Wolf’s Fitting Fulfillment theory of meaningfulness combines the appeals of two intuitive, pre-theoretical views that one finds in popular culture. The first view is the one implied by the advice “find your passion and go for it”. The idea here is that a meaningful life is one in which a person engages in projects or activities that she finds gripping or engaging. We can call this experience “fulfillment”. We find fulfillment in doing things that we love, whether that be: taking care of loved ones, doing science or philosophy, or cooking a delicious meal. Fulfilling activities may not always be enjoyable. Taking care of a loved one is not always an activity that makes us happy. It is often very trying. Nevertheless, on this view, such labors of love are what make life meaningful.

The second pre-theoretical view is the one implicit in the advice, “contribute to something larger than yourself”. Wolf interprets this advice as being somewhat metaphorical. To contribute to something “larger than oneself” is to do something which has value independently of one’s interests and desires — something with objective value. So, on this view, a life spent pursuing one’s own personal desires and interests is importantly shallow. A truly meaningful life — a life well lived — will be one in which the person contributes something to the world, as it were.

The first pre-theoretical view, then, emphasizes a subjective criterion: doing something that one finds fulfilling. And the second view emphasizes an objective criterion: doing something that has value independently of one’s own interests and concerns. Of course, we tend to assume that the things people find interesting and engaging will be activities that have (at least some) objective value. Few people would genuinely be fulfilled by staring at goldfish, or building rubberband balls. Similarly, we tend to assume that someone who “contributes to something larger than oneself” will also find his contributions to projects of objective worth fulfilling.

Wolf argues that each of these views is more plausible if it works in conjunction with the other. The subjective experience of fulfillment is surely appealing. But, someone who spends his life staring at a goldfish, or building rubberband balls doesn’t live a meaningful life — even if he finds this activity fulfilling. Similarly, a life spent working on some important project — cancer research, for instance — is missing something very important if the person is completely disengaged and disinterested. Such a person would be doing something morally good. But, she would not be living well. So, Wolf’s suggestion is that we explicitly combine these two views. As she puts it, “On this conception [i.e., the Fitting Fulfillment theory], meaning in life arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (pg. 26).

“Essentially, the idea is that a person’s life can be meaningful only if she cares fairly deeply about some thing or things, only is she is gripped, excited, interested, engaged, or as I earlier put it, if she loves something — as opposed to being bored or alienated from most or all of what she does. Even a person who is so engaged, however, will not live a meaningful life if the objects or activities with which she is so occupied are worthless.” (pg. 9)

Wolf’s account raises a number of important questions. What is objective value? And, in virtue of what does something have objective value? Can one have a meaningful life if one’s projects are of a valuable kind, even if they are actually failures? Consider, for instance, a hack artist, or a scientist who spends her life working on a research program that eventually gets scrapped. Supposing that they both found fulfillment in these projects, were their lives meaningful?

These questions are not, I think, serious objections. They are calls for clarification and elaboration. (In fact, Wolf has some things to say about them in her response to the commentary in the book.) On the whole, I think the Fitting Fulfillment theory is a very appealing view, and more or less correct. Or, at least, it’s on the right track.