The Creation of Value

What is meaning in life? Does anything really matter? How can a life achieve lasting significance? How can we explain the human propensity to struggle for ideals? How is meaning related to contentment, happiness, joy? Is meaning something we discover, or do we create it? What is the nature of value, and what are its sources in human experience? Can there be a meaning in life without religious faith? What is the meaning of death? Is life worth living? What would enable us to have a love of life?

"Meaning in life," writes philosopher Irving Singer, "and the meaning in our own lives, results from creative efforts on our part. It is not a prior reality awaiting our discovery. Though we talk about a 'search' for meaning, what we are seeking is primarily a mode of creativity that will make our lives meaningful." In The Creation of Value, the first volume of hisMeaning in Life trilogy, Singer studies the nature of imagination, idealization, and love in the context of humanity's attempt to define itself through the pursuit of meanings and values that it creates. Singer confronts life's most troubling problems: the meaning of death, the presence of anxiety in daily existence, the conditions needed for us to have a life worth living, and the possibility of a love of life in others as well as in ourselves.

Irving Singer is Professor of Philosophy at MIT. In addition to his two trilogies, The Nature of Love and Meaning in Life, he is the author of many other books, including the recent Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up, and four books on film aesthetics, Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique; Three Philosophical Filmmakers: Hitchcock, Welles, Renoir; Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity; and Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film, all published by the MIT Press.