The Value and Meaning of Life

Christopher Belshaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138908772
• eBook ISBN: 9781000199932
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

In this book Christopher Belshaw draws on earlier work concerning death, identity, animals, immortality, and extinction, and builds a large-scale argument dealing with questions of both value and meaning. Rejecting suggestions that life is sacred or intrinsically valuable, he argues instead that its value varies, and varies considerably, both within and between different kinds of things. So in some cases we might have reason to improve or save a life, while in others that reason will be lacking.

What about starting lives? The book's central section takes this as its focus, and asks whether we ever have reason to start lives, just for the sake of the one whose life it is. Not only is it denied that there is any such reason, but some sympathy is afforded to the anti-natalist contention that there is always reason against.

The final chapters deal with meaning. There is support here for the sober and familiar view that meaning derives from an enthusiasm for, and some success with, the pursuit of worthwhile projects. Now suppose we are immortal. Or suppose, in contrast, that we face imminent extinction. Would either of these threaten meaning? The claim is made that the force of such threats is often exaggerated.

The Value and Meaning of Life is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, ethics, and religion, and will be of interest to all those concerned with how to live, and how to think about the lives of others.

1 Sanctity

Many people say that life is sacred. We can ask, what is it that these people are saying when they say this? And, is what they say true? But this oversimplifies matters. The key terms here are susceptible to a variety of meanings and interpretations. So what people are wanting to say when they make such a claim will vary from case to case. So too, perhaps, will the truth of what they are saying. We can ask first, then, how ‘life’ might be understood when it is said that life is sacred. And then we can, in the same way, ask about the meanings of ‘sacred’.

Begin, however, with a preliminary question. Is this talk of sanctity, as both etymology and many texts suggest, essentially religious? Or might we have, as a number of people seem to believe, a robustly secular account? I’ll argue that the most plausible and consistent of the familiar versions have religion pretty much at their core. But these virtues are only conditional – plausible and consistent given God. So those disinclined to the religious view will find sanctity talk harder to embrace.

Life

Some discussions of the sanctity of life might appear to be from the outset confused. Consider this:

A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succour, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living. He does not ask how far this or that life deserves sympathy as valuable in itself, nor how far it is capable of feeling. To him life as such is sacred. He shatters no ice crystal that sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from its tree, breaks off no flower, and is careful not to crush any insect as he walks.¹

But ice crystals aren’t alive. Schweitzer here runs together a concern for living things with an attention to nature more generally. This isn’t a stupid mistake, for, as I’ll explain in more detail later, there are evident connections between the two spheres, but it is a mistake nevertheless. Perhaps others, in holding that further non-living things – certain places, rituals, crosses, flags – can be sacred are not making this mistake, but intentionally widening the field. This is arguably well-motivated; these things, in contrast to nature more generally, are directly linked with human life and human practices – the place is sacred as miracles occurred here; the cross because Jesus was nailed to it; the flag symbolizes the history, struggle, destiny or what have you of the American people. So then these things are, we might say, sacred through association. A more intimate connection is that between human life and human remains, which are also, of course, often viewed as sacred. As I write this there is widespread outrage about the inappropriate disposal of body parts. Concerns here are in some measure about health risks, but mostly centre on a failure properly to respect the residues of those who once were living.²

If we focus, as plausibly we should, just on life, or living things, then the broadest interpretation holds that animals, plants, and microbes are all sacred, and are, if Schweitzer is right here, all to be helped, and not harmed, where possible. But restrictions might be in place – it can be held that sanctity attaches just to sentient life, so that perhaps we should help, and not harm, only those who might as a result feel, or cease to feel, pleasure or pain.³ Another restriction is familiar – it is just human life, and in all its conditions and forms, that is sacred, and thus to be sharply distinguished from other lives. Is there yet a further restriction to consider? Many of those who appear most exercised about the sanctity of human life often seem untroubled by or supportive of war, capital punishment, targeted executions, sometimes even torture. And the claims and insistences these people make about abortion in particular might suggest that in their view only innocent human lives are sacred, perhaps that we are all to varying degrees corrupted by the world, and that criminals, enemies, all those intentionally threatening innocent lives, thereby forfeit sacredness. Certainly it is possible to want to limit the sphere of the sacred in this way; but how this might be achieved, as I’ll soon explain, depends on how sanctity is to be understood.

A further, different, and conflicting restriction can be considered. It might be suggested that the lives only of persons are sacred. So, roughly – and more needs to be said in the chapter to follow – what matters here is rationality, self-consciousness, awareness of time, perhaps also a moral sense.⁴ And then the very young – fetuses, newborns – and some among the very old – in particular those with severe Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases of the mind – along with those who at other ages become unable to think as you and I, and most of those we know, are fully able to think; all these fall outside of sanctity’s remit. This is a conflicting restriction in two respects. First, it is possible, at least in principle, for there to be non-human persons; and whales, dolphins, apes have been offered as candidates here. Moreover, it is possible in principle – and this will depend on how developments in artificial intelligence proceed – also for there to be non-living persons. Second, and this is true not only in principle but, unfortunately, also in practice, there are many non-innocent persons.⁵

Now holding only for persons isn’t at all how sanctity talk is commonly understood, and there’s little warrant for introducing this sort of restriction, so long as such talk retains its overt and familiar religious connotations. But, as I’ve said, attempts are often made to sever the links here, and then to develop secular accounts of sanctity. And then these accounts might well appeal to some such restriction, and identify persons as chief among those having the characteristics and status that sacredness seems to involve. I’ll say more in sections below, and show that this isn’t going to work.

Here, though, a final and not unrelated point about life. In talking of its sanctity people might be thinking that life itself, living, or the property of being alive, is what is sacred, and the thing thus to be respected, revered, promoted, or whatever it is that sanctity enjoins us to do. Or they might instead be focusing on the individual things, the concrete particulars – plants, porpoises, people – that have life. There is, of course, no locus for life, being alive, beyond the range of living things, and so it might be wondered whether the distinction here will be of any significance. And in most of what follows I’ve no need, and make no attempt, to differentiate between these senses. Nevertheless, there is something here worth noting. If life itself is sacred it is presumably always and everywhere sacred. If the things that have life are sacred then perhaps they’re sacred only when they are alive. But perhaps not. For the idea that living things are sacred might lend itself to the belief that some residues of sanctity persist in the body even after death. But if we think sanctity attaches to the property, being alive, then we’ll care less for, and think less of, this once-living body. So there is a link here with the distinction between burial and cremation, and, of course, an echo of the earlier point about human remains.⁶

Sanctity

What is meant by sanctity, and our saying that such and such is sacred? People often use these terms without giving any developed account of what it is they have in mind. But it seems there are two components at least implicit within sanctity talk. First, there’s some kind of claim made about the nature of things that are sacred – what it is about these things that differentiates them from the profane. And second, there are insistences on what follows from this regarding our attitudes and activities – how we should behave in relation to the sacred. The concern here is just with life. The claims, I’ll say, focus on value. The insistences take on various forms.

So then it seems clear that there is some sort of value to life on the sanctity view. But very many things have some sort of value – the value that life has, because it is sacred, is going to be in certain ways special. Both supporters of the sanctity view and its detractors also will agree this is a key component.⁷ Yet the questions, first, of precisely what value is, and then, second, of what particular value is in play here are both of them taxing, and are not altogether done with until Chapter 3. Still, we can make a start. And, as I’ll claim, the sort of value at the core of this sanctity talk is special or distinctive in two ways. It doesn’t depend on us. And it doesn’t very much depend on the condition the allegedly sacred thing is in, or what it is like.

What sorts of value might usefully be distinguished? Several of these are familiar. We value many plants and animals for food, clothing, medicines, but also, particularly as with plants, just for their appearance, and, as with animals, for companionship. Other people are, of course, valued in the last of these ways, but we recognize as well that people – ourselves and others – typically value their own lives, want them to continue, and to go well. I’ll say considerably more about these values – and we can refer to them, oversimplifying somewhat, as instrumental and personal values – in a later chapter. But it will be clear already that if something is said to be sacred then it allegedly has some value of a quite different kind from those just sketched. Talk of the sanctity of human life – and this is going to play a central role in any sanctity account – illustrates this well. For the lives that are said to be sacred are not at all confined just to the useful lives – doctors, architects, crop-gatherers, mothers, politicians – but include many that have no obvious point or purpose. Nor are they restricted to the good or happy lives, or to those that are, in fact, valued by their owners. Both those who have, for various reasons, no interest in continuing to live and those who actively want to die have lives, it is said, that are sacred. They are valuable in themselves, whatever their condition, and whatever their relation to the wants, needs, and preferences both of those living these lives, and of the various others – parents, children, friends, and carers – having a close relationship to and interest in them. But now what is this special and distinctive value that attaches here to the sacred; attaches, as I’ve said, at least to human life in all its variety? It might be suggested – and again there is considerably more on this to come – that we are talking here of intrinsic value. Several writers, and from a variety of positions, make this point explicitly, with several others at least often implying it.⁸

Grant this, at least provisionally. It needs to be considered now what sorts of demands a thing’s being sacred, having this special value, will put on us. And the beginnings of answers here, and moreover answers at two levels, can be found by returning to Schweitzer. The passage quoted above is excerpted from a work where he reveals an explicit concern with a reverence for life. And this notion sits at the heart of his career as a whole. But both within this work, and in many further places besides, Schweitzer talks instead of respect. So what is it to respect or revere life? What is it, more generally, to treat something with respect?

Start with a distinction between neutral and positive evaluations. We respect something by properly understanding it, and then treating or engaging with it appropriately. But what is appropriate needn’t be favourable. We might be told to respect the weather, or to handle some dangerous substances with due respect. It isn’t implicit here that the weather is a good thing, something I should look after, or that this substance is one we should want to preserve. But talk of respect often seems to imply an overall favourable attitude. I admire this thing, care for it, want to preserve or promote it. You might be thought to have missed the point if, told you should respect your parents, you cut off all ties with them on the grounds that they are scoundrels. Similarly, whereas I might, assuming the first sense, show respect for a poison by carefully disposing of it, it would be difficult, given the second sense, to demonstrate respect for an inconveniently located tree, and the life of a tree, by cutting it down.⁹

How do these notions of respect connect with sanctity? The requirement that we treat things appropriately is very wide-ranging. Arguably in this sense, we should treat everything with respect. Nothing, whether it is life, or nature, or walls, or cars, should be dealt with inappropriately, thoughtlessly, carelessly. Respect’s second sense, where some positive or protective attitude is involved, has a narrower scope. But it can be made narrower still. We might respect, care for, look after something – perhaps a landscape, some artwork, a vintage car – because this thing matters to certain people, and they care about it. Sacred objects, in contrast, should in some sense be cared for, looked after, nurtured, not for our, or someone else’s benefit, but just for their own sake.¹⁰ Ideas or notions of reverence lack these ambiguities. There seems to be an evident religious dimension here, where the things we revere are pretty much explicitly in some way valuable, deserving of care, protection, and admiration in themselves. Having the view that something is sacred, then, it follows we should revere that thing.

This doesn’t yet get us very far. We need more detail. Fortunately, in talking about our needs to help and not harm, Schweitzer gives useful pointers here. For we can consider first what we might be required positively to do, in response to sanctity, and then, in contrast, what we might be forbidden from doing. In short, what is prescribed and what proscribed.

Yet I need here a further distinction, and one that will help shape several of the chapters to come. For our various interactions in support of life might be understood in three ways, relating to starting, saving, and improving. Consider each of these in relation first to what, on sanctity views, might be prescribed. The least controversial here is the last. Many of us will think there is some sort of obligation to attend to the living things that are, and will continue to be, in existence, and to improve their lot. We might, for example, ensure that trees don’t suffer from drought, free a rabbit or hare caught in barbed wire, or provide for our children a decent education. Fairly closely connected is the business of saving lives. And many will believe we ought, where we can, to rescue plants, animals, and human beings from the threat of death, and so to extend their lives. Yet this, as will be explained below,¹¹ should strike us as a more controversial claim, and one where the category of persons might play an importan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Sanctity
• 2 Terms
• 3 Value
• 4 Lives
• 5 The Asymmetry
• 6 Choosing
• 7 Anti-natalism
• 8 Meaning
• 9 Immortality
• 10 Extinction
• Appendix 1: Dworkin and reconciliation
• Appendix 2: The experience machine
• Appendix 3: How bad is death?
• Appendix 4: Values and reasons
• Appendix 5: XR/CV
• Bibliography
• Index