The Good, the Bad, and the Meaningful

Philosophers tend to treat meaningfulness as a type of value worth seeking and promoting, on a par with well-being and moral value. In this paper I argue that finding something in one’s life meaningful does not require attributing to it any substantive positive value, but rather it can be rooted in an attachment to one’s narrative identity or to one’s place in a broader story about the world. This proposal explains how we can find meaning in past experiences of adversity, hardship, or loss without finding any silver linings in such experiences or having reason to seek them again the future.