Expectable Outcome Deontology – A New Theory of Life’s Meaning

The question of what constitutes a meaningful life has recently regained attention after being largely neglected in the 20th century. A new debate in ethics, known as the debate on meaning in life, has emerged around this question. In this article, I propose a new normative theory of meaningfulness, which I label as Expectable Outcome Deontology (EOD), to contribute to this debate. EOD is an axiological theory that evaluates lives based on the idea that a person’s life is meaningful to the extent that they perform intrinsically meaningful actions. An intrinsically meaningful action, moreover, is an action that possess meaningfulness – as it is sometimes put – “in itself”, “for its own sake” or “in its own right”. Footnote 1 While the theory is deontological at its core, I contend that intrinsically meaningful actions are those that most likely bring about specific outcomes, typically those that promote the good, the true, and the beautiful. Thus, although the theory is not driven or motivated by consequentialist considerations, it very much accomodates such demands too. I argue that EOD is, with suitable clarifications, the correct theory of meaningfulness.