The Dual Impact of Determinism on Meaning in Life

Abstract Threats to free will, such as determinism, have long been debated in view of the (im)possibility of moral responsibility. Another significant but less-discussed question is whether such threats have implications for meaning in life. Pisciotta introduced the hard incompatibilist idea into the issue of meaning in life, arguing that meaningfulness is undermined by the non-existence of free will due to determinism. While this may appear to be entirely bad news, I argue that it also contains good news. This is because determinism, when genuine to the extent assumed by hard incompatibilists, undermines both meaningfulness and anti-meaningfulness in agential lives. Before arguing this, I consider certain objections to the connection between meaning in life and free will, explicating the baseline point to be defended regarding this connection. The arguments that I put forth in this paper should at the very least prompt hard incompatibilists to reconsider the impact of determinism on meaning in life.