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Remorse and the Ledger Theory of Meaning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2022

Lucas Scripter
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Abstract

A common idea about assessing meaning in life is that one draws up a list of those various positive values that one has achieved and subtracts from it one's negative deeds in life. The resulting balance is the meaningfulness of one's existence. I call this the ledger theory. Drawing on the work of Raimond Gaita and Julian Barnes's novel The Sense of an Ending, I argue for a phenomenology of remorse that gives us reason to reject the ledger theory. Even those agents whose lives have been exceptionally meaningful in some respects may remain haunted by their past. Certain sorts of misdeeds – those that involve significant, irreparable damage – leave life marred in such a way that the negative remains, even in the face of all the meaningful deeds of life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 98 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 81 - 102
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Philosophy

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