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Question I used to love my work and see it as a path to a virtuous happiness and sense of self-fulfillment. But working for someone else had changed all that; amidst the petty slights, status contests, and probably just far too many hours in the office working for people who don't treat me well (with no choice about when or what I work on), my work has lost all its meaning. I feel like I built up a false belief system about achievement, and it worked for 27 years, but it's now come crashing down. I know I listed some probable causes, but I'm sure it could be explained more philosphically and eloquently. I need to better understand in abstract terms - what causes meaning to erode? And what have philosophers suggested as cures for such existential crises?

Accepted:
September 3, 2009

Comments

Sorry to hear of your distress. And I'm also sorry that I don't have a lot of insight to offer, except but of negative advice.

When you wonder what causes meaning to erode, there are two rather different sorts of things you might be asking. One is what sorts of reasons and arguments might persuade us that things don't have the cosmic significance we thought they did. Some philosophers have had things to say about that, and you might find Thomas Nagel's classic article "The Absurd" (Journal of Philosophy, 1971 pp. 716-727) interesting as an example. But Nagel cautions that even if his diagnosis of the absurdity of things is correct, it doesn't give us a reason to worry about it. Put in a different way, perhaps, a philosophical account of how things mean less than they seem needn't get in the way of a rich and enjoyable existence.

And that brings me to what I suspect is the real point. Many of us have gone through periods when things seem meaningless to us not just in some abstract philosophical sense, but in a more deep-in-the-bones sort of way. Sometimes it's a reasonable response to things going on in our lives, and sometimes it's something else - dysthymia, as they say, or even depression. *That* sort of meaninglessness is usually not particularly responsive to philosophy. On the contrary, approaching it "philosophically" may lead to just the sort of ruminative rut that keeps us stuck.

So the philosophical point here is that it's important to know when a problem isn't philosophical. It sounds like you're stuck in an unpleasant situation, and that what you need is a plan, some diversions (exercise can be much more helpful than you might guess) and a support system - friends, family, religious community or whatever. It may be as well that you could use some professional help, as happens to many of us at times, but I'm in no position to judge that. But my best philosophical advice is to treat your situation as something other than a philosophical problem.

Good luck to you! I hope things work out.