Editing Meaning of life (section)

== Origin of the expression ==

The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in [[Thomas Carlyle]]'s ''[[Sartor Resartus]]'' (1833–1834), book II chapter IX, "[[The Everlasting Yea]]".<ref name=":8">{{Cite web |last=O'Brien |first=Wendell |title=Meaning of Life, The: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives |url=https://iep.utm.edu/mean-ear/ |access-date=2022-12-28 |website=[[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |language=en-US}}</ref> <blockquote>Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the '''meaning of Life''' itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle. |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1051/1051-h/1051-h.htm |access-date=2022-12-28 |website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref></blockquote>Carlyle may have been inspired by earlier usage of the equivalent German expression ''der Sinn des Lebens'' by [[German Romanticism|German Romantic]] writers [[Novalis]] and [[Friedrich Schlegel]]. Schlegel was the first to use it in print by way of his novel ''Lucinde'' (1799), though Novalis had done so in a 1797–1798 manuscript, in which he wrote: "Only an artist can divine the meaning of life." Additionally, the word ''lebenssinn'', translated as life's meaning, had been used by [[Goethe]] in a 1796 letter to [[Schiller]].<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Leach |first1=Stephen |last2=Tartaglia |first2=James |author2-link=James Tartaglia |date=2018 |title=The Original Meaning of Life |url=https://philosophynow.org/issues/126/The_Original_Meaning_of_Life |access-date=2022-12-28 |website=[[Philosophy Now]]}}</ref> These authors grappled with the [[rationalism]] and [[materialism]] of modernity. Carlyle called this the "Torch of Science", which burned "more fiercely than ever" and made religion "all parched away, under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief", resulting in the "[[Temptation of Christ|Wilderness]]" of "the wide World in an [[Atheism|Atheistic]] Century".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-12-04 |title=How meaning of life was invented: Thomas Carlyle on how to overcome an existential crisis |url=https://frankmartela.com/2020/12/04/how-meaning-of-life-was-invented-thomas-carlyle-on-how-to-overcome-an-existential-crisis/ |access-date=2022-12-28 |website=Frank Martela |language=en}}</ref>