The problem of the meaning of life: who are we, why are we here and where are we going?

No matter how busy a person is with his deeds, no matter how sad or pleased his life, he still faces the question: what is this all about? Why do we live if we still die, moreover, if inevitably those who we love are dying? This is the problem of the meaning of life - probably the same problem, in an attempt to solve which arose philosophy itself. Because in this problem is concentrated all the most important and valuable for any person who is not afraid to think about it.

Any system of beliefs, ideology and philosophical views, in the end, is based on an approach to solving this issue. This is not surprising, because in the end, all prohibitions and prescriptions, traditions and values are justified only by what for and why they should be observed. That is why the meaning of life in philosophy and the relation to the finiteness of life and death are very related. In addition, individual meaning is intertwined in this question - that is, the meaning of the life of a particular person - and the social meaning - of the life of society or of humanity as a whole. Historically, philosophy knows three types of approaches to this problem.

The first of these is the traditional approach based on faith. Life only makes sense when it is eternal. When all the best that you have does not disappear, when there is no more evil or time, but only eternal joy and fullness of being. But in order to achieve such a life - to resurrect after physical death in another world - one must reach unity with the gods even in life, or with God, and observe the prescriptions and restrictions given from above. The problem of the meaning of life with this approach is removed by the aspiration to God and eternal life. However, many religious systems demanded and demand the rejection of human individuality, or shared the position of hell and eternal death for those who do not observe divine ordinances.

Associated with the religious, secular approach suggests that the person's destiny is to arrange or reconstruct the world in such a way that people do not suffer from fear or hunger, but live according to the principles of justice and brotherhood. For the sake of this progress, there lives an individual. To some extent, this approach carries paradise from another world into the future. But if a religious approach often turns an individual person with his shortcomings or disbelief into an obstacle that needs to be overcome, then the problem of the meaning of life in the secular setting of the question becomes exclusively a collective one, and people become something of a humus for future generations.

Another, no less traditional approach, puts forward the theory that the meaning of life as such emanating from any higher rules or values does not exist, and human life is finite in principle. Therefore, we need to use it and give it the meaning that we ourselves wish to give it. Thus, a person either drinks, eats and makes merry, because tomorrow he will die, or consciously decides to fall victim in the struggle for his identity, but at the same time not hoping for anything. But the problem of the meaning of life in this case seems to recede into the background and is obscured, hidden. To divide the heroism of this approach, not all have the courage, and therefore supporters of this approach need to overcome despair and pain, especially since such an approach, reconciling with the existence of death, does not solve the problem of the death of loved ones.

The problem of the meaning of life in philosophy and its historical development also allow us to see that many famous personalities, famous for their wisdom, shared this or that approach. Thus, Diogenes, Epicurus, Nietzsche, and with certain reservations, Spinoza can be called supporters of the view that life has meaning in itself, and a person must realize and practice this, striving for happiness, inner peace, the realization of "the will to power" and so on . Aristotle, Marx, Feuerbach, Mill preferred to see the meaning of life in the realization of social aspirations. As for Egyptian, Indian, Chinese philosophy, Socrates and Plato, various trends of Christian and Muslim philosophy, classical European philosophy, especially in the person of Kant, they in principle shared a religious approach, even if they often criticized many of its shortcomings. Somewhat apart from this is the philosophy of existentialism, whose representatives could also be guided by a secular, atheistic or religious approach. But their contribution to the study of this issue consists in investigating the very process of the "borderline situation", when a person suddenly finds himself in a critical, "dying" state and, overcoming it, is able to gain freedom and understand the meaning of his own being.