By Richard Norman
Richard Norman is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent. He is a Patron of Humanists UK and author of the book On Humanism. In this article he suggests that the nature of human flourishing is conditioned by contingent facts about human nature. We could have been like rabbits, sheep, cuckoos or amoebas, but instead we are conscious, social, and mortal beings.
The question “Why do we exist?” is ambiguous. It could be a request for a causal explanation. The appropriate answer (if ‘we’ means human beings in general) would refer to earlier states of the universe, the so-called “big bang”, the formation of galaxies and stars and planets including our Earth, the evolution of living things by natural selection – the familiar story of the prior occurrences which led to the emergence of the human species. But it could also be understood as a request for a different kind of explanation, a purposive explanation: what are we here for?
Whereas causal explanations are backward-looking, citing the prior events which led to the event to be explained, purposive explanations are forward looking, citing some future state of affairs which is aimed for. Purposive explanations are important in some contexts, most obviously to explain human actions. “Why are you typing furiously?” “So as to finish this article in time for the deadline.” That’s the purpose I’m trying to achieve, it’s what I’m aiming at. And explanations of that kind are ubiquitous in human life.
They can be extended beyond human actions, for example to the behaviour of other living things. Why do swallows fly south in autumn? To spend the winter in a warmer environment where there are the insects they need to feed on. It’s not that the birds are motivated by a conscious aim, they do it instinctively, but their behaviour is sufficiently analogous to human behaviour for talk of "purpose" to be illuminating. Such language can be and regularly is also extended to explain biological phenomena more generally. Why do trees have leaves? For photosynthesis, to convert sunlight into energy which enables them to grow. Here the language of “purpose” is getting trickier. The tree is not in any sense “aiming” to grow, but as a functioning organism it’s as though it were aiming to grow and survive, and we can think of its biological features as serving that purpose. They meet the needs of the tree.
Beyond a certain point, however, the language of purpose has to be resisted. It’s a deep feature of human thinking that we tend to look for agency to explain the world around us, and hence to look for a purpose where there is none. Confronted with some unexpected and perhaps startling occurrence, people often say “There must be a reason for it”, and they may be looking not for a cause but for some purpose which it might serve. Perhaps it’s a deeply distressing event for which they seek consolation. “Why was our child taken from us as such a young age? It must be to serve some greater purpose, though we don’t know what it is.” In the same way, throughout history, human beings have asked “Why are we here?” and supposed that there much be some purpose which we exist to serve. Hence, of course, the search for the purposes of some non-human agent such as a divine creator to explain the existence of human beings. “Man’s chief end”, the Catechism tells us, “is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” (See explanatory note.) That’s why God put us here, it is saying. And the proper response from a humanist point of view is not to look for a different answer, some other “chief end”, but to reject the question. We do not exist for a purpose, because there is no being whose purposes we serve.
At this point, a typical humanist conclusion might be that if there is no pre-given overall purpose for human life, then it is simply up to us to choose our own purposes in life. That’s essentially right, I think, but I suggest that there’s more to be said. Of course, human beings are diverse and the purposes which they pursue will be correspondingly diverse. Not everyone likes foreign travel, say, but some people make it their chief enjoyment in life. But though we’re all different, we share a common human nature, and if we are looking for a purposeful life, one which is genuinely fulfilling, then not just anything goes. There are certain features of our human nature which have implications for our choice of purposes. They entail certain conditions which are needed for human flourishing.
What are they? First, I would suggest, the fact that we are conscious beings. We possess consciousness not just in the weak sense that we are aware of our surroundings, but in the sense that we can and do step back from our immediately instinctive behaviour, we can think about it, assess it, ask ourselves what it means for us and what it adds up to. A further implication, then, is that we need to see our actions and purposes as ours, we need, as we say, to “make a difference”, “make our mark on the world”, in order to get a sense of satisfaction. This is why we value our creativity. It can take a great variety of forms, and this of course is where our diversity comes into play. Many people engage in some kind of artistic activity – play music, paint pictures, write stories, take photos or make films or computer games or whatever. Many people are keen on gardening, on planting and shaping to create an attractive scene. For others, political activity may be important, aiming to make a difference in the world by doing what they can to shape the future direction of their society. Or they may simply want to improve the lives of those close to them, helping their friends or neighbours or bringing up a family. But in all these ways people get a sense of satisfaction from being able to see the outcome as their doing, being able to see it as a reflection of themselves, their way of making a difference in the world.
Secondly, there is the fact that we are social beings. We share our lives with others, we get affirmation from others, we need love and affection, and if we are starved of these things we feel lonely and isolated. Once again this is consistent with the fact of great variety. Some of us are more gregarious than others. Personally, I like going for walks in the woods and I like going on my own; I enjoy immersing myself in the pleasures of the natural world and in my own thoughts without the distractions of human company. But I also like telling others where I’ve been and what I’ve seen, and of course there are many other activities which are satisfying for me because they are shared with others. I suggest that this is characteristic of human beings – that we need positive interaction with at least some other people, we need the purposes we adopt to be at least to some degree shared, to get confirmation from others of the value of what we are doing. More positively, we need at least some degree of emotional affection. Without it, even the most ruthless seeker after power, ambition and individual aggrandisement will feel lonely and incomplete. Likewise the pleasures of cooperative tasks or team games are satisfying precisely because they are shared, because we can enjoy the camaraderie. And the sharing which we seek and which gives point to our lives is not just direct and personal, but also more diffuse. In reading a novel or poetry, I get a sense of being enriched by shared human experience.
So our purposes in life, if they are to be truly fulfilling, need to reflect these two features of the human condition – that we are conscious beings, who need to get some sense of achievement from the things we do, and that we are social beings who need to share our lives with others. And these two facts are closely connected with a third – the fact of our mortality. We are finite beings. We all die. And it’s a familiar truth that some ways of life can come to seem pointless in the light of our mortality.
“You can’t take it with you”, the saying goes. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. It is uttered most frequently when talking about the pursuit of wealth. One implication is that a life is ultimately pointless if it is overwhelmingly devoted to some purpose which is simply a means to further ends. The only point in striving for money is in order to use it for things which, unlike money, are valuable in themselves. We should make the most of the one life we have, as humanists regularly say. And that entails identifying those activities and enjoyments which are worthwhile in themselves, are valuable for their own sake rather than as a means to something else, and ensuring that we make room for them in our lives before it is too late.
There is a further implication of our mortality. Confronted with the fact that all our activities and experiences will come to an end, it is natural to want something of ourselves to outlast us, to continue after we are dead. This is where the social nature of our existence again comes into play. We may want our purposes to be ones which extend beyond our own lifetime. It may simply be that we seek to be remembered with gratitude and affection after we are dead. It may be that we do what we can to provide, for those we love, a good life after we have gone, or to contribute to the future well-being of our community and our society. We may work for a more just world, knowing that we will not live to see it. We may seek to preserve the natural world, in all its beauty, for those who will come after us. In any of these ways, a more fully purposeful life will be one whose purposes extend beyond our own lifespan.
What makes for a purposeful life, then, is conditioned by our human nature, by these very general facts about what it is to be human: that we are conscious beings, that we are social beings, and that we are mortal. These facts may seem obvious, and we may take them for granted, but we should remind ourselves that they are contingent facts about us. They could have been otherwise, and if they had been otherwise, that would have had very different implications for the conditions of human flourishing. We could have lacked the kind of consciousness that is distinctively human; we could have been animals which just got on with their lives, like rabbits or sheep, mostly eating grass, and having no propensity to think about our lives and what they add up to. We might not have been social animals; we could have been like cuckoos which, after they have mated and laid eggs in the nests of other birds, thereafter live mostly solitary lives, not even rearing their own young. We could have been immortal like amoebas, which do not age, and reproduce by splitting and continuing to live in both their halves. Suppose that we had been. These are thought-experiments which can alert us to the ways in which the nature of human flourishing is conditioned by our nature as human beings.
Are these, then, answers to the question of why we exist? Is this what our lives are for? Maybe, but that is not the best way of putting it. We do not exist to serve some external purpose, the purpose of a non-human being. Our purposes are our purposes, they are human purposes. But if that is so, then, I have suggested, a satisfyingly purposeful life will be one whose purposes are fully human purposes.
Explanatory note
The phrase “Man’s chief end” is a reference to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a document created in 1647 by English and Scottish theologians as part of the Westminster Assembly. The Catechism is a concise set of questions and answers that summarize key Christian beliefs. It was produced as a part of the Westminster Confession of Faith, primarily within the Presbyterian tradition, but it has been widely adopted by various Protestant denominations.
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