The Meaning of Life: A 250-Year-Old Question
The question feels timeless, but the phrase "the meaning of life" first appears in English around 1833 — and in German in the 1790s — right as the scientific picture began eroding the religious one. Was the question itself a symptom of that crisis rather than a permanent human inheritance? This episode traces the arc: what Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and traditions from the Lakota to the Maya say the point of it all is; how the analytic philosophers split the problem into supernaturalism, naturalism, and nihilism; and what the Greeks — Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics…
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