Perfectionism and Vulgarianism About a Meaningful Life
David Matheson
Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.14, No.1 (March 2024):1-13
Abstract
As a troubling evaluative error, perfectionism involves demanding of the merely good what ought only to be demanded of the outstanding. Iddo Landau has recently charged many philosophers of life with such perfectionism about a meaningful life. Here I argue that although Landau’s charge is unlikely to persuade those who adhere to a superlative concept of a meaningful life in the first place, there is nevertheless an important lesson for them to learn from that charge: to avoid perfectionism about what they will regard as good but not meaningful lives, they must constantly be vigilant to appreciate the value of such lives. I go on to consider whether the required vigilance is a reason to abandon the superlative concept in favor of a nonsuperlative one. I argue that it is not, because a similar sort of vigilance, to avoid a contrasting but equally troubling error that I call “vulgarianism,” would be required even upon such abandonment.
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