In this paper, I will explicate Richard Hare’s “Nothing Matters” and David Schmidtz’s “The Meaning of Life”. Richard Hare claims that if we think nothing matters at all, then we have not understood that the function of the word ‘matters’ is to express concern. Hare defends argument by describing a young man start to think “nothing matter” after reading Camus’s “The Stranger”. It is not because of the young man think nothing matters anymore, but rather confused about what it means to matter. David Schmidtz on the other hand think that analytic philosophy is not well equipped to answer the meaning of life question. He give us some optimistic philosophic reflection on what life means to him. We need to find meaning with respect to our own life.
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The word matter means to express concern for something. This meaning could be miss understood because that our value is derived from our own wants and the imitation of others. However in the end what is matter is what is important to us. “In the end, if we are to be able sincerely to say that something matters for us, we must ourselves be concerned with it; other people’s concern is not enough.” (Life Death & meaning, 47) We often shape our value by imitating others. For example, as a kid you looked up to your parents and want to be like them. If your parents like certain kind of music, and you want to be like your parents. You start to pretend that you like that kind of music too, but you did not actually like them at the start. It is quite often you eventually start to like thing that you pretend to like later, if you pretended in the right spirit. Hare use alcohol as an example and stats that at least there is some of us was dishonest at the start, and learned to like it as time passes. You imitating others causes you start to think the word matter/concern is an activity. For example, you think the act of drinking is what it matters. However, “mattering” is not an activity it is an express of concern, so when do we don’t find those activity it seems that nothing matters in life. Something matter when we care about something, so it would be very hypocritical to say nothing matters, because we always care about something. Even if that thing is the idea “nothing matter” the person thinking it is expressing concerns for it. I think that this argument is valid but might not sound. The argument fellows a logical condition, and stats that people that don’t care for anything have psychological problems which covers a wild range of criticisms as psychology can describe any abnormal behavior as a mental illness or a condition. “There may be people who sincerely say that very little matters
The word matter means to express concern for something. This meaning could be miss understood because that our value is derived from our own wants and the imitation of others. However in the end what is matter is what is important to us. “In the end, if we are to be able sincerely to say that something matters for us, we must ourselves be concerned with it; other people’s concern is not enough.” (Life Death & meaning, 47) We often shape our value by imitating others. For example, as a kid you looked up to your parents and want to be like them. If your parents like certain kind of music, and you want to be like your parents. You start to pretend that you like that kind of music too, but you did not actually like them at the start. It is quite often you eventually start to like thing that you pretend to like later, if you pretended in the right spirit. Hare use alcohol as an example and stats that at least there is some of us was dishonest at the start, and learned to like it as time passes. You imitating others causes you start to think the word matter/concern is an activity. For example, you think the act of drinking is what it matters. However, “mattering” is not an activity it is an express of concern, so when do we don’t find those activity it seems that nothing matters in life. Something matter when we care about something, so it would be very hypocritical to say nothing matters, because we always care about something. Even if that thing is the idea “nothing matter” the person thinking it is expressing concerns for it. I think that this argument is valid but might not sound. The argument fellows a logical condition, and stats that people that don’t care for anything have psychological problems which covers a wild range of criticisms as psychology can describe any abnormal behavior as a mental illness or a condition. “There may be people who sincerely say that very little matters