide what is needed. The idea that we should be adding something beyond the activity of endless stone-rolling can be related to the claim that the deficiencies of bad infinity can be resolved only by reference to an infinity which stands permanently opposed to it. The difficulty in both cases is that this move leaves everything the same. Stone-rolling remains meaningless and bad infinity remains bad. Furthermore, the addition itself seems doomed to remain within the ambit of the offending structure – eternal contemplation of the temple is no less tedious than stone-rolling, and genuine infinity becomes one more finite quantity. Hegel would agree with Wiggins that, as far as eternal stone-rolling is concerned, we make no advance by adding a mere impulse at the level of the subject – a desire to roll stones forever. At least, this is so if the response is articulated from within a framework which tells us that nothing really matters. We are seeking to rectify the deficiencies of bad infinity using resources that are by-products of the offending structure. We have not advanced. 3. Schopenhauer on Desire We have a structure in terms of which to comprehend the activity of endless stone-rolling, and some considerations which lend justice to Wiggins’ complaint that adding meaning to it is not a matter of adding some quantity – either something beyond the activity which could not engage the subject or something within him. The structure in question exemplifies Hegel’s model of bad infinity, and the idea is that the limitations of this model can help us to understand how not to address the question of meaning. Schopenhauer agrees that our activities exemplify this ‘on and on’ structure. He accepts with Taylor that they are desire-driven, but denies that this is sufficient to endow them with meaning. He draws this conclusion on the ground that desires themselves exemplify this ‘on and on’ structure. This claim, if true, provides further justification for concluding that a psychological addition of this kind is insufficient to solve the difficulty at hand. It threatens also to compromise the idea that desire could have any role to play in this context. The idea that desire must be dispensed with altogether seems premature, and, if Wiggins is to be believed, such a response is just a further expression of the offending either/or framework. Yet Wiggins himself is prepared to allow that not all of the activities which motivate us are on an equal footing as far as meaning is concerned. Our question then is whether there are any insights to be found in Schopenhauer’s account, and, if so, where this leaves the issue of life’s meaning. Schopenhauer claims that we are willing beings, and that willing involves desire. Desire stems from a lack in the subject – it is a matter of deprivation or absence, and it involves suffering. This lack can be filled and the suffering abated because desires can be satisfied. However, they can be satisfied only temporarily, and are compelled to rear up again, giving rise to more suffering, demanding similar satisfaction, and so on ad infinitum. The World as Will and Representation, trans E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1969), vol 1, 196. The result is that: The subject of willing is constantly lying on the revolving wheel of Ixion, is always drawing water in the sieve of the Danaids, and is the eternally thirsting Tantalus. The World as Will and Representation, vol 1, 196. The picture is very similar to that presented by Taylor when he describes the life of the world – our life included - as ‘a vast machine, feeding on itself, running on and on forever to nothing’, and Schopenhauer likewise takes the workings of this ‘vast machine’ to be inclusive of all life-forms. The difference, however, is that whereas Taylor finds in all of this the ingredient which makes for meaning – in the human case, the desire to perpetuate this unending cycle – Schopenhauer finds no such thing. Hence: (s)o long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never obtain lasting happiness or peace…without peace and calm, true well-being is absolutely impossible. The World as Will and Representation, vol 1, 196. And: Absolutely every human life continues to flow on between willing and attainment. Of its nature the wish is pain; attainment quickly begets satiety. The goal was only apparent; possession takes away its charm. The wish, the need, appears again on the scene under a new form; if it does not, then dreariness, emptiness, and boredom follow, the struggle against which is just as painful as is that against want. The World as Will and Representation, vol 1, 231-4. For Schopenhauer then, we do not add meaning to human activity by adding a desire to engage in it, because desire itself exhibits a similar meaningless trajectory – a trajectory, moreover, in which pain always outweighs pleasure. I strive for something (suffering), and either my desire remains unsatisfied (suffering) or I get what I want. If I get what I want then there is satisfaction and pleasure, but this pleasure is short-lived and quickly gives rise to boredom (itself a form of suffering), and then more willing (suffering). Alternatively, if I don’t get what I want then I may continue to strive for it (suffering), or fix upon another goal (suffering) which, if attained, will give way to boredom, and then more willing, and so on, and on, forever. The interesting thing about all of this is that boredom – the state which, for Taylor, becomes inevitable once we transcend activity and seek meaning elsewhere – is given a place within the structure of willed activity itself. Schopenhauer agrees that boredom occurs when the will is in abeyance, but he believes that this kind of abeyance is not genuine, and that will remains in the background nonetheless: it involves an implicit second-order willing – the will to will with nothing to will. Compare Tolstoy’s definition of boredom as ‘The desire for desires’ (Anna Karenina, vol 8). Taylor would perhaps accept this and use the claim to lend credence to his idea that a life in which the will remains disengaged is meaningless. Indeed, he takes such a life to provide a paradigm for the picture of infinite boredom which he takes to ensue if we seek meaning in some final point. Schopenhauer would agree that a life of infinite boredom is meaningless, but because he takes boredom to be part and parcel of a desire-driven existence, he denies that this represents a position in which the will is truly disengaged. Furthermore, because he thinks also that a desire-driven existence is meaningless (and, of course, tedious), he cannot agree that it provides a genuine antidote to meaninglessness. He concludes therefore that the will must be disengaged in a more radical sense – a sense which calls a halt not merely to the cycle of insatiable desire, but also to the boredom which emerges as its by-product when the disengagement is incomplete. We can be forgiven for thinking that Schopenhauer is working within the offending framework. He dismisses the idea that meaning can be found at the level of desire, doing so on the ground that, qua subjects of desire, we can never find lasting happiness or well-being. He concludes from this that meaning is to be found only when desire is transcended, the most obvious implication being that it is to be located beyond anything that could engage the subject. Add to this the claim that it is our nature to be desiring beings, and it is difficult to resist the conclusion – which Nietzsche found to his horror and disgust – that our only hope lies in extinction. Compare Christopher Janaway: ‘Schopenhauer thus provides the paradigm of the stance Nietzsche called resignationism, or no-saying or life denial…For Nietzsche this is the controlling, degenerate, sick ideal against which we must make war. We might say: the pathos of Schopenhauer is that, revealing to us our ‘true nature’ in the will to life, he sees precisely this as what we must disown before our existence can claim to have value’ (‘Schopenhauer’s Pessimism, in Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, ed., Christopher Janaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 341. There is a clear enough sense in which Schopenhauer is claiming that meaning is to be located beyond anything that could engage the subject, at least in so far as engagement is taken to be inextricably tied to willing/desiring. However, and in the light of the importance he attaches to compassion in his account of how we might begin to find a modicum of peace and well-being, we might suggest on his behalf that it is not desire per se which is standing in the way of meaningfulness, but, rather, the assumption that it is to be understood in the manner he demands. According to this way of thinking, it is a blind impulse which remains oriented towards the subject in the sense that the desires in question are exclusively self-concerned, They are ‘I desires’ in the sense defined by Bernard Williams in his ‘Egoism and Altruism’, in Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 250-265. An interesting corollary to this suggestion is that the claim that boredom is inextricably tied up with desiring is transformed into the claim that it is egoistically motivated, and then we have a possible vindication of Walker Percy’s definition according to which boredom is ‘the self being stuffed with itself’(Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (New York: farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1983), 70-1. Nicholas E. Lombardo cites this definition in an interesting discussion of boredom in his The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 259-271. and it exhibits the ‘on and on’ structure of bad infinity. There need be no implication that egoistic desires are to be removed from the picture altogether, so it remains open – Schopenhauer notwithstanding – that they have a role to play in a meaningful existence. The point is, rather, that the category of desire or interest must be expanded to incorporate instances which are irreducible to this egoistic structure. That is to say, we must make reference also to desires which involve a concern for something other than the desirer, and which lend justice to the idea – so important to someone like Wiggins – that a meaningful existence must incorporate a variety of interests, many of which engage the subject with something other than himself, and some of which may lead him to put on one side what he happens to want for himself on a particular occasion. An imposition of this condition lends substance to Wiggins’ claim that meaning is irreducible to any one thing. It also suggests a capacity on the part of the subject to discriminate between his various interests, the implication being that he is receptive – and willingly so - not simply to the demands imposed by his egoistic inclinations, but also to those which arise by virtue of his participation in a world which exceeds these limits. See Wiggins, ‘Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life’, 136. The implication here is that these demands are not fated to be relentless, and that the eternally thirsting Tantalus is granted a reprieve. 4. Good infinity. We can begin to appreciate the structure of this alternative position by returning to Hegel and examining his preferred conception of infinity. His aim is to define an alternative in which the infinite is no longer ‘posited over against the finite’. That is to say that the finite no longer exhibits the offending ‘on and on’ structure, and the infinite ceases to be an inaccessible beyond. As a model for this alternative, Hegel cites the example of a circle, which is infinite whilst having no ends; Science of Logic, 149. Martin suggests the Möbius strip – a band which becomes a circular form with a single twist. ‘In Defense of Bad Infinity’, p.5. Both of these figures are endless, but they do not go on and on forever in the manner of bad infinity, for the progression is not set apart from something else with which it could never engage. Rather, they are totalities which, we might say, already incorporate this putative something else. As Hegel puts it, we are no longer concerned with an infinite which is ‘empty and otherworldly’. Rather, we are concerned with something ‘concrete and strictly present’ – something which is no longer ‘just one of the two’. The finite is ‘touched by the infinite’, there is a ‘unity of the infinite and the finite’, but in such a way that the distinction between these terms is preserved. Encyclopaedia Logic, s.95. The language is abstract, but the thought is clear enough. First, the finite is no longer opposed to the infinite. Second, because this opposition has been lost, the infinite is no longer a further something else. Third, because it is no longer a further something else, it is no longer finite, and because it now incorporates the finite, we lose the structure of bad infinity which was characteristic of the finite on the offending dualistic picture. The claim then is that we are now, and only now, in a position to accommodate the distinction between finite and infinite, and to do so in a manner which allows that the infinite can be revealed in the finite. We can relate this line of thought to the case of life’s meaning as follows. According to the position I have recommended, we are to reject the idea that meaning is to be located beyond anything that could engage us. Likewise, it is no solution to add a mere desire in the subject to motivate the activities he happens to perform. Impulses are insufficient in themselves to generate meaning, and require reference to something more if they are to do the required work. What they require reference to is something that will endow them with meaning. This something is not to be located in a far and inaccessible beyond. Rather, we must reconfigure our desires and interests in a manner which makes manifest their significance, and I have suggested that one way of doing this is to expand the category of desire beyond purely egoistic limits. This move promises to break the relentless cycle of selfish desires in two related ways. First, the subject is no longer exclusively preoccupied with his own satisfactions; second, he becomes receptive to a reality which exceeds the limits imposed by egoistic consciousness and which grants him the right to engage in a meaningful life. What does this have to do with circles and möbius strips? The idea, I take it, is that human subjectivity, on this way of thinking, is circular not in the sense that it remains enclosed in a structure which is sealed off from what is genuinely meaningful – as if there is a closed totality set in permanent opposition to an inaccessible something else. A circle of this kind would exhibit the structure of bad infinity, and we would be back with Schopenhauer’s wheel of Ixion. Rather, the circular movement it exhibits already engages with – is ‘touched by’ - what is meaningful, and it is by virtue of this fact that the spinning is no longer frictionless. I borrow this metaphor from John McDowell. Crucially, however, there is no implication that human subjectivity has been swallowed up in the process. Rather, it forms a crucial part of the process. It is, to continue the metaphor, that which keeps the wheel turning, and, contra what Schopenhauer suggests, it is no solution to put a stop to this endless cycle. The point is simply that the wheel must remain engaged. 5. Levinas, Desire, and Infinity. We have a position which promises to lend substance to Wiggins’ idea that the question of life’s meaning is not to be addressed by adding a single ingredient to an otherwise meaningless activity. Such ingredients – whether within or without – leave everything the same. The alternative is to reconfigure their status so that instead of being self-standing and mutually exclusive ‘particulars’, they are incorporated within a framework which permits their reconciliation. Meaning involves desire without being reducible to it, for we are capable of engaging with things that really matter. I have suggested that Hegel’s notion of good infinity provides a model in terms of which to comprehend this conception of human subjectivity, and that it grants a rightful place to the idea that existence has a point. I have noted already that Wiggins would deny that it has a theological point on the ground that such a position is bound to involve a retreat back into the offending framework. The assumption here is that a move in this direction would compromise the meaningfulness of our ordinary human concerns. Meaning would lie elsewhere, for example, in the Kingdom of God. I have implied already that this assumption is questionable, and I want to end this paper by offering a justification for this complaint. If my argument is along the right lines then a move in the direction of God may yet turn out to be a natural extension of the way that has already been paved. My role model here is Levinas, for there are features of his position which have particular relevance to the themes I have pursued. He agrees with Schopenhauer that our activities are desire-driven, and agrees also that many of these desires exhibit the ‘on and on’ structure of bad infinity. He refers to them as ‘needs’, and claims with Schopenhauer that they stem from a lack in the subject – a lack which can be filled by consuming and ‘assimilating’ an object that satisfies the desire: ‘in need I can sink my teeth into the real and satisfy myself in assimilating the other’. Totality and Infinity, (Pittsburgh: Duqusne University Press, 1969), trans. Alphonso Lingis, p.117. He allows that there is more to need than lack, for we ‘thriv(e) on our needs’, and are ‘happy’ for them…Need, a happy dependence, is capable of satisfaction, like a void which gets filled,’ and happiness is ‘the satisfaction of all needs. Totality and Infinity, pp. 114-115. Nevertheless, he has misgivings about this mode of existence, and implies, like Schopenhauer, that its satisfactions are illusory. The further claim is that what we really want, whether we know it or not, lies elsewhere: (w)e are thus moving toward the thesis of the inadequacy of satisfaction to need. The analysis of the satisfaction of need and of the atmosphere in which it is brought about will lead us to attribute to need a type of insufficiency to which satisfaction could never respond’. On Escape, p.60. Levinas claims that a subject who remains in thrall to such satisfactions inhabits a ‘totality’ in which there is no room for anything which is genuinely other. He is caught up in an exclusively self-concerned world, and it is implied that this totality – which can only ever produce ‘more of the same’ - confines the subject to something like Schopenhauer’s wheel of Ixion. We are told also that it is to be set apart from infinity, infinity being something which, we are to suppose, breaks this vicious circle. For Levinas then, totality remains closed off from that which is genuinely infinite. It exhibits the kind of bad infinity with which we are familiar from Hegel. Levinas would object that Hegel’s conception of good infinity remains a totality in this pejorative sense, and that his distinction between good and bad infinity collapses. It is beyond the scope of this paper to assess this objection. Levinas agrees with Hegel that genuine infinity cannot be treated as a separable something else. It is not any kind of thing. He claims also that the category of desire is fundamental to an account of how we relate to infinity – a mode of relating which, we are to suppose, can heal the inadequacies which remain at the level of need and make for a meaningful existence. The desire in question is ‘metaphysical desire’ – a kind of desire which is to be distinguished from need: The other metaphysically desired is not “other” like the bread I eat, the land in which I dwell…I can “feed” on these realities and to a very great extent satisfy myself, as though I had simply been lacking them. Their alterity is thereby reabsorbed into my own identity as a thinker or a possessor. The metaphysical desire tends towards something else entirely, towards the absolutely other…It is a desire that can not be satisfied. Totality and Infinity, pp.33-4. The idea that metaphysical desire cannot be satisfied might be thought to suggest that it exhibits the kind of ‘on and on’ structure we associate with bad infinity, in which case, it becomes difficult to make sense of the idea that it takes us beyond the totality to which we are confined when we remain at the level of need. This is not what Levinas is saying. Rather, the claim is that metaphysical desire is insatiable in a quite different sense. It is insatiable in a different sense because, unlike our other desires, it does not involve a demand for food, ‘Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite’, p.114. and, consequently, does not stem from any kind of lack in the subject which is constantly required to be filled. It expresses an ‘insufficiency’ that is ‘without possible satisfaction – not only unsatisfied in fact, but outside of every perspective of satisfaction or unsatisfaction’. Totality and Infinity, p.179. The claim then is that there is a kind of desire which does not call for food. It tends towards something which is ‘absolutely other’, and the relation which is hereby established with this other is such that ‘distance ‘is more precious than contact’, ‘non-possession more precious than possession’. Totality and Infinity, p.179. The implication here is that this relation puts us in touch with something that calls a halt to Schopenhauer’s wheel of Ixion, and it does so by introducing a quite different dimension to our subjectivity. As Levinas puts it, ‘the inward play of the soul’ is broken, ‘the Other overflows the Same’. ‘Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite’, p.112. The structure of thought is familiar from Hegel, for Levinas is claiming likewise that the infinite cannot be viewed as a separable something else which stands juxtaposed to anything with which we could ever engage. So it is not an inaccessible something which ‘we cannot reach in our finitude’. Totality and Infinity, p. 63. Such a model, Levinas complains, would reduce the infinite to a finite quantity, and it would suggest also that our relation to it is no different from the relation in which we stand to any other object of need. That is to say, it would become one more object to be consumed or possessed, the difference being that, in this particular case, our attempts at appropriation would remain ever frustrated. The infinite cannot be like this, and according to Levinas’s alternative, we can accommodate its true nature only by allowing, first, that it is not an inaccessible ‘something’, and second, that it serves to transform our subjectivity. This second condition is met by reference to the notion of metaphysical desire, and the further claim is that this desire, rather than stemming from a lack in the subject, has its source in the infinite. Totality and Infinity, p.61. The idea that it involves no lack on the part of the subject vindicates the claim that it does not call for food, and it allows us to give a quite different sense to the idea that it is insatiable. It is insatiable not in the sense that it involves a hunger that can never be satisfied, but in the sense that it gives expression to an ‘insufficiency’ which is ‘outside of every perspective of satisfaction and nonsatisfaction’, and which guarantees that the subject is receptive to that which is genuinely other. It is in this way that the ‘inward play of the soul’ is broken, and it is in this way that the infinite finds true expression. To resort to our metaphor, we have an ‘on and on’ structure which is no longer without friction, infinity has been made good. Levinas accepts that a meaningful existence is desire-involving, and he accepts also that desire puts us in touch with what really matters. He grants a place to our egoistic desires, insisting only that they be located within a context which challenges their supremacy. He claims also that metaphysical desire involves a desire for God. This would be the sticking point for someone like Wiggins, for as I have said, he takes such a claim to involve a retreat back towards the idea that meaning is some further thing beyond anything that could engage the subject. It should be clear from what I have said on Levinas’s behalf that he stands opposed to such a position. For he insists that that which bestows meaning upon existence precisely is something that engages us. This is the point of claiming that we are metaphysically desiring beings. But what of the idea that qua such desiring beings, we desire God? Does this not suggest that we are really hankering after a more ultimate goal, that our earthly pursuits are but means to this more superior end – this one thing which gives a point – the only point – to human existence? Levinas would resist this implication. Indeed, he would object that it forces us back into just the kind of egoistic framework it is his purpose to transcend. For it suggests that the desire for God is just one more desire to get something for ourselves – in this case, an entry point into heaven which will provide the ultimate in satisfaction. He would claim also that this betrays a deep misunderstanding of the nature of God: He is there to satisfy our needs, and our relation to Him is purely instrumental. He becomes, as Levinas puts it, an inhabitant of a child’s heaven. “Loving the Torah more than God”, in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, p.143. The desire for God is not like that, and Levinas insists that we can relate to Him only by standing in moral relations to others. Hence: ‘The vision of God is a moral act. This optics is ethics’; “For a Jewish Humanism”, in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, p. 275. and ‘I approach the infinite insofar as I forget myself for my neighbour who looks at me….A you is inserted between the I and the absolute He’. Collected Philosophical Papers, ed. Alphonso Lingis (Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague, 1987), 72-3. He has several reasons for insisting upon this. First, it excludes the idea that we could stand in an unmediated relation to God – the kind of relation which, depending upon one’s outlook, would provide either ultimate satisfaction or infinite boredom. Second, it guarantees that God is not at the service of egoism. Third, it guarantees that we, too, escape the ego's clutches so as to relate authentically to God: ‘to know God is to know what must be done’. ‘A Religion for Adults’, p.17. So the idea that we are oriented towards God need not imply that our earthly endeavours are mere means to a further, more superior, end, and if Levinas is to be believed, this simply forces us back into the kind of totality which the reference to God was intended to break. So the introduction of God is intended to lend meaning to existence, and it can do so, Levinas believes, only to the extent that it severs the exclusive hold of egoistic consciousness. It does this by awakening the subject to the demands of morality. We are left in no doubt that an interest in such demands can be viewed in egoistic/instrumental terms only at the cost of severing our connection with that which is genuinely worthwhile. Morality is important to Wiggins, and he would be happy to allow that it has an indispensable place in a meaningful existence. We have seen that Schopenhauer is prepared to make a similar concession. Neither of these thinkers, however, is prepared to go all the way to God. See Gerard Mannion, Schopenhauer, Religion, and Morality (Aldershot, Hants; Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), for an interpretation which poses a challenge to this view of Schopenhauer. Our examination of Levinas suggests that a move in this direction remains compatible with the idea that human existence is meaningful, and that it does not imply that what really matters lies elsewhere. But does it not suggest that meaning is, after all, a single thing? And that, as Wiggins puts it, there is ‘one thing from which all values can be derived…one focus from which all other concerns can be organized’? Well, it does not suggest this if such a claim is intended to imply that meaning is some one thing out there – something distinct from anything that could seriously engage us. However, it does suggest that there is one thing from which all other values can be derived, for the claim is that these values have their source in God. Likewise, it is claimed also that there is one focus from which all others can be organized, for the suggestion is that orientation towards God is ultimate, and that it is that without which our other focuses would lapse into meaninglessness. So these claims are fundamental, but it is unclear that they carry the consequences envisaged by Wiggins. First, the claim that orientation towards God is ultimate does not imply that we are to forgo all other relations and concerns. On the contrary, the claim is that we shall do so only at the cost of retreating into a meaningless (=Godless) existence. The suggestion then is that we can relate to God only by retaining the concerns which, for Wiggins, are fundamental. So there is nothing here with which Wiggins could take issue. By contrast, the second claim – that there is one thing from which all other values are derived – is arguably more problematic. But again, we can ask: what does this really commit us to? It does not commit us to the idea that all values are reducible to a single value, as if we are compelled to conclude that there is only one thing that matters. Rather, it commits us to the idea that all values have their source in God. But what does this mean? It is unclear what it could mean for someone like Levinas given his reluctance to talk about God in any direct sort of way. One of the things it could mean is that values have their source in something beyond the subject, and hence, that things do not become valuable simply because we feel that they are. Wiggins is anxious enough to preserve this thought, taking its acceptance to be necessary for avoiding the offending either/or framework. Again then, there is nothing with which he could take issue. Of course, he would take issue with the idea that we can avoid this subjectivist picture only by moving in the direction of God, but given that Levinas himself insists that this movement can proceed only by reference to ingredients which, by Wiggins’ lights are perfectly in order, it becomes difficult to identify a substantial disagreement. Indeed, in the light of the conclusions we have reached, it is tempting to go back to Wiggins’ diagnosis and to say that there is only one acceptable interpretation of the claim that here is one thing from which all other values are to be derived – or one thing from which life’s meaning is to be derived. According to this interpretation, this one thing is nothing less than human subjectivity itself – human subjectivity, on this way of thinking, incorporating all of the ingredients which are required to address these fundamental questions. This, I take it, is what Wiggins is getting at when, having advanced his diagnosis, he tells us to go back to the ‘the’ in the original question: ‘what is the meaning of life’: And to interest ourselves afresh in what everybody knows about – the set of concerns he actually has, their objects, and the focus he has formed or seeks to bring to bear upon these: also the prospects of purifying, redeploying or extending this set. ‘Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life’, p.136. This response is implicit in the conclusions I have recommended throughout. It lends justice to Hegel’s claim that human subjectivity exemplifies the structure of good infinity, and makes sense of the idea that things matter. I have argued that it is compatible with such a position that this structure is God-involving. If Hegel and Levinas are to be believed we can reject this conclusion only at the cost of occupying the ‘subjectivist’ horn of the dilemma Wiggins seeks to transcend, the implication being that a move in the direction of God is precisely what is needed if the dialectic is to be adequately resolved. Fiona Ellis Heythrop College, London [email protected] PAGE 14