TY  - GEN
AB  - The popular view that the meaning of a life should be a project is assessed by examining a life that did have that shape. John Stuart Mill's utilitarian life project is described, and is argued to be a best representative of the class. Turning points and unusual features of Mill's life are shown to be side effects or preconditions of having a very large project center stage in it. Life projects are motivated as satisfying a coherence requirement imposed on the valuable elements of a life. But Mill's biography demonstrates that living out one's life as a project undermines its coherence. The overunified life, it is concluded, is to be avoided, and the meaningfulness of a life is best reconceived so as to give it application in the lives of loosely organized agents.
AU  - Millgram, Elijah,
CN  - Oxford Scholarship Online
CN  - B1607
ID  - 892420
KW  - Life.
KW  - Meaning (Philosophy)
LK  - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190873240.001.0001
N1  - Also issued in print: 2019.
N2  - The popular view that the meaning of a life should be a project is assessed by examining a life that did have that shape. John Stuart Mill's utilitarian life project is described, and is argued to be a best representative of the class. Turning points and unusual features of Mill's life are shown to be side effects or preconditions of having a very large project center stage in it. Life projects are motivated as satisfying a coherence requirement imposed on the valuable elements of a life. But Mill's biography demonstrates that living out one's life as a project undermines its coherence. The overunified life, it is concluded, is to be avoided, and the meaningfulness of a life is best reconceived so as to give it application in the lives of loosely organized agents.
SN  - 9780190873271 
T1  - John Stuart Mill and the meaning of life /
TI  - John Stuart Mill and the meaning of life /
UR  - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190873240.001.0001
ER  -