Some are pregnant in body,“ he said, “while some are pregnant in soul.” That is, to gain immortality through words, deeds and actions. Plato’s tenet was that while a man’s primal instinct is to gain immortality through biological reproduction, he can also - more importantly - gain immortality through ethereal reproduction. Through This, something of the organism continues to exist even after it’s death our children carry part of our name and biology, but most relevant to Plato was that they carry part of our beliefs, wisdom, and values. It is the effort by an organism to prolong it’s existence by passing down it’s genetics to subsequent generations. All biological lifeforms participate in the act of procreation. It is at the core of the drive behind Richard Dawkins’ 'Selfish Gene’.

“Reproduction,” he reasoned, “goes on forever, and it is what we have in place of immortality.”īiological reproduction is the purpose and end goal of all life on this planet. The lowest, he felt, was biological reproduction. Plato believed in three levels of meaning. Camus reasoned that while there is no greater purpose to it all, there is no point in wallowing in depression “We are to live and love and laugh and dance,” was his philosophy. We’re simply biological matter living on a rocky planet orbiting a star swirling around a galaxy that is part of a huge indifferent universe.Ĭamus stood in a long line of thinkers from Kierkegaard to Nietzsche to Heidegger and Sartre who wrestled with the notion that there is in fact no preordained meaning to life, and that purpose and meaning is what each of us prescribe to it.Ĭamus set himself apart from the former philosophers however, for they tended to be melancholy in their views. Twentieth Century philosopher Albert Camus added that life, for all practical purposes, is altogether meaningless. ‘Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star,’ said Carl Sagan.

What is the meaning of life