How to Live a Meaningful Life

if i'm claiming hey this is good and you ought to do it this is true you ought to know it this is beautiful and you ought to seek it all i'm doing is playing a power game those things can't be true in themselves they're a disguise play of power well see with that's been baked into the minds of so many young people today and when that happens the realm of value even s's or it's it's occluded the result a loss of meaning [Music] [Applause] i had a great good fortune last week of sitting down for a zoom conversation with three very interesting gentlemen one was jordan peterson second was jonathan pajot and the third was john verveiki i'm sure you all know jordan peterson one of the most influential figures on the cultural scene today jonathan pageau is a very interesting man uh he's an artist in the in the christian uh orthodox tradition and then john vervicky is a professor of cognitive psychology at the university of toronto and all three have a very strong social media presence and all four of us are very interested in this question of meaning and the crisis of meaning especially among young people so we had a good two-hour conversation about it but peterson began by asking each of us just to give our understanding or our definition of meaning and then more specifically of religious meaning so when my turn came i said well i think to have a meaningful life is to be in some kind of purposive relationship to values and to have a religiously meaningful life is to be in a purpose of relationship to the highest value or the supreme good now what did i mean by this language well i go back to dietrich von hildebrand the great catholic philosopher of the 20th century he talked about the intuition of objective values these values that go beyond the merely subjectively satisfying so we know what that means when we we like something subjectively but the objectively valuable isn't just a matter of pleasing one's subjectivity the objectively valuable seizes us it invades us it rearranges our subjectivity it demands attention so there are values hildebrandt would say in the epistemic order that is to say truths their values in the moral order so we see the great goods on display in the lives of the saints there are values in the aesthetic order so we notice the beautiful a meaningful life is one that is awakened to these values and ordered to them that we seek them we seek to integrate them and in some cases for example the artistic case to create them in the moral case to imitate the great saints and become ourselves subjects of moral goodness okay by the sumo bonum or the supreme value i mean that unconditioned form of the good the true and the beautiful that stands behind and shines through all the more limited forms of objective value i made reference in the conversation to uh to plato plato knew all about these values but he also said there's the form of the good he compared it to the sun by whose light we see all things so the form of the good the unconditioned good the good in itself that's the goal of the highest striving of the mind and the heart for aristotle it would be a contemplation of the unmoved mover so this this supremely actual reality that stands behind all the potentialities and actualities of the world for thomas aquinas and here is very interesting jordan peterson was very much echoing aquinas the will seeks goods i'm i'm seeking it good right now making this this video but that particular act of the will nests in a still higher value or set of values i'm doing this video because i want to evangelize etc and then that desire ness in a still higher good or purpose i want to evangelize because that's the uh the command of the lord with any act of the will i can do this kind of nesting analysis and see that finally every particular act of the will is grounded in a desire for something perceived to be the sumim bonum the highest good it's why tayar de chardin said we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning unless implicitly we believed in god he's making the same point i get out of bed in the morning seeking some particular good but that nest in ever higher goods until i come finally to the supreme good to be in purpose of relationship to that value is to have a religiously meaningful life okay so we all knock this idea around from our different perspectives but then we came the question of okay what's prompted the crisis of meaning especially among a lot of young people today and i think we focus on a couple of things especially the first one is scientism you know i've talked about this before i haven't a single little thing against the sciences i love and reverence the sciences but i've got a lot against scientism which is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge the trouble is we're so impressed by the success and predictive equality of the physical sciences that we have reduced human knowing to that realm well see if you're a platonist that means you are looking at the shadows on the wall of the cave in a hyper sophisticated way you're coming to ever deeper knowledge of the evanescent passing things of this world but objective values moral and aesthetic that goes beyond what the physical scientists can grasp when i limit authentic knowledge to the physical sciences i see this realm of value as simply oh subjectivism it's simply a projection of my needs it's soft science as opposed to the hard science the problem is prior to the to the rise of the modern sciences most of the most brilliant people in the western tradition were cultivators of this wisdom tradition articulating objective values orienting us to the supreme value but today because of scientism there's a great sort of occluding of that realm and then the second thing we put our fingers on was what i've called the culture of self-invention which carries with it the concomitant conviction that claims to objective value whether that's truth or goodness or aesthetic value those aren't real those are disguised plays of power right this is michel foucault and so many others in the post-modern framework that if i'm claiming hey this is good and you ought to do it this is true you ought to know it this is beautiful and you ought to seek it all i'm doing is playing a power game those things can't be true in themselves they're a disguise play of power well see with that's been baked into the minds of so many young people today and when that happens the realm of value even s's or it's it's occluded the result a loss of meaning yeah knowledge given by the physical sciences sure we have a lot of that affirmation of our subjectivity we got tons of that but we're losing a sense of objective value and a purposive orientation to that value okay what's the solution i said look speaking as a catholic bishop out of the catholic tradition we need great catholic scholars who reverence this wisdom tradition that know it that no of these figures going back to augustine and thomas aquinas and dante and coming up through the great figures today that know and love that tradition can teach it effectively we need to be sure great catholic artists and here you know jonathan pajot was interesting to talk to a guy who is a carver and a painter in the iconic tradition we need great catholic artists who reverence the objective aesthetic values that know the catholic aesthetic tradition stretching up from ancient times through you know michelangelo and everybody else up to the present day and then finally i suggested we need great catholic saints we need people who embody these great moral values they don't just talk about them they embody them they live them these figures will be the mentors and the wisdom figures who can draw young people back into a sense of a meaningful life that's the best way to address this crisis of meaning thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video i invite you to share it and to subscribe to my youtube channel

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 102,031

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Meaning, Word on Fire, Bishop Barron, Commentary, Youth, Young people, Jonathan Pageau, John Vervaeke, Crisis, wisdom, tradition, scholars, meaningful, life, jordan peterson 2021, meaning of life, what is the meaning of life, meaningful life, ordered life, goodness truth beauty, the highest good, how to live a meaningful life, scientism, bishop robert barron, objective values, jordan peterson meaningful life, wisdom tradition, catholic tradition

Id: iSFJE87rgdA

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 30 2021