Meaning of life - Anthropology Essay Example for Free

Meaning of sprightliness Anthropology EssayThe Meaning of Life and Cultural Relativism What is the meat of keep? Whats the gist of life? is today a question generally meant as a joke. This apparently wasnt true in the past. Religious teachers, from Jesus to Buddha to Mohammed, offered a clear means of life. Philosophers from Plato to Augustine to Voltaire to Nietzsche to William James also offered such a meaning, although in progressively less certain ways.Today, however, philosophers have just aboutly turned away from questions of the meaning of life (or when they talk over it, they may proclaim lifes meaninglessness, as does Nagel in this weeks reading). A big reason for this is that there are so many another(prenominal) different beliefs in the field today they relativize all beliefs, and make certainty problematic. A key principle of anthropology is heathenish relativism this has become a rally principle in todays world at large. How merchant ship you know that your reek of the meaning of life is truer than someone elses sense of the meaning of life?This is why it may be difficult to be both a Christian and an anthropologist. And this is why this course cannot offer much advice as to the meaning of life. Meanings of Life in Anthropology Anthropologists thus cant discuss the meaning of life but they can analyze peoples personal meanings of life, as a way of better understanding how people are culturally and socially shaped. There is a fundamental difference between the meaning of life and meanings of life, and only the latter can be fully explored by anthropologists.Anthropologists explore culture the ways of thinking by which people live. Anthropologists study a campaign of different culturally-shaped fields, from economics to politics to religion to gender in different societies. However, few anthropologists have directly studied meanings of life (maybe none, except for me ) This is because in most societies that anthropologists study, there is no ordinary word that people use to describe whats most important to them in their lives. However, the Japanese language has such a term ikigai.Ikigai means that which makes your life worth(predicate) living, or, more practically speaking, whats most important to you in your life. Common ikigai are work, family, religious belief, creative endeavor, or personal dream. 1 Why does only Japanese have the term ikigai? Why dont other languages have ikigai? In any case, veritable(a) if other languages dont have the term ikigai, people everywhere can understand what ikigai means. It is whats most important to you in life, what makes your life worth living. What is your ikigai?This is difficult for students, because you havent yet made the life choices of work and family that you probably will make over the next few years. But you can get some idea Is it pleasing your parents? Finding a boyfriend/girlfriend? Gaining knowledge? Getting good grades and a good future commercial e nterprise? Helping the world become better? Pursuing creativity? Being close to God? The Sociocultural Analysis of Ikigai . Most Japanese books about ikigai talk about it in a psychological sense how individuals seek and find and lose ikigai.However, ikigai is also social all ikigai involve us in the world of other people whether you live for family, for your personal dream, for God, or for alcohol, all of these are social. Ikigai in this sense I define as that which most deeply relate the self to the social world ikigai is what ties you to the world around you. This can take two broad forms ikigai as self-realization, and ikigai as commitment to ones grouping both are fundamentally social.Here is a one-sentence cross-cultural theory of ikigai On the basis of culturally and personally-shaped fate, individuals strategically formulate and interpret their ikigai from an array of cultural conceptions, negotiate these ikigai within their circles of immediate others, and pursue their ik igai as channeled by their purchase orders institutional structures so as to attain and maintain a sense of the personal significance of their lives. We have ikigai because ikigai gives us a sense of the purpose and significance and worth of our lives but we necessarily hold these ikigai within the context of the society around us, with which we constantly interact in forming and maintaining ikigai.