No matter how busy people with their chores, no matter how sad or happy with any of his life still in front of it the question arises - what is it all?Why do we live, if all die anyway, moreover, inevitably die when those whom we love?This is the problem of the meaning of life - probably, the same problem in an attempt to resolve the philosophy that arose.Because the problem is concentrated all the most important and valuable for anyone who is not afraid to think about it.
Any belief system, ideology and philosophical views, in the end, based on the approach to the issue.It is not surprising, because in the end, all the prohibitions and regulations, traditions and values are justified only to why and for what they should be respected.That is why the meaning of life in philosophy and attitude to the finiteness of life and death are very connected.Also in this issue are woven individual sense - that is, the meaning of life of a particular individual - and social - the meaning of the life of society or humanity in general.Historically, philosophy knows three types of approaches to this problem.
first of them - this is a traditional approach based on faith.Life only makes sense when it is eternal.When the best of what you have, do not disappear when no evil, no time no longer exists, but only everlasting joy and fullness of life.But to achieve such a life - resurrected after physical death in another world - you need while still alive to achieve unity with the gods, or God, and obey the rules and limitations given above.The problem of the meaning of life in this approach removed aspiration to God and eternal life.However, many religious systems require and demand rejection of the human personality, or the separated position of hell and eternal death for those who do not follow the divine establishment.
related to religious, secular approach says that the destiny of man is the arrangement or reorganization of the world so that people do not suffer either from fear or from hunger and live, guided by the principles of justice and brotherhood.For the sake of progress and individual lives.To some extent, this approach carries a paradise from another world in the future.But if the religious approach often makes the individual with his shortcomings or lack of faith in an obstacle that must be overcome, the problem of the meaning of life in the secular formulation of the question becomes only a collective nature, and people have become something of a humus for future generations.
Another, no less traditional approach, put forward the version that the meaning of life itself, coming from any higher rules or values does not exist, and human life is finite in principle.Therefore, we must use it and give it the meaning that we are willing to give it.Thus, a person or a drink, eat and make merry, because tomorrow will die, or fall victim to consciously decide to fight for their identity, but nothing on hoping.But the problem of the meaning of life in this case seemed to be receding into the background and obscured, concealed.Divide the heroism of this approach not all have the courage, so proponents of this approach need to overcome despair and pain, the more that such an approach, to accept the existence of death, does not solve the problem of the death of loved ones.
problem of the meaning of life philosophy and its historical development also allows us to see that many well-known personalities, famous for his wisdom, shared by one or the other approach.Thus, Diogenes, Epicurus, Nietzsche, and under certain reservations Spinoza can be called supporters of the view that life has meaning in itself, and the person must realize this and practice, striving for happiness, inner peace, implementation of the "will to power" and so on.Aristotle, Marx, Feuerbach, Mill preferred to see the meaning of life in the realization of the aspirations of the public.As for the Egyptian, Indian, Chinese philosophy, Socrates and Plato, the different areas of Christian and Muslim philosophy, classical European philosophy, especially in the face of Kant, they basically shared the religious approach, even if often criticized many of its shortcomings.Somewhat apart at the same time it is the philosophy of existentialism, whose representatives could also be guided by secular, atheistic or religious approach.But their contribution to the study of this question is to examine the process of "borderline situation" when a man suddenly finds itself in a critical, "dying" state, and overcoming it, is able to find freedom and to understand the meaning of their own existence.
