Он – содержание знания: I don't suppose you know the meaning of life, either, she said (COCA); I wanted a loaf of bread. I wanted to know the meaning of life (COCA); Their children have perfect complexions and teeth, but do not know the meaning of life (COCA).

Смысл жизни можно объяснить и ему можно научить: He looked at her as if she had just explained the meaning of life (COCA); However, liberal democracies have been less successful at explaining the meaning of life (COCA); Vivi has taught me the meaning of life (COCA); Pacino plays a feisty grandpa who teaches his grandson the true meaning of life (COCA); Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. Dying teacher tells a longtime student the meaning of life (COCA); But before you lecture me about the meaning of life maybe you ought a get one... ta ta (COCA).

Атрибутика смысла жизни также свидетельствует о его категориальной принадлежности к знанию – как и знание, он может быть истинным, настоящим, глубоким, фундаментальным, окончательным и пр.: Foundation of alienation are false, nevertheless alienation – and the loss of the authentic meaning of life – is a reality in Western societies too... (COCA); I know – I think people are missing out on – on what the real meaning of life is (COCA); He comes to the real essence of life only in Europe (COCA); Only in this way can it express its unconscious conviction of “the relativity of time and the true, metaphysical meaning of life” (BNC); At the same time, her awareness of the truth and the deeper meaning of life is evident in her sense of humor and her love of life (COCA); … To read poetry or Plato and write theatrical plays that supposedly revealed the profound meaning of life (COCA); Like James Joyce, she sensed that the fundamental meaning of life could be found in seemingly ordinary experiences (COCA); It is a fundamental essence of life (COCA); The Artist’s gift is always to creation itself, to the ultimate meaning of life, to God (BNC). 

Смысл жизни, безусловно, абстракция высшего уровня, и, как всякая абстракция, для своего чувственного представления сознанию нуждается в метафоре.

Прежде всего, в образном представлении смысла жизни выделяются две базовые концептуальные метафоры, которые можно назвать «корневыми»: метафора клада и метафора колодца, где смысл жизни предстает в виде чего-то хорошо и надёжно спрятанного и чего-то лежащего на глубине.

Тем самым, как уже говорилось, смысл жизни приходится искать, исследовать, находить, обнаруживать, открывать, достигать: Some travelled east following the hippy trail to India and Nepal in search of the meaning of life (BNC); Interview approaches such as this one do not have to be limited to exploring the meaning of life events over long spans of time (COCA); We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – We find it with one another (COCA); Levin discovers the meaning of life in the simple living of it after he rejects intellectual constructs that purport to teach a philosophy of life (COCA); Ask a wise man to reveal the meaning of life (COCA); Indeed, in some scenes, Mosley has constructed a perfect Socrates for millennium's end – a principled man who finds that the highest meaning of life can be attained through self-knowledge, and who convinces others of the power and value of looking within (COCA); … A consensus about the purpose of life and the way in which that purpose should be achieved (COCA).

Как нечто скрытое и находящееся на глубине (At the same time, her awareness of the truth and the deeper meaning of life is evident in her sense of humor and her love of life – COCA), смысл жизни приходится нащупывать (The intellectual exploration of the human need to probe the meaning of life – COCA); Somehow to grasp the essence of life we must probe more deeply – BNC).

Смысл жизни довольно регулярно также представляется в виде некого ускользающего, исчезающего и убегающего предмета, который нужно поймать: The common misconception of philosophy as an ivory tower intellectual pursuit for the meaning of life (COCA); You can not pour scorn on beauty without losing sight of the meaning of life (COCA); Grasping the meaning of life... is more relevant for our society than any other (COCA); We are at a further remove from the possibility of grasping an essence of life (COCA); Empathizing as far as possible with his hosts, the anthropological research worker seeks to seize the essence of life around him and to incarnate its animating spirit (BNC); The medieval is expressed by the artist’s striving to capture the spiritual significance of life (COCA); But, then, how does one capture the essence of the Universe at that very earliest instant? (COCA); To whom the purpose of existence seems to have been reduced to the most distant vanishing point on an endless horizon (COCA).

Наблюдения над метафорикой смысла жизни свидетельствуют о том, что он практически никогда не субъективируется – не представляется в качестве живого активного существа, а представляется преимущественно в виде объекта, с которым можно что-то сделать.

Его можно посадить в клетку, как птицу (Not surprisingly, each of their attempts to cage the meaning of life in a functional definition fell short – COCA), он увядает, как цветок (But also, late at night, one wonders about whether the meaning of life fades with memory, or whether the richness of an individual’s experience – COCA), его можно вдыхать, как воздух (And you’re grateful, you’re just breathing the meaning of life again – COCA), как у любого стоящего предмета, у него имеется основание (Love-hate relationship between Homo sapiens and science goes right into the shaky foundations of the meaning of life – COCA).

Смысл жизни предстает как нечто зримое, что можно наблюдать и что можно показать (… You start looking at the meaning of life – COCA; I also discovered, quite incidentally, that writing, like any other act of invention and creation, is not something you do best by sitting at home contemplating the meaning of life – BNC; … What better way to show the meaning of life – COCA), и нечто весомое, что можно взвесить (He is pondering the meaning of life next – COCA).

Смысл жизни предстаёт как нечто густое и темное, где можно затеряться (But it's a very nice way of getting lost in the meaning of life – COCA), как некое содержимое (She was staring at the holiday roster as if it contained the meaning of life – BNC; Why, it might contain the essence of life itself – BNC; Message, papered over or lost in the welter, contains the meaning of the universe – COCA), как некое событие, он свершается (But for Teodor Amsted the meaning of life has been fulfilled – COCA), как некий товар, он доставляется (When he finally delivers the meaning of life, you almost miss it – COCA).

Речевая соположенность имён смысла жизни как их синтаксически свободное появление в одном смысловом ряду с другими именами, как правило, отправляет к семантическому наполнению «формулы» лигвокультурной идеи смысла жизни (см.: Воркачёв 2010а), в которую включены, помимо понятия (концепта) смысла жизни и его аналогов, противоположные ему понятия бессмыслицы бытия и смысла смерти, концепты, представляющие основные «факторы смысла жизни» – обстоятельства и условия, способствующие обретению этого смысла конкретным человеком, а также концепт-предтеча «бессмертие» и концепт-спутник «счастье» (см.: Воркачёв 2010б: 168).

Чаще всего в этом ряду появляется имя смерти и бренности: Yeats’s mistake, though, is to make death the entire meaning of life (COCA); The philosophy is that the meaning of life lies in the recognition of death (COCA); It is the ability to answer the unanswerable questions about the meaning of life and death (COCA); Only occasional insights about the meaning of life and death offer any relief from the cruelty of a violent crime (COCA); It would discuss specifically religious views on the purpose of life and attitudes to death (BNC); His discussion favours the content criterion because it identifies a set of beliefs about the significance of life and death issues (COCA); … As officers lectured on mortality, God, and the meaning of life (COCA).

Далее по частоте появления идет цель жизни: I could not find the meaning of life or the purpose of life in my marriage (COCA); … The way in which we understand the meaning of life and human purpose (COCA); … Be possible to foster this understanding by exploring provocative existential questions about the meaning and purpose of life (COCA); A basic interest in questions about the meaning and purpose of life (BNC); In plain language, the profound meaning, the high aim of life, can only be unfolded and presented to the masses symbolically (COCA).

По нескольку раз здесь появляются счастье, страдание, Бог, религия, любовь и ценность: What is the key to happiness and the meaning of life? (COCA); Existential questions concerning suffering, the purpose of life, and similar topics lead some people to seek answers through religion (COCA); … As officers lectured on mortality, God, and the meaning of life (COCA); They deal with the same issues about the meaning of life which have engaged traditional religions (COCA); Cruise stars as a sports agent who loses everything but finds love and the true meaning of life on his way to figuring things out (COCA); Teaching our kids the value, importance and meaning of life right from kindergarten is a sure way of stopping this crime wave… (COCA).

По одному разу здесь появляются бессмертие, красота, истина, судьба, Божий промысел, семья, брак, духовность, будущее Земли, свобода воли, бессмыслица и пр.: Gardenlike environments designed to encourage quiet and restful contemplation of nature, immortality and the meaning of life (COCA); To see further and deeper than others into the beauty and meaning of life (COCA); Like, Truth is the very essence of life (COCA); … Serious questions about the meaning of life, love, family and happiness (COCA); Things are not mere postulates but realities and events having to do with the very meaning of life and the final destiny of the human person (COCA); Arabic words are intuitions which reveal glimpses of the divine design and the meaning of life to Arab consciousness (COCA); Most authors do agree on is that spirituality enables us with an awareness of the meaning of life (COCA); Zachary spoke, in his intense, obsessive way, of impersonal subjects: the meaning of life, the future of Earth… (COCA); His feelings on free will, marriage, God and the meaning of life (COCA); … The larger existential questions of human angst and the meaning of life (COCA); Emperor, stripped of its non-essentials, was a controversy as to the end and purpose of life on earth (COCA); The experience of meaninglessness, therefore necessitating the reformulation of what we think the meaning of life is (COCA).

Эксплицитное определение смысла жизни, вернее, его толкование в тексте корпусов встречается относительно редко – где-то в пределах десятка раз. Смысл жизни, прежде всего, понимается как её ценность и ценность вообще: So when people ask, What’s the meaning of life? I think what we really want to know is, What’s a good way to live? (COCA); But what is the meaning of life? What makes your life worth living? (COCA); “The telling itself – the selection of genre, formal structures, sentences, vocabulary, of the whole manner of addressing the reader’s sense of life – all of this expresses a sense of life and of value, a sense of what matters and what does not (COCA); He would see loads of young people who are trying to learn how to make sense of life, trying to sort out what is right and what is wrong, trying to understand who they are and how to get on with people around them (BNC). Затем он понимается как её цель и назначение: Questions concerning our place in creation, generally involving why we are here and the meaning of life (COCA); “I want to know the meaning of life,” he answered with burning eyes. “Why are we here” (COCA); Now, years later, that memory restores me when I feel overwhelmed by the devastation of God’s creation or when spiritual questions overshadow me. What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose here? (COCA). Затем как сущность жизни: Art may arouse in us a sense of mystery about who we are: the meaning of life (COCA); He would see loads of young people who are trying to learn how to make sense of life, trying to sort out what is right and what is wrong, trying to understand who they are (BNC). И, наконец, он понимается психологически, как знание своего места в общем существовании и ощущение причастности к протеканию жизни: It’s just that I came to understand the course of my life and the meaning of life in general (COCA); The essence of life is not a feeling of being, of existence, but a feeling of participation in a flowing onward, necessarily expressed in terms of time, and secondarily expressed in terms of space (COCA).

В самом общем виде концепции смысла жизни – это взгляды на природу и сущность тех целей, стремление к которым, как мы считаем, делает нашу жизнь осмысленной, «незряшной».

Вопрос о смысле жизни – ключевая мировоззренческая проблема, напрямую связанная с определением «локуса смысла» – его местонахождения – в самой жизни или за её пределами (см.: Воркачёв 2011: 38).

Чтобы из формулы «смысл жизни» не исчез смысл как «внеположенная сущность феномена» (Шрейдер 2001: 576), приходится прибегать к дихотомии – рассечению жизни на две части, из которых одна служит средством достижения целей, содержащихся в другой, – выносить локус смысла жизни за пределы последней.

В зависимости от понимания сущности человеческого бытия это может быть противопоставление жизни индивидуальной, корыстной и эгоистичной, жизни родовой, общественной, альтруистической, когда цели, определяющие смысл жизни отдельного конкретного человека, лежат за пределами его «микромира» и выходят за рамки его личных интересов: любовь как желание блага другому, благотворительность, служение обществу, творчество как стремление оставить после себя след в культурной памяти, совершенствование мироустройства и пр.: We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with one another (COCA); Iraq War veterans through the stream-choked mountains of Colorado, I learned that the true essence of life is found in the sweet connection of two souls (COCA); The meaning of life is to love others as we love ourselves and to serve others (COCA); Perhaps I left a job that wasn’t helping me or I left a marriage or I decided that the meaning of life was about love or about being helpful or about service or something like that (COCA); The meaning of life is to love others as we love ourselves and to serve others (COCA); Only compassion can teach that the sense of life is in the grace of love (COCA); Freud was interested in value which he defined as the purpose of life both in the sense of the pursuit of ideals, and in the sense of the development of cultural assets (COCA); In my teens, teachers and ministers repeatedly told me, “The whole point of life is serving others” (COCA); The value of life is in learning and good deeds (COCA).

Совершенно естественно такому пониманию смысла жизни противостоит его гедоническое, потребительское понимание, по сути сводящее его на нет: For me, the meaning of life is a Frappuccino and a cinnamon biscotti (COCA); The quest for wealth and aggrandizement has emerged... for many as the meaning of life... (COCA); Best friend, a nearsighted biker named Blind who lived in Elkhart, said the meaning of life was finding out what you liked to do and doing it (COCA); The culture-ideology of consumerism proclaims, literally, that the meaning of life is to be found in the things that we possess (BNC); If humans are the only animal that doesn’t think the purpose of life is to enjoy it, Americans are an especially hard case (COCA); All that follows will be based on the assumption that the desired purpose of life is that it should be enjoyed, and that this is an irrefutable fact (BNC); The only real purpose of life is to maximize pleasure and to minimize pain (COCA); When one year was largely like the next, the purpose of life must be to make everyday existence as tolerable as possible (COCA); Enjoyment is, after all, the point of life (COCA).

В свою очередь жизнь земная, «телесная» и конечная – «сама жизнь», всецело подчинённая биологическому выживанию, может противопоставляться жизни небесной, духовной и вечной, обретаемой через веру и соблюдение религиозных заповедей.

Тогда с одной стороны: The meaning of life is to perfect oneself, to be a Christian not just in name but in life (COCA); And so the Bible teaches if people say, what’s the meaning of life? Well, I’ll tell you in three words, preparation for eternity (COCA); Quite literally the sense of life as a pilgrimage toward God was deeply and physically impressed as the seniors died and you moved up in ranks (COCA); The only point of life is letting go of our own ego’s needs and desires and coming to know God’s love (COCA); This contrast with the previous medieval/religious paradigm where the purpose of life was the salvation of the soul and man had no need to understand the physical universe, only to celebrate it as God’s creation (BNC); Through Christ we were given an insight into the essence of God, the essence of life (COCA); Religion is about giving people something to believe in, something that makes sense of life (COCA).

С другой же: The meaning of life is to live it, period (COCA); The meaning of life is in the living of it (COCA); The meaning of life is a life (BNC); For him the meaning of existence is “life” itself (COCA); The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience (COCA); To the women who might greet each other with this saying when they meet along the countryside, the very essence of life lies in survival (COCA); The industrial paradigm has been based on the idea that the purpose of life is the satisfaction of our physical needs (BNC).

Другая концептуальная точка зрения на природу смысла жизни состоит в признании за ним объективных либо субъективных свойств.

Если смысл жизни объективен и задаётся нам кем-то «со стороны» – Богом или природой, то в этой жизни его необходимо искать и открывать: Arabic words are intuitions which reveal glimpses of the divine design and the meaning of life to Arab consciousness (COCA); The Divine purpose of life is almost entirely forgotten and he spends each lifetime self-centredly chasing after vanishing mirages (BNC); When we ask ourselves what is the meaning of life, itself, we looked for the same answer: God created the world and all peoples in it according to a plan, and it is our job to find our individual purpose in it, one that had been designated by God. We find our calling (COCA); Well, the point is that scientists have a variety of ideas about religion, including – there are many, by the way, people who are theistic evolutionists, that they believe that there is a divine purpose of the universe, but they also accept the evidence of science of evolution (COCA); In their time there was a general recognition of an ultimately important spiritual dimension to life that is lacking in our own a sense of the universe given meaning by God so that man’s words interpenetrate with the Word, that whole transcendent meaning so fragmented and distorted by the Fall (BNC).

Если же он субъективен, то его мы творим сами: The meaning of life is not a fact to be discovered, but a choice that you make about the way you live, she once told me (COCA); Harris has argued that the value of life can only sensibly be taken to be that value that those alive place on their lives (BNC).

Как уже говорилось, в «формуле» смысла жизни факторы – это источники, определяющие осмысленность и оправданность бытия человека: важнейшие цели и ценности, главные жизненные задачи. В эксплицитной форме («Смысл жизни – это…») в тексте обоих корпусов имена этих факторов, которые по доминанте соответствующего синонимического ряда можно объединить в тематические группы, появляются относительно редко: всего лишь 83 раза.

Чаще всего (см. Таблицу 1) здесь, как и можно было ожидать, появляется любовь (10 употреблений): Perhaps love is what makes for a meaningful life (COCA); In fact, the ecological crisis may very well lead us into a deeper relationship with God and help awaken us to the true meaning of life, which is loving all that exists (COCA); The meaning of life is to love others as we love ourselves and to serve others (COCA); Romantic Idealism, which holds that love is the very essence of life and is the highest goal of the relationship between a man and a woman (COCA).

Следом (8 употреблений) идёт удовольствие/наслаждение: In other words, what was the very purpose of existence for the former was only a means to the enjoyment of life for the latter (COCA); Enjoyment is, after all, the point of life (COCA); The only real purpose of life is to maximize pleasure and to minimize pain (COCA); Joy and delight is part of the essence of life and it is there in the depths of the soul waiting to be found (BNC); … Considers social pleasures, such as the theatre and good company, as the meaning of life (COCA); All that follows will be based on the assumption that the desired purpose of life is that it should be enjoyed, and that this is an irrefutable fact (BNC); If humans are the only animal that doesn’t think the purpose of life is to enjoy it, Americans are an especially hard case (COCA).

Как и следовало ожидать, в числе первой тройки по числу употреблений (7) идет (сама) жизнь как смысл жизни (The meaning of life is a life – BNC; For him the meaning of existence is “life” itself – COCA), однако, по большому счёту, как будет показано, жизнь в принципе не может быть фактором смысла жизни. 

Далее (6 употреблений) идёт забота как помощь/служение другим: The meaning of life is to love others as we love ourselves and to serve others (COCA); The meaning of life is not to rule but to render service to one’s neighbour, service to one’s calling, service to one’s native country, service to truth and to justice (BNC); The whole point of life is serving others (COCA); Their lovers and their brothers and sisters that were dying were their main point of life. They dropped everything else to take care of someone (COCA).

Пять раз встречается Бог и религия (вера): He describes God as a force, as the essence of life, as pure, undefiled consciousness, as truth, goodness, light and love (BNC); The only point of life is letting go of our own ego’s needs and desires and coming to know God’s love (COCA); Religion is about giving people something to believe in, something that makes sense of life. The attitude required is that of faith (COCA).

Три раза обладание материальными благами: The quest for wealth and aggrandizement has emerged... for many as the meaning of life... (COCA); The culture-ideology of consumerism proclaims, literally, that the meaning of life is to be found in the things that we possess (BNC); While under capitalism the owning and accumulating of property is seen as the aim of life, in tribal conditions property is simple seen as a necessary pre-condition of life and social relations (BNC).

По два раза встречаются благодеяние, семья, дружба, опыт, исследование, творчество, самосовершенствование, удовлетворение физиологических потребностей, выживание, смерть, продолжение рода и культура: The value of life is in learning and good deeds (COCA); The most important thing in life is your family (COCA); Of these a few came to see in friendship the whole meaning of life: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and E. M. (BNC); To capturing the extraordinary experience that for most people is an enormous part of the meaning of life – an experience that fosters well-being and growth? (COCA); As far as I am concerned, the point of life is to learn more and explore (COCA); I was totally identified with yang energy: I thought the purpose of life was to do, to make, to act (COCA); The meaning of life is to perfect oneself, to be a Christian not just in name but in life, because every sin, every digression from God's truth, deprives us of the closeness to him (COCA); The industrial paradigm has been based on the idea that the purpose of life is the satisfaction of our physical needs (BNC); The very essence of life lies in survival (COCA); The aim of life is not evolution but regression, or, in its most seemingly contradictory form, the aim of life is death (COCA); The meaning of life is to bring a new generation into the world, then another (COCA); Freud was interested in value which he defined as the purpose of life both in the sense of the pursuit of ideals, and in the sense of the development of cultural assets (COCA).

По одному разу встречаются дети, работа, хорошее образование, действие, прогресс, самопознание, истина, счастье, радость, страсть, развитие способностей, индивидуальность, спасение души, приготовление к вечности, секс и красота: Passion, children, and art are, for me, the essence of life (COCA); The traditional and most important essence of life was obtaining a good education, which to the black immigrants was the key to success, a way out of the ruck (BNC); The whole point of life is to get your work done so you can go to the ballpark (COCA); I was totally identified with yang energy: I thought the purpose of life was to do, to make, to act (COCA); The essence of life is not a feeling of being, of existence, but a feeling of participation in a flowing onward, necessarily expressed in terms of time, and secondarily expressed in terms of space (COCA); Gandhi in fact does conceive the purpose of life to be to know the Self (BNC); Truth is the very essence of life (COCA); What makes your life worth living? Happiness, some will say (COCA); Joy and delight is part of the essence of life and it is there in the depths of the soul waiting to be found (BNC); Thus a large part of Spinoza's message is that the point of life is simply to develop one’s own powers and enjoy their exercise (BNC); The ontological traditions of Greek and Latin theology to assert: personhood is the meaning of being (COCA); This contrast with the previous medieval/religious paradigm where the purpose of life was the salvation of the soul and man had no need to understand the physical universe, only to celebrate it as God’s creation (BNC); And so the Bible teaches if people say, what’s the meaning of life? Well, I’ll tell you in three words, preparation for eternity (COCA); Sex is the zenith of existence, the whole point of life (COCA); Emerson liked to remind his readers that the Greek word Kosmos originally meant “beauty”, suggesting that the meaning of the universe could be found in aesthetic bliss, readily available to all in gorgeous nature as well as in art (COCA).

Большая часть смысложизненных факторов концептуально объединяются в несколько семантических блоков (см. Табл. 1), из которых наиболее объёмным предстаёт каритативно-альтруистический (23 единицы), за которым идёт гедонически-эпикурейский блок (11 единиц), за которым следуют деятельностный блок (9 единиц), религиозный (7 единиц), креативно-гносеологический (6 единиц), потребностный (5 единиц), призвания (4 единицы) и социальный (4 единицы).

Представляется, однако, что культурологически наиболее симптоматичным будет соотношение факторов смысла жизни, объединяемых (достаточно условно, поскольку дети, семья, дружба занимают двойственное положение) в группы по признаку «духовность-материальность». Тогда факторы каритативно-альтруистического и религиозного блоков будут противостоять факторам блоков социального, деятельностного гедонически-эпикурейского и потребностного и соотноситься как 30 : 29, что свидетельствует о приблизительно равном распределении представлений о местонахождении «локуса смысла жизни»: за пределами жизни или в самой жизни.

Таблица 1

Помимо всего прочего смысл жизни обладает собственной прагматикой: отношением к нему его «пользователей».

Это отношение может проявляться в форме оценки его онтологического статуса и ассоциироваться с типичным возрастом его «искателей» – юностью и молодостью: … Had felt like an adolescent again, facing the great questions of career and the meaning of life (COCA); Science becomes less appealing to boys as they get older (and to girls, it seems, at all stages of adolescence) and become interested in issues as varied as the meaning of life, the existence of God, ideologies, their emerging sexuality, their future career and lifestyle (BNC).

Реальность бытия смысла жизни может отрицаться эксплицитно (The relativism of values seems so sensible and convincing until we reflect on what this implies, namely that what we feel passionately about with regard to truth or justice or purpose of life has no justification apart from the fact that we happen to think like this – BNC) либо имплицитно, столь популярным тавтологическим утверждением «Смысл жизни – это сама жизнь», равнозначным умножению на ноль.

Однако наибольшее число оценочных суждений относительно смысла жизни связано, естественно, с его гносеологическими характеристиками – его познаваемостью.

Постижение смысла жизни связывается с интуицией (The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life – BNC), ему приписывается невыразимость в логических категориях (Longing for something that we can’t even name. You can call it the meaning of life, or wonder, or mystery, or you can call it God – COCA; N… Продолжение »