The question of meaning in life has enjoyed renewed attention in analytic discourse over the last few decades. Despite the apparently “existential” quality of this topic, existential philosophy has had little impact on this re-energized conversation. This paper draws on Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death in order to challenge the objectivist theory of meaning in life. According to that theory, a meaningful life is one replete with objective goods. Kierkegaard, however, exposits four forms of the spiritual sickness he calls despair that are compatible with the possession of objective goods. If this account is convincing, it poses a challenge to the objectivist view, suggesting that a subjective contribution is also necessary to fully account for meaning in life. By a process of negative inference, this paper concludes by sketching out what this subjective contribution might look like and suggests the term “authenticity” in order to capture this subjective element of a meaningful life.

中文翻译：

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绝望对意义的威胁：克尔凯郭尔对客观主义理论的挑战

在过去的几十年里，生命意义的问题在分析性话语中重新受到关注。尽管这个话题显然具有“存在主义”的性质，但存在主义哲学对这种重新焕发活力的对话几乎没有影响。本文取材于克尔凯郭尔的《致死之病》为了挑战客观主义的人生意义理论。根据该理论，有意义的生活是充满客观物品的生活。然而，克尔凯郭尔揭示了四种他称之为绝望的精神疾病，它们与拥有客观物品相容。如果这个描述令人信服，那么它就对客观主义观点提出了挑战，这表明主观贡献也是充分解释生命意义的必要条件。通过否定推理过程，本文最后勾勒出这种主观贡献可能是什么样子，并提出了“真实性”一词，以捕捉有意义生活的这一主观元素。