Bridging the gap between philosophical and empirical inquiries in meaning in life

Current theoretical discussions in meaning in life emphasise the significance of an objective perspective of meaning in life in addition to the subjective component, such as Susan Wolf (2010 Meaning in Life and Why it matters), Peter Singer (1993, How are we to live? Ethics in an age of self-interest) and Thaddeus Metz (2013, Meaning in Life). This paper, however, highlights the significance of the subjective aspect of meaning to university students in their search of meaning as shown in an empirical study. A funded, pilot research that aims to investigate how a general education (GE) course in higher education (entitled Life and Death) would change university students’ attitude towards death and meaning in life was conducted. The course deals with various life and death issues and philosophical theories in meaning in life. The quantitative data obtained from a pretest-posttest survey contain 258 full-time university students, with 135 students taking another GE course that deals with moral philosophy but does not focus on meaning in life, assigned to a control group and 123 students taking the GE course Life and Death to an intervention group. The quantitative data showed that the intervention group exhibited significant improvement in meaning in life after taking the course, while students in the control group did not show any significant changes in meaning in life. The qualitative data, which involved 10 individual interviews with students in the intervention group were conducted after they have completed the course, confirm the improvements in meaning in life among the students in the intervention group. It is found that most students expressed a positive change in their attitude towards meaning in life, for a variety of reasons and in different manners. The improvements can be explained by the learning experience in which they were exposed to different philosophical theories or ideas, which interacted in a variety of ways with the students’ preconceptions and beliefs. Interviews with students revealed that a discussion in existentialism provided them with a new subjectivist perspective in their search for meaning, which enhanced their authenticity and responsibility towards their own life. More importantly, a discussion on how existentialism responds to suffering helped students to build resilience towards negative life experience.