1. For discussion see e.g. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981). Our view shares important features with the views defended by e.g. Kai Nelsen, ‘Linguistic Philosophy and “The Meaning of Life’”, in E.D. Klemke,The Meaning of Life(New York, Oxford University Press, 1981), Ch. 13, John Kekes in ‘The Informed Will and the Meaning of Life’,Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchXLVII (1986), Kekes, ‘The Meaning of Life’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 24 (2000): 17–34, and especially Neil Levy, ‘Downshifting and Meaning in Life’, Ratio 18 (2005): 176–189.
2. This division is inspired by similar ideas in Richard Taylor, ‘The Meaning of Life’, in O. Hanfling (ed),Life and Meaning(Oxford Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 39–48, and Thomas Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 716–27.
3. Kekes argues in ‘The Meaning of Life’ (p. 30) that we can accept genocidal dictators as leading meaningful lives if we draw a bright line between the meaningfulness of a life and the morality of the achievements which it contains.
4. See George Sher, ‘Blameworthy Action and Character’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXIV (2002): 381–392.
5. See e.g. David Wiggins, ‘Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life’, in Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Essays on Moral Realism, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 162. For an overview of this discussion, see Thad Metz, ‘Recent Work on the Meaning of Life’, Ethics 112 (2002): 781–814.