God, Agency and Meaningfulness
Trevor Pisciotta

April 17, 2012 (time unknown)
Department of Philosophy, The University of Melbourne

Old Quad Common Room
Parkville
Australia

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In my thesis, I seek to show how the issue of meaningfulness in lives is importantly related to questions of agency. In particular, I argue that on most plausible accounts of what a meaningful life consists in, an agent must be relevantly active with respect to the potential meaning-conferring features of her life. It has been suggested that this claim is threatened by theistic answers to the question of what makes life meaningful. In particular, it might be thought that on some theistic accounts of what makes life meaningful, the meaningfulness of an agent's life could depend not on the actions of the agent, but rather on divine will, with respect to which an agent is essentially passive. In this paper, I examine a range of theistic accounts of meaningfulness in life and argue that their plausibility depends, at least in part, on the requirement that an agent be relevantly active with respect to the meaningfulness of her life. Theistic accounts of meaningfulness do not, therefore, threaten my central claims regarding agency and meaningfulness.

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