Exploring the meaning in life through phenomenology and philosophy

Psychological and philosophical studies have long shown that the moods and subjective emotions of a person have a significant impact on the way in which they experience “meaning in life”. The philosopher Matthew Ratcliffe stressed that a person’s mood operates in a lively way in the context of perception and plays a major role in the way he seizes the meaning of his life.

Also in psychology, empirical studies have studied how mood affects the perception of the meaning of life. Meanwhile, phenomenology revealed that lived experience in the first person of the body deeply influences the way we perceive the world.

In the adjacent fields, concepts such as approach, solicitation and the ection (ectivism) were proposed one after the other. These concepts focus on how human physical interactions with the world influence and form the way humans perceive and understand their environment.

In a recent study, Professor Masahiro Morioka of the Waseda University Faculty of Human Sciences aimed to apply this same mechanism – not only to the perception of the outside world, but also to the perception of “meaning in life”. The results of this research were published online in Philosophy June 4, 2025.

This study is a conceptual and theoretical survey on the nature of “meaning in life”. In the philosophy of the sense of life to date, researchers have often debated the question of whether the meaning in life is purely subjective, that is to say that life has a meaning if the individual believes it; Purely objective, that is to say that life has a meaning, whatever the individual thinks; or a hybrid of both.

This study, however, puts aside these discussions and examines in place how “meaning in life” develops between a person who tries to live his life and the life they are trying to live – and how this sense is felt by the person.

Consequently, the study offers a “geographic model of meaning in life”, an active exploration model. Applied to the perception of the meaning of life, this model suggests that the way in which a person explores their life – with specific attitudes and commitments – an eliP various responses of life itself. These responses can take the form of real or potential experiences of the meaning of life or misery.

In other words, the value of life emerges – both positively and negatively – as a type of diversified geographic configuration that forms human experience. This study proposes that we understand “meaning to life” as a geographic configuration which corresponds to the acts of exploration of the person and to his attitude towards life.

The notable definition, according to Morioka, is: “The geographic model of meaning in life is the set of models of lived experiences of the value of the life of a life which is lived in the activation of my survey action on my life in the way of here and now, and this action is similar to the action of a blind person to probe his life with a rod.

“This survey can be carried out with various attitudes or commitments to life, such as positive, negative, reluctant, etc.

In many ways, this work marks a paradigm shift: it deals with both significant and tragic experiences as parts of the same experiential landscape and explores “meaning in life” as a perceptual experience of this complex geography. This change was made possible by introducing phenomenological methodology in the philosophy of the sense of life, which could serve as a bridge between philosophy and psychology, opening the door to a more productive interdisciplinary collaboration.

In particular, psychology has developed quantitative and qualitative scales to measure how people think that their life is significant. These existing approaches vary considerably, but the “geographic model” proposed in this study approaches the experience of the meaning of life from a completely different angle. It can offer new perspectives on psychology and related areas.

The eyes fixed on the future, Morioka notes: “My next objective is to integrate this study with other approaches in progress in the philosophy of the meaning of life: namely the soli approach of meaning in life and liberation and the memory of approach. Thanks to such integration, I aim to build a new systematic framework in the sense of the philosophy of life.”