Atheism and the Meaning of Life

Atheism and the Meaning of Life

As Hans Blumenberg has shown, a major characteristic of the
Occidental thought tradition is the rootedness of its fundamental
structures of meaningfulness in transcendence. Since the expansion of
Christianity, this rootedness is guaranteed by a transcendent God.
This radical dependence upon structures of transcendence as the
ultimate resources of meaning becomes most eloquently obvious at the
wake of Modernity when Christian faith is progressively fragilized, and
the medieval ordo starts to erode. The erosion of this ordo-
metaphysics gives way to a growing awareness of human autonomy,
leading to the recognition of human agency. This shift carries
significant consequences: Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous aphorism
declaring the death of God illustrates with great acuity the challenge
linked to this revolution of paradigm: Following Jean-François Mattéi,
Man is left in a “crise du sens”, the French notion “sens” hinting at
both meaningfulness and orientation. The entire metaphysical
structure of the Platonic-Christian tradition crashes and (Western)
Mankind is in an urgent need to find new resources for the generation
of meaning. However, the repeated crises in the history of Modernity,
and in particular the spread of nihilism in the late 19th century and the
nihilistic ideologies of the 20th century, show insistently that it is far
from obvious to take up this challenge. Whereas Nietzsche suggested
that we become creators of new values, Søren Kierkegaard tried to
handle the loss of metaphysical reassurance by claiming God as a
subjective truth, and Martin Heidegger attempted to find the lost
entirety of Dasein, and thus a genuine meaning in life, through a
merely immanent conception of authentic possibilities emerging from
the anticipation of one’s own death. Yet, it is maybe – and
paradoxically – in Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus that the
indebtedness of Modernity to the metaphysical tradition becomes the
most striking reminder of the devaluated resources of meaning: the
revolt he presents as the attitude to adopt facing the absurd is
understandable only against the backdrop of what has been lost,
culminating in the claim that life is lived all the better if it does not
have meaning.
Unlike the continental tradition, analytical philosophy has long
neglected questions about the meaning of life. This started to change
at the turn of the millennium, and a new discourse has emerged,
reexamining these “classic” philosophical questions in the context of a
pluralistic and post-secular world. This conference seeks to explore
responses to the challenges posed by the “post-metaphysical” context
for the contemporary world and to engage with new perspectives on
meaning. By explicitly addressing “atheism,” we aim to sever the
assumptions underlying the theistic framing of meaning: What is the
meaning of meaning beyond theism? How can meaning be understood
within a naturalistic worldview? Are classical theistic discourses on
meaning influenced by cultural bias? The conference is interested, among
others, the following topics:
- The relation of meaning of life and atheism, naturalism, and/or
secularism
- The meaning of life within philosophy of religion (especially
non-theistic accounts)
- The meaning of meaning
- Atheism, Absurdity and Nihilism
- Atheism and Anti-natalism,
- Non-western theories on meaning(-lessness)
- The topicality of specific authors for dealing with the
issue of meaning in late modernity (e.g. Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre)