MEANING OF LIFE

Meaning of Life

Meaning of Life

Introduction

The term meaning of life refers to the questions raised by human regarding the purpose of their existence. The term, however, described in a variety of ways, like writers extract their own meaning, religious scholars interpret the meaning as per their beliefs and philosophers utilize their own observation and experiences to provide the definition (Klemke, 1981). In this connection, this study will compare philosophical and religious scholars mainly Plato, St. Francis Assisi and Karl Marx to examine how they have described the term meaning of life.

Thesis Statement

There is a common thing between the interpretations of the term “meaning of life” by Plato, St. Francis Assisi and Karl Marx, that is realism.

Discussion

Plato's Belief

Plato was a Greek philosopher and philosophical school. The influence and authority of Plato's thought is virtually without parallel in western civilization (Ferrari & Griffith, 2000). No matter how "philosophy" formally described, for centuries the practice of philosophy meant responding to what Plato had said and written (Burnet, 1928). To understand how Plato has provided meaning of life, it is pertinent to discuss his belief regarding life.

Christianity began while Platonism was in stage scholars now call "Platonism," a stage of development whose origins go back to Antiochus of Ascalon. It is "middle" because it stands between the dogmatism of the first Academy and the dogmatism of "New Platonism." Middle Platonism marked a departure from skepticism and a return to the concerns of moral cosmology, that is, an account of a transcendent cause which is good, the Good. Although the ancients had available more of Aristotle than do we, we have as many true texts by Plato as the ancients possessed (Ferrari & Griffith, 2000). The Republic is Plato's longest work and covers many important topics, including aesthetics, ethics, polity, epistemology, and psychology. Republic 4 gives a psychology of moral action, a moral map that divides the soul into three kinds of activity: rational, a righteousness or temper that is open to the direction by reason, and irrational desire. Clement of Alexandria refers to Plato's "On the Soul," a conflate of parts of the Phaedrus and Republic 4. Plato regularly cited by Christians as a precedent for the belief in the immortality of the soul (while, at the same time, they reject his idea of reincarnation) (Burnet, 1928). An interest in moral psychology remained strong in Platonism, and works on "On the Soul," as well as commentaries on the Phaedo, occur with great regularity, including Tertullian's On the Soul and Gregory of Nyssa's On the Soul and Resurrection (Ferrari & Griffith, 2000). These writings almost always have a polemical character; that is, they reflect arguments over how divisions in the soul are to be identified and how unity in the soul is to be conceived. These works also reveal how difficult it is to type a person as a "Platonist" (Ferrari & Griffith, 2000). Tertullian's psychology, for example, considered having been Platonic, but he also held the Stoic doctrine that the soul consisted of a ...