The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Thursday, 22 January 2026, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe UniversityFKH colloquium
Iddo Landau (University of Haifa)
»Meaning in Life: Intelligibility-based Narrativity vs. Value«Abstract
Two competing views on what constitutes life’s meaning are the value view and the intelligibility view. According to the value view (e.g., Wolf 2010; Metz 2013, 219–248), life’s meaning is determined by some ways in which a life is valuable. According to the intelligibility view (e.g., Repp 2018; Thomas 2019), life’s meaning is determined by some ways in which a life is intelligible. In this paper I critically discuss a version of the intelligibility view, the intelligibility-based narrativity view (e.g., Goldman 2018; 2022; Weber-Guskar 2023), according to which what makes a life meaningful is a coherent narrative that describes it. I suggest that the intelligibility-based narrativity view is too problematic to accept, and that the value view is, at present, the best theory for explaining what makes a life meaningful.
The speaker
Iddo Landau is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel. He specializes in the philosophy of meaning in life and in the optimism/pessimism debate. In 2025/26 he is a fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de
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