HMN 2025: How to Explore the means in life via phenomenology and philosophy

Psychological and philosophical research have lengthy proven that an individual’s subjective moods and feelings have a big influence on how they expertise the “that means in life.” Philosopher Matthew Ratcliffe identified that an individual’s temper vividly operates within the background of notion and performs a serious function in how they grasp the that means of their life.

In psychology as effectively, there have been empirical research investigating how temper impacts the notion of life’s that means. Meanwhile, phenomenology has revealed that the lived, first-person expertise of the physique deeply influences the best way we understand the world.

In adjoining fields, ideas corresponding to affordance, solicitation, and enaction (enactivism) have been proposed one after one other. These ideas give attention to how human bodily interactions with the world affect and kind the best way people understand and perceive their environment.

In a latest study, Professor Masahiro Morioka of the Faculty of Human Sciences at Waseda University aimed to use that very same mechanism—not solely to the notion of the exterior world, but in addition to the notion of “that means in life.” The outcomes of this analysis have been printed on-line in Philosophia on June 4, 2025.

The current study is a conceptual and theoretical investigation into the character of “that means in life.” In the philosophy of life’s that means so far, students have typically debated whether or not that means in life is solely subjective, i.e., life has that means if the person believes it does; purely goal, i.e., life has that means no matter what the person thinks; or a hybrid of the 2.

This study, nonetheless, units apart these discussions and as an alternative examines how “that means in life” develops between an individual attempting to reside their life and the life they’re making an attempt to reside—and the way that that means is skilled by the individual.

As a outcome, the research proposes a “Geographic Model of Meaning in Life,” an lively exploration model. Applied to the notion of life’s that means, this model means that the way through which an individual explores their life—with particular attitudes and commitments—elicits numerous responses from life itself. These responses could take the type of precise or potential experiences of life’s significance or distress.

In different phrases, life’s worth emerges—each positively and negatively—as a kind of numerous geographical configuration that varieties human expertise. This study proposes that we perceive “that means in life” as a geographical configuration that corresponds to the individual’s acts of exploration and their perspective towards life.

The noteworthy definition, as per Morioka, is, “The geographic model of that means in life is the entire set of patterns of mixtures of lived experiences of the worthfulness of residing a life which can be skilled being activated by my motion of probing into my life within the right here and now, and this motion is just like the motion of a blind individual probing her method with a cane.

“This probing may be carried out with numerous attitudes or commitments in the direction of life, corresponding to optimistic, detrimental, reluctant, and so forth. The worthfulness of my life is skilled in a different way, comparable to the attitudes or commitments I take after I probe into my life.”

In some ways, this work marks a paradigm shift: it treats each significant and tragic experiences as elements of the identical experiential panorama and explores “that means in life” as a perceptual expertise of that complicated geography. This shift was made attainable by introducing phenomenological methodology into the philosophy of life’s that means, which may function a bridge between philosophy and psychology, opening the door to extra productive interdisciplinary collaboration.

Notably, psychology has developed each quantitative and qualitative scales to measure how individuals really feel that their lives are significant. These current approaches differ extensively, however the “geographical model” proposed on this study approaches the expertise of life’s that means from a totally totally different angle. It could provide new insights into psychology and associated fields.

With eyes set on the long run, Morioka remarks, “My subsequent purpose is to combine this study with different ongoing approaches within the philosophy of life’s that means: particularly, the solipsistic strategy to that means in life and the liberation and recollection strategy. Through such integration, I intention to construct a brand new, systematic framework throughout the philosophy of life’s that means.”