Ideals and Meaningfulness

The book develops a theory of ideals as conceptions of admirable ways of being. It provides astory of what it means to have an ideal and why the rationality of acquiring one’s ideals implies agreater degree of selectivity than does our admiration for the manifestation of ideals in others.Having ideals is understood as a relationship between an agent and an ideal, consisting of a set ofemotional dispositions, at the heart of which lies a feeling of a calling to be as represented by theideal. This relationship is normatively significant. It provides the agent with a reason to try to liveup to one’s ideal. The question arises, moreover, whether a life suffused with ideals is a better life.Here it is argued that the pursuit of one’s ideals doesn’t necessarily make one happier, but has thepotential of rendering one’s life more meaningful in a number of ways.