A Phenomenological Approach to the Philosophy of Meaning in Life

In recent years, the discussion of the philosophy of meaning in life has gained momentum, and the number of published books has increased.^{Footnote 1} One of the most debated topics is the definition of “meaning in life”, that is, what makes a life meaningful. Susan Wolf believes that a life can be meaningful “when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf, 2010, p. 9). Thaddeus Metz believes that the more a person directs her rationality toward “fundamental conditions of human existence”, the more meaningful a life becomes (Metz, 2013, p. 222). And many important criticisms of Wolf and Metz have been published.

One lacuna of the current discussion is that it has not been focused much on the investigation of the lived experience that makes us feel that the events or actions that occur in our lives are meaningful. This experience of meaningfulness in life should be explored more fully in philosophy.

Of course, there are many discussions about the relationship between a meaningful life and a person’s experiences. For example, the questions of whether pleasurable experiences give meaning to a life, or whether emotions such as love, pride, and admiration are necessary components of a meaningful life, have been much discussed among philosophers (cf. Metz, 2013, pp. 31–32). However, these studies have rarely gone so far as to analyse the mechanism or structure of the process by which events or actions emerge as meaningful in our lived experience.

The objective of this paper is not to rethink the whole picture of the concept of meaning in life, but to intentionally shed strong light on the experience of meaning in life, that is, the experience of the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of a life event or an action in one’s life, and to philosophically inquire into the mechanism or structure of the emergence process of such experiences.

When we experience a devastating event, such as the death of a beloved family member, we may ask ourselves, “What am I living for?” and sink into sadness, unable to find the answer. However, if we are determined to survive this low point in our lives and try to get through life with the help of experts and close friends, sometimes our lives gradually begin to look less negative. In this case, it is our positive attitude towards life that creates a sense of meaningfulness. If we have different attitudes towards life, our lives will look different corresponding to those attitudes. This is one of the simplest descriptions of the mechanism or structure of the emergence of meaningfulness that we experience in our lives.

In order to develop this line of inquiry with precision, it is very helpful to adopt two phenomenological concepts, affordance and enaction, in research on the philosophy of meaning in life.

Affordance is a concept proposed by James J. Gibson. It originated in optical psychology, but has also been much discussed in phenomenology. One can walk on the floor of a building because the floor affords one the possibility of walking on it. Affordances are possibilities for action which the environment affords us. Gibson argues that affordances are properties that belong to the objective environment, not to the observer or agent.^{Footnote 2} This point becomes important when introducing the concept of affordance to discussions of meaning in life.

Enaction is a concept proposed by Francisco Varela. He argues that our sensation of the external world can only be established as perception when it is integrated into an observer’s accompanying bodily actions towards the world. He refers to Held and Hein’s famous experiment through which they found that while the vision of a kitten that could walk around and see its environment developed fully, the vision of a kitten that could not walk did not develop as well, showing that performing spontaneous actions is fundamental to the development of a cat’s vision (Varela et al., 1991, 2016, p. 174; Held & Hein, 1963). I believe that this enaction model can also be effectively introduced into the research on meaning in life.

This paper uses these two concepts and proceeds as follows.

First, I review previous studies.^{Footnote 3} In the field of philosophy, only a few academic studies have investigated meaning in life from a phenomenological perspective. Among these, I would like to examine the arguments of two philosophers, Antti Kauppinen and Matthew Ratcliffe. Second, I introduce the concept of affordance into the philosophy of meaning in life and propose a concept called “life affordance”. I pay particular attention to Hubert Dreyfus’s idea of solicitation. Third, I introduce the concept of enaction and Noë’s idea of “colour aspect profile” to propose an enactive interpretation of meaning in life. Fourth, I propose the final version of a phenomenological approach to meaning in life and call it “the geographic model of meaning in life”.

This paper concludes with a proposal for this model. Due to lack of space, many issues are left for future discussion, but I try to clarify my argument as much as possible in this paper. The term “geographic model” may sound strange for a philosophy paper. I believe that this shows an interdisciplinary character of this attempt, which can influence various approaches in the humanities. Another purpose of this paper is to build a broad bridge between phenomenology and the philosophy of meaning in life. I hope that my attempt will be helpful to readers interested in this topic.

In this section, I would like to take a brief look at two previous studies that attempt to connect phenomenology and the philosophy of meaning in life.

Philosopher Antti Kauppinen analyses the subjective experience of existential emotions and moods that we have when we feel the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life.^{Footnote 4}

One of the most important contributions of his arguments is his introduction of a kind of structural analysis of the emergence of meaning in life:

The first thing to emphasize is that all of these experiences have to do with agency. Experiences of meaning in life result from how we view the past, present, and future exercises of our own agency. In this respect, they contrast with, say, pleasure, with respect to which we may be purely passive. [italics original]. (Kauppinen, 2022, p. 351).

Here, Kauppinen suggests that experiences of meaning in life emerge in different ways depending on how we actively view both the world around us and human relationships. This means that the experience of meaning in life is not a passive perception, such as a sense of pleasure, but something that is created by our active and intentional involvement in the world. Although Kauppinen does not use the word, this is closely related to the concept of enaction in phenomenology. Unfortunately, Kauppinen does not further develop the idea of enaction in the context of meaning in life (which is the main topic in Section Four of my paper).

Matthew Ratcliffe argues that we experience the world “through our feeling bodies”, and that feeling falls into two categories: intentional feeling and pre-intentional feeling. The former includes emotions, which are experienced directly through our bodies, while the latter includes deep moods, which function as a “background” to our perception of such emotions (Ratcliffe, 2010, p. 350). Echoing Heidegger, Ratcliffe says that “moods are phenomenologically deeper than emotions” and “emotions are only intelligible in the context of a mood” (Ratcliffe, 2010, p. 354). Furthermore, these deep moods “constitute the meaning of life” (Ratcliffe, 2010, p. 353). According to Ratcliffe, deep moods, which exist in a pre-intentional way at the base of our experience and support the emergence of our emotions, give life meaning. If a mood were removed from an experience, “one could no longer be excited, delighted, annoyed, or disappointed by worldly events…”. Thus, “a mood is a background sense of belonging to a meaningful world” (Ratcliffe, 2010, p. 356).

In another paper, Ratcliffe introduces the concept of a “life structure”, which means the way in which “the surrounding world appears, against which one thinks and acts” (Ratcliffe, 2023, p. 2; see also Ratcliffe, 2022, p. 30). This life structure “is not fixed or static”, and “the sustenance, revision, and repair of life structure” can occur (Ratcliffe, 2023, p. 2). A life structure includes the layer of deep moods, and Ratcliffe believes that this structure can be revised. However, I do not necessarily agree. I think that a life structure that gives a life meaning can be universal and unchanged. What is revised is the content of the geographical appearances of the lived experiences through which we can perceive meaning in our lives. I discuss this from a different perspective in Section Four.

Let us turn our attention to the concept of affordance.

My first argument in this paper is that Gibson’s idea of affordance can also be applied to our lived experience of living a life. Just as Gibson distinguishes between the observer and the environment, and thinks that the latter provides affordances for the former, we can distinguish between “a person living her life” and “the life she lives” and think that the latter provides life affordances for the former. We can enjoy life, regret life, and find meaning in life. These are examples of life affordances that a person can receive from her life.

People often talk about life as a journey. Imagine a long journey, for example, from Edinburgh to Brisbane. We can imagine an itinerary: a traveller gets on a plane, walks through a huge airport, and takes a taxi to a hotel. The same is true of a life. The itinerary from Edinburgh to Brisbane is “the life a person lives”, and the traveller is “a person living her life”. On a plane, a traveller sometimes forgets that she is on a trip, especially when she is concentrating on watching an interesting movie. Similarly, in life, we sometimes forget the fact that we are in the midst of living our own irreplaceable life, but even in such cases, life affordances are working behind the scenes.

If we follow Gibson’s way of thinking, life affordances are characteristics that belong to a person’s life, not to the person who lives that life. Life affordances are the possibilities of actions we can take in our lives. These include all the actions we can do in the present, such as eating, drinking, walking, sleeping, singing, loving someone, and hurting someone; all the actions we can do toward our past, such as regretting, remembering, hoping to go back to younger days, and despairing about what we did to intimate others; and all the actions we can do toward our future, such as expecting, anticipating, predicting, dreaming of our sweet future days, and fearing aging and death. All of these possibilities are what our lives afford us and what we receive from our lives. At the same time, there are many things that our lives cannot afford us, such as actually returning to our past with a time machine, going back and forth in time as we wish, or standing outside our life timeline and observing every part of it directly from a god’s point of view. The existence of such impossibilities is an important feature of life affordances.^{Footnote 5}

From the perspective of life affordances, one’s life can be viewed as an entity-like something that is independent of the person who lives that life. It provides the person with possibilities for action, and the person responds to these possibilities by performing various actions toward her life. There are dynamic interactions between the life of a person and the person living that life. In order to look at these interactions closely, let us examine another important concept, the concept of invitation or solicitation.

Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka argues that when we see a mail box, it invites us to mail a letter, and when we see a handle, it wants to be grasped. According to Koffka, artifacts in the environment have the automatic function of inviting the observer, and the observer is naturally drawn to these objects.

Hubert Dreyfus uses the word “solicit” instead of “invite” and reinterprets the concept of affordance. He writes, with Sean D. Kelly, as follows:

The experiences that have this peculiar quality are experiences of an “affordance”, i.e., experience in which the world solicits a certain kind of activity. We use the Gestaltist’s term “solicits” to refer to a datum of phenomenology. To say that the world solicits a certain activity is to say that the agent feels immediately drawn to act a certain way (Dreyfus & Kelly, 2007, p. 52; italics original).

The idea of solicitation opens up an interesting interpretation of perception: perception is produced by a mutual interaction between the object and the observer, and in this interaction there is first a solicitation by the object after which, drawn by the solicitation, the observer’s actions toward the object follow. This kind of dialogical process is the key here.

I believe that a similar solicitation process functions in the case of life affordances. For example, when a person is feeling very low, she may hear an inner voice saying, “Wouldn’t it be better not to live any longer?” We can regard this voice as a solicitation from her life. In response to this solicitation, she may take action against her life, such as hurting herself, or, in contrast, telling herself that she will never be defeated by hardship. This is a dialogue between a person and her life. The life of a person solicits the person who lives that life, and the person responds to the solicitation and takes action towards her life. I would like to call a solicitation that urges us to dialogue with our own life a solicitation from a life or a life solicitation. A life invites a person to do something, and in response, the person acts towards her life.

A solicitation from a life can take at least three forms.

The first is a solicitation for death and survival. When a person sinks into the depths of despair or depression, her life sometimes solicits her to follow a path to death. Being solicited by her life, a person begins to think, “Wouldn’t it be better for me to die?” “Do I have to go on living?” “Isn’t it acceptable for me to just give up on life?” These thoughts are examples of responses to a life’s solicitation for death. However, there can be other responses that lead in the opposite direction. Even when a person hears a negative voice from her life soliciting her to die, she can face her suffering with all her strength and decide to survive. This is also a significant response to a life in times of hardship.

The second is a solicitation for a commitment to quality of life. This solicitation urges a person to reconsider, change, and sometimes improve the quality of her life. When a person begins to think, “I need to live more freely without worrying about what others think of me”, “I want to live a quiet life without having my mind stirred up”, and “I want to be the kind of person who can make intimate others happy”, this person is responding to the solicitation from her life to reconsider or improve her current life.

The third is a solicitation to question meaning in life. When a person suddenly experiences a devastating event, such as the death of her romantic partner, she may begin to think, “What am I living for? What is the meaning of my life if I have to live without my partner?” Such questioning of meaning in life is considered a response to her life’s solicitation, which comes in the form of a shock wave created by the event, urging her to reconsider the meaning of her life. When a person looks back on her life and cannot find any important values, or when she is satisfied with her daily life but feels a vague anxiety or emptiness about the ultimate pointlessness of her life, she may think, “What has my life been about? Isn’t it meaningless to live such a life?” This is also a response to the solicitation that urges her to reconsider her way of life up to the present. Just as when we see a handle in front of us, we are drawn to reach out and grab it, when we are faced with a devastating event or serious anxiety in our lives, we are drawn to think deeply about whether a life is actually worth living or exploring.

My point here is that the questioning of meaning in life can be considered one of the responses to the life solicitation that urges us to reconsider the worth of living when severe psychological difficulties, such as intense despair, anxiety, or emptiness, strike us. This process looks like a kind of dialogue between a person and her life in which the solicitation from life occurs first, and the solicited person’s questioning of meaning in life follows.

Readers may wonder whether it is actually possible to apply the framework of the phenomenology of perception of the external world to questions about meaning in life because while we can directly perceive the external world, we cannot directly perceive a life itself as an object anywhere in the world. Let us consider this problem here.

What we are discussing is a temporal life experienced from the inside. It consists of past, present, and future life events. As Augustine argues, past life events emerge indirectly in my memory, present life events emerges directly in the here and now, and future life events emerge indirectly in my imagination. In this sense, every life event can be an object of my experience directly or indirectly in a temporal life as seen from the inside (from here, I will use the word “experience” instead of the word “perceive” in the case of a life event).

This is similar to the phenomenological fact that my perception of a pot in front of me includes both the direct perception of the front of the pot and the indirect perception of the back of the pot (Husserl’s Abschattung and Horizont). Just as I can perceive both the front and the back of a pot in different modes, I can experience both the current life event and the past and future life events in different modes (I discuss this in a different context in the next section). And, just as the external world extending in front of me can be an object of my perception, my entire temporal life extending towards the past and the future can also be an object of my experience. Thus, we can apply phenomenological theories of perception of the external world to a temporal life seen from within.

Let us move on to the next point: enation.

Alva Noë explains the concept of enaction as follows. “[P]erceiving is a way of acting. Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do. … What we perceive is determined by what we do (or what we know how to do); it is determined by what we are ready to do.… [W]e enact our perceptual experience; we act it out” (Noë, 2004, p. 1. italics original).

Remember that the questioning of meaning in life is a kind of action that a person takes toward her life in response to a life solicitation. This shows that this topic must be closely related to enactive approaches in phenomenology.

I believe that the experience of meaning in life is constituted by both the worthfulness a person experiences in her life and the actual action she takes towards her life. From this perspective, Kauppinen’s claim that “[e]xperiences of meaning in life result from how we view the past, present, and future exercises of our own agency” (Kauppinen, 2022, p. 351) begins to reemerge with great significance.

Before moving on to that point, I would like to mention another important discussion, the discussion of the colour aspect profile presented by Noë.

Noë discusses our experience of colour and claims that to see the colour of an object is to discover its “colour aspect profile”, which is “a unique range of ways its colour aspect transforms as the relevant kinds of movements (colour-critical changes) occur”. He writes, “To experience something as red, then, is to experience not merely how it looks here and now, but how it would look as colour-critical conditions vary”. (Noë, 2004, p. 132). I would like to explain what he means in my own way.

Imagine that there is a ripe tomato without a stem on the table in front of you. You look at the tomato and see that there is a small white spot on the upper left part of the red tomato skin. This is because sunlight is shining through the window on the left side of the room. Next, you move around the tomato. You notice that as you move, the place of the white spot also moves. Of course, you understand that this white spot is a reflection of sunlight, not an actual white stain inscribed on the surface of the tomato. In this case, the pattern of red and white on the tomato changes as the observer moves. Here, we can define the whole pattern of red and white transformations that an observer experiences as she moves around the tomato as the “colour aspect profile” of the tomato. A colour aspect profile consists of the actual colour perception of the tomato in front of an observer and a set of possible colour perceptions that an observer perceives when the physical relationship between the observer and the tomato changes. This is the meaning of Noë’s argument that to see the colour of an object is to discover its colour aspect profile (this can be considered a unique variation of Husserl’s Abschattung). I believe that this idea has significant implications for the philosophy of meaning in life.

Let us apply the idea of enaction to meaning in life from the beginning.

Just as the sensation of the external world through the sensory organs can only be established as perception when it is integrated into the accompanying bodily actions of the observer, in the case of questioning the worth of living a life, the worthfulness of living that a person experiences as a response to her questioning can only be established as an experience of meaning in life when it is integrated into the actual attitudes or commitments she makes towards her life.^{Footnote 6}

An important implication of my argument is this: The experienced meaning of a life or a life event can vary significantly corresponding to different attitudes or commitments a person takes toward a life when questioning the worth of living it.^{Footnote 7}

Imagine a situation in which I am faced with a difficult problem, such as the sudden death of my romantic partner, the experience of severe and persistent harassment at the workplace, or the inability to escape severe drug addiction. In such a case, I would probably feel a kind of worthlessness or insignificance of my life unfolding before my eyes.

However, there are many attitudes or commitments I can take in such a time of suffering. For example, if I am determined to survive the devastating situation, with the help of close friends and family members, my life may become a little more hopeful. This kind of attitude or commitment might encourage me when I have hit rock bottom and make it possible for me to see my current suffering from a brighter angle. In this case, the worthfulness of living a devastating life event is strongly influenced by my attitude of determination, and my life begins to take on a positive colour. The possibility of going through hardship and arriving at an affirmation of life begins to emerge before me. This is an example of the structure of meaning in life as seen from an enactive approach to meaning in life.

If I sink into the depths of despair and want to give up on life, my life may become something completely insignificant, empty and worthless. The motivation to live a positive life is completely lost from me, the thought of wanting to disappear from this world arises, and suicidal feelings gradually come to the surface. In this case, the worthfulness of living a devastating life event is strongly influenced by my attitude of escaping from life, and my life begins to take on a negative colour. My life in the here and now is shrouded in dark clouds and a sombre negativity sets the basic tone for my lived experience. This is another example of the structure of meaning in life as seen from an enactive approach to meaning in life.

If I try to improve my devastating situation by myself, without any help from my friends or specialists, I would be completely at a loss in the midst of unsolvable problems, and my life appears to be a huge maze filled with dead ends and traps. I am trapped in my own vision, going back and forth in the same place, unable to find an exit. A life is still significant for me, so I try to find a way out of this painful situation, but the life in front of me remains shattered in pieces, and the fragments rise up as a big question mark, full of mystery and completely devoid of any importance or integration. In this case, the worthfulness of living a devastating life event is strongly influenced by my attitude of solving the problem only by myself, and my life begins to be an incomprehensible collection of mere fragments. This is another example of the structure of meaning in life as seen from an enactive approach to meaning in life.

It is important to keep in mind that all actions of questioning the worth of living a life are done in response to a life solicitation I receive from my life. Here, the worth of living a life is a subjective worthfulness and it is received as a lived experience. It is not a social value that we can objectively evaluate.

Considering all of the above, we can establish a first stage definition of meaning in life from a phenomenological point of view as follows: Meaning in life is a lived experience of the worthfulness of living a life that is experienced being activated by my attitude or commitment towards my life. I can experience meaning in life when I question the subjective worth of my life in response to a life solicitation I receive from my life.

An important point is that meaning in life requires a corresponding attitude or commitment being taken towards my life. Meaning in life is established by being coloured by attitude or commitment; without it, meaning in life is nowhere to be found. This is one of the structures of meaning in life that the concept of enaction opens up in the field of philosophy of meaning in life. (I would like to add that the word “worthfulness” in the above definition can include “worthlessness” in its connotation. In this sense, the phrase “a lived experience of a life or a life event in the dimension of worthfulness or worthlessness” may be considered more accurate).

Here, I would like to further examine what the phrase “attitude or commitment” in the above sentence actually means. Merleau-Ponty and Noë use the example of a blind person walking with a cane when discussing enacted bodily perception. For example, Noë describes the following: “Think of a blind person tap-tapping his or her way around a cluttered space, perceiving that space by touch, not all at once, but through time, by skilful probing and movement. … I argue that all perception is touch-like in this way” (Noë, 2004, p. 1). This illustrates the core idea of enacted and embodied perception. We can apply it to our discussion of the philosophy of meaning in life because a person’s action of questioning her life in response to a life solicitation looks very much like the act of probing into her life using a mental cane. In our discussion, a person is not probing into her physical paths; she is probing into her life paths that extend from the here and now, and she probes them with certain attitudes or commitments.

Therefore, we can rewrite our definition as follows. Meaning in life is a lived experience of the worthfulness of living a life that is experienced being activated by my action of probing into my life in the here and now, and this action is similar to the action of a blind person probing her way with a cane. This probing can be carried out with various attitudes or commitments toward a life, such as positive, negative, reluctant, and so on. The worthfulness of living my life is experienced differently corresponding to the attitudes or commitments I take when I probe into my life. I can experience meaning in life when I question the subjective worth of my life in response to a life solicitation I receive from my life. In the beginning, there is a life solicitation. In response, I question and probe into my life, and as a result, I can have a lived experience of the worthfulness of living. In this way we can connect affordance, solicitation, and enaction in the context of meaning in life.

We can extend our idea one step further.

Remember Noë’s idea of the colour aspect profile. According to Noë’s theory, the colour aspect profile of a tomato placed on a table can be defined as the whole set of patterns of transformation of red and white that an observer experiences as she moves around the tomato. A colour aspect profile is made up of both the actual colour perception of the tomato in front of an observer and the possible colour perceptions an observer perceives as she moves around it.

The same can be said about meaning in life, that is to say, meaning in life can be considered the whole set of patterns of lived experience that are experienced corresponding to the attitudes or commitments I take when I probe into my life. Each of these lived experiences is made up of the actual experience of the life that I have here and now, and the possible experiences of the life that I would have if I took different attitudes or commitments.

Let us go back to the example of a devastating situation that we discussed earlier, and think about it in more detail.

If I probe into my life in the here and now with the attitude of trying to endure the devastating situation, that attitude encourages me in the darkest of times, and the possibility of surviving gradually begins to appear before me. A positive view of my life corresponding to my attitude of perseverance emerges. This is the actual experience of my life when I have a positive attitude. At the same time, I can imagine other experiences of my life that I would experience if I had different attitudes. I want to call them possible experiences of my life. For example, I can imagine a possible experience of my life that I would have if I probed into it with the attitude of giving up on life. This would be a life coloured by a gloomy negativity. I can also imagine another possible experience of my life that I would have if I probed into it with the attitude of trying to improve my devastating situation only by myself. This would be a maze-like life, full of mystery and devoid of importance or integration. Of course, I can imagine numerous other possible experiences of my life that I would have if I were to take different attitudes or commitments.

If I take a positive attitude and probe into my life, this positive attitude becomes my actual attitude, while other attitudes (negative, lonely, etc.) remain possible ones. A positive experience of my life emerges before me, and other experiences hide behind my perspectives, but they still remain in my mind as something imaginary. Let us call this pattern of the combination of actual and possible attitudes Pattern One. Next, if I take a negative attitude and probe into it, this negative attitude becomes my actual attitude, while other attitudes (positive, lonely, etc.) remain possible ones. A negative experience of my life emerges before me, and other experiences hide behind my perspectives, but they still remain in my mind as something imaginary. This is Pattern Two. Similarly, there can be many other patterns (Three, Four, …) of combinations of actual attitude and possible attitudes.

I would like to call the whole set of those patterns of combinations of the actual experience and the possible experiences I would have if I probed into my life with different attitudes or commitments the second stage of meaning in life. This kind of meaning in life is highly conceptual because it is impossible for me to directly experience all the aspects of meaning in life at the same time. I can directly experience the actual worthfulness of living a life, but other possible experiences escape from my perspective. The current actual experience can also escape from me if I begin to take a different attitude or commitment towards my life, and another possible experience then becomes the actual one. This is an application of Noë’s colour aspect profile to meaning in life. The experience of colour in Noë’s model corresponds to the experience of worthfulness in our model.

This can also be called a geographic model of meaning in life. With the word “geographic” I have in mind a subjective, phenomenological geography.

Imagine that you are standing on the top of a mountain. If you look in a certain direction, you can see blue sky, white clouds, and a straight mountain trail leading to a distant ridge. The scene in front of you is beautiful and makes you feel very happy. The scene behind you disappears from your direct view, and the scene in front of you feels like the whole world that you can experience. However, if you turn your body slightly and look in another direction, the situation will be completely different. The blue sky you just saw disappears from your direct view, and you see rain and strong wind blowing in front of you. If you step down in that direction, you will soon be completely soaked. This scene makes you feel very low. If you turn your body slightly again, another different landscape unfolds in front of you. It is a winding mountain path descending from the top, with bare rocks here and there. The path is shaded, so it looks cold going down. The blue sky or the heavy rain you saw before disappears from your direct view.

This is a series of transforming phenomenological scenes that appear in front of you corresponding to the turning of your body on the mountaintop. Here, we can imagine the whole set of actual and possible scenes that you can see in front of you and think of this as a kind of phenomenological geography. What I am talking about is not a map that you can look down on from the sky. You are embedded in the actual landscape, so what you see is always from your own perspective. You cannot have a god’s eye view from which you can see the entire landscape at once.

The situation is the same in the case of meaning in life. I am embedded in my actual life and can only see it from my own perspective, so it is impossible for me to directly experience the whole set of actual and possible experiences of my temporal life.^{Footnote 8}

Although this is a philosophy paper, I think I should say a word about a phenomenological approach to geography. In the 1970s, phenomenological ideas were imported into geography, and a major trend of humanistic geography emerged. Yi-Fu Tuan, a pioneer of this approach, argued that “place is a centre of meaning constructed by experience” (Tuan, 1975, p. 152). If we look around the interior of our home, on the level of physical configuration, there are the fireplace, the hearth, and the beds; on the level of meaning, these objects constitute the centres of meaning for the family (pp. 153–154). This structure extends to a broader geography that includes farmsteads and small settlements. Tuan writes that they are “places, centre of meanings to those who live in them, but they rarely appear in atlases” (p. 156). He considers that there is the layer of a physical configuration of various objects that people can experience in the external world, and there is another layer of meanings that covers the whole configuration.

I believe that something similar can be found in the case of the geographic model of meaning in life. In this model, there is a certain attitude to a life solicitation, and corresponding to this attitude, a certain worthfulness or worthlessness emerges in front of me. And this structure is multiplied corresponding to my possible attitudes and is configured around me as a virtual geography. Tuan’s model and our model are similar in that both think of geography as an overlap of two layers, but they differ in that Tuan thinks there is the layer of a configuration of objects and the layer of meaning covers it, while our model thinks that there is an overlap of two layers in a single attitude, and this overlap is multiplied and forms a geography of meaning in life. The difference is very small, but it can create an interesting nuance in thinking about meaning. In the 1980s, humanistic geography came under heavy criticism for its methodology (Ley, 1983, p. 269), but I believe that we can still draw important research inspiration from this discipline, and that the relationship between humanistic geography and the philosophy of meaning in life should be further explored.

From all the discussions I have made in this section, I would like to define the geographic model of meaning in life as follows:

The geographic model of meaning in life is the whole set of patterns of combinations of lived experiences of the worthfulness of living a life that are experienced being activated by my action of probing into my life in the here and now, and this action is similar to the action of a blind person probing her way with a cane. This probing can be carried out with various attitudes or commitments towards life, such as positive, negative, reluctant, and so on. The worthfulness of my life is experienced differently corresponding to the attitudes or commitments I take when I probe into my life. Each pattern of lived experience consists of a combination of the actual experience of my life and the possible experiences of my life. I can experience meaning in life when I question the subjective worth of my life in response to a life solicitation I receive from my life.

This is a geographic structure of meaning in life. The whole process begins when a person receives a life solicitation and ends when she gets a rough geographical image of the whole pattern of combinations of lived experiences of the worthfulness of living a life. You might think that there are many cases where people find meaning in life without receiving any life solicitations, or where people who receive a life solicitation do not want to question the worthfulness or worthlessness of their lives. Yes, of course there are. I am inclined to think that in the former cases, people are receiving life solicitations in hidden ways, while in the latter cases, people’s reluctant attitudes can be explained as one of the possible patterns of their attitudes that sometimes constitutes the geographic model. However, this needs further clarification.

What we have attempted to do is illustrate theoretically how a meaningful life and a meaningless life, or a meaningful life event and a meaningless life event, are intertwined to create a single phenomenological geography that unfolds through the act of probing into our lives with certain attitudes or commitments.

To clarify the basic structure of such a phenomenological geography, we need to explore the phenomenological concepts of affordance and enaction and introduce them into the discussion of the philosophy of meaning in life. This is what I have done in this paper as a first step to illustrate a big picture of a phenomenological approach to a life and its meaning. Although many issues remain unanswered or unexamined, I believe that a fundamental scheme for bridging phenomenology and the philosophy of meaning in life has been clearly laid out.