Meredith Wenzler
Phil 101 Final
Professor Hough
12/10/2019
When I was asked at the beginning of the semester if human lives had meaning, I claimed
that we had no true meaning in a metaphysical sense. I still believe this. I also still believe that
we have some meaning but, is self-inflicted or self-assigned based on socialization. But now,
around four months later, I can identify the similarities and differences between my own
personal beliefs and those of philosophers. I consider all of the ideas that the thinkers have
presented and take them in to account when I assign value to my own life. It is like I was given
evidence to back my original claims. Inversely though, learning about these thinkers has made
me question the things I claim. I am now able to look at what I believe and give a much more
thorough and textured response. I do not feel as if this class completely shifted my views, but it
has opened my eyes to the ways that they could be criticized. Through the readings of Nietzsche
and Sartre I recognized that I had a no-self view, Narayan and Lloyd drew my attention to the
way the human body can affect this view and Plato’s ideas of the forms and recollection made
me question the meaningless way I viewed human life.
In my original essay I claimed that we as humans assign ourselves meaning in order to
survive. Nietzsche’s no-self view backs this belief. Nietzsche claims that we are made of culture;
we are born with no essence and are shaped by socialization to become the people are. No one is
born with the habits, morals, and knowledge that they die with. What we are as people, is
created from the time we are born to the time we die, there is nothing before, there is nothing
after. We fall in with the culture around us and inherit the moral practices of those who teach us.
As Nietzsche claims, “the maintenance of one community have been very different from those of
another community,” (IP, 571) meaning that a person is created fully from those around them. I
could be a completely different human being if I were born to different people in a different
