^{page 457 note 1} See Edwards, Paul, ‘The Meaning and Value of Life’, in Klemke, E. D. (ed.), The Meaning of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).Google Scholar Unless otherwise noted, page numbers cited in text refer to this book. Edwards says, ‘It may indeed be the case that once a person comes to believe that life has no meaning in the cosmic sense his attachment to terrestrial goals will be undermined to such an extent that his life will cease to be meaningful in the other sense as well. However,… this is by no means what invariably happens… the meaninglessness of a given person's life in the terrestrial sense would not logically follow from the fact, if it is a fact, that life is meaningless in the cosmic sense… Furthermore, there is really no good reason to grant that the life of a particular person becomes meaningful in the terrestrial sense just because human life in general has meaning in the cosmic sense’ (131).

^{page 458 note 1} See Edwards, Paul, ‘The Meaning and Value of Life’, pp. 118–9.Google Scholar Edwards’ concern is with the question of ‘whether the pessimistic conclusions are justified if belief in God and immortality are rejected’ (119), not with whether life is part of a divine scheme, or there is life after death.

^{page 458 note 2} Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: RKP, 1922).Google Scholar See para. 6.4312. ‘The temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say, its eternal survival after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that we survive for ever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time…’

^{page 460 note 1} Hepburn appears to hold this view, though he acknowledges that there is also a sense in which one's life can be meaningful apart from whether or not one knows that is meaningful, or what the meaning is.

Could a man's life have or fail to have meaning without his knowing that it did or did not have meaning? This question could be answered either way, according to the interpretation given to ‘ the meaning of life.’ We can answer Yes: …if ‘ having meaning’ is equated with ‘contributing to valuable projects’ …but it may be felt…that such an answer goes against the grain of language…that it is too odd to say, for instance, ‘White did not himself find the meaning of his life: but Black (White's biographer, writing after White's death) did find it.’ Finding the meaning of White's life may be deemed something only White is logically able to do…Conversely, in the case of people who have not worked at it, seen it as a task, who have been unreflectively happy, or unhappy, it would be most natural to say that they have neither found nor failed to find the meaning of life…it distorts the logic of ‘the meaning of life’ if we take as paradigmatic instances of success in discovering meaning, people who have never been troubled by the problematic aspects of life… (216)

^{page 460 note 2} Those who claim that life can have ultimate meaning apart from God often go on to assert related and ‘stronger’ theses as well. For example, they sometimes argue (e.g. Klemke, Baier, Nielsen and Taylor), that life can have meaning only if God does not exist, if there is no divine cosmic scheme that gives meaning to our lives as a whole, no ‘objective’ meaning to our lives, a meaning that comes from without, rather than one that we individually and collectively give to our own lives. Kurt Baier says ‘To attribute to a human being a purpose in that sense [i.e. fulfilling an end determined by God] is not neutral, let alone complimentary: it is offensive. It is degrading for a man to be regarded as merely serving a purpose’ (104). Baiers' view is an oversimplification. To fulfil some end stipulated by God is not necessarily ‘to be regarded as merely serving a purpose' – someone else's purpose for their own end – to the exclusion of one's own interests and values. On the contrary, when believer's speak of fulfilling God's purpose, they mean it in the sense of fulfilling their own purpose as well, in accordance with their own sense of values. One may deny that there is anything that a person qua person should become – but religious world views hold that there is such an end. If there is, or if one can be justified in believing that there is, then Baier's assertion is false. God's purpose is not some selfish end of God. To fulfil God's purpose is at one and the same time to fulfil one's own purposes and goals – to become what it is that is most valuable to become.

Furthermore the believer need not assert that God creates value. They need not deny the impact of the Euthypho problem which asserts that value must be independent of God. The believer need only assert that God's purposes are valuable (conform to whatever objective value there may be) and that it is in one's own best interests to pursue that goal since it identical with the end that one would rationally seek if one had one's best interests in mind and knew what those interests were, and if one valued most that which was most valuable. (It has been argued by Quinn, Philip, Divine Commands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, and others, that a ‘divine command theory of ethics’ does not require an abandonment of one's moral autonomy and so is not objectionable on that ground.) Even if one regards all value as subjective in some sense, so that God's values were as subjective as anyone elses – still one might maintain that, in terms of being human, one's values should coincide with God's if one is to achieve maximum value whether this be conceived of as happiness or in some other way. (For an opposing view see, Neilsen, , pp. 184–5.)Google Scholar

^{page 462 note 1} The quotation is from Clark, C. D. H., Christianity and Bertrand Russell, (London, 1958), p. 30.Google Scholar

^{page 463 note 1} In Klemke, , p. 6.Google Scholar From Popper, Karl, ‘How I See Philosophy’, in Mercier, A. and Silvar, M. (eds), Philosophers on Their Own Work, vol. III (Berne and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1977), p. 148.Google Scholar The point about value sometimes being a function of transitoriness rather than permanence is also made by Flew. See The Presumption of Atheism, p. 160, cited below. Also, Williams, Bernard, ‘The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality’, in Problems of The Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 82–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 464 note 1} Perrett, Roy W., ‘Tolstoy, Death and The Meaning of Life’, Philosophy 60 (1985), pp. 231–45, 236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Flew's views may be found in, Flew, Anthony, The Presumption of Atheism (London: Elek/Pemberton, 1976), ch. 12, p. 154.Google Scholar

^{page 465 note 1} There is indication that Taylor realizes his interpretation is incorrect in his discussion that follows (125).

^{page 465 note 2} My thanks to Susan Levine, Robert Mckim, Tim Oakley, John Reeder, Robert Scharlemann, Bill Throop, Robert Young and students at the University of Virginia, La Trobe University, University of Pennsylvania, and St Andrews College for comments.