A common idea about assessing meaning in life is that one draws up a list of those various positive values that one has achieved and subtracts from it one's negative deeds in life. The resulting balance is the meaningfulness of one's existence. I call this the ledger theory. Drawing on the work of Raimond Gaita and Julian Barnes's novel The Sense of an Ending, I argue for a phenomenology of remorse that gives us reason to reject the ledger theory. Even those agents whose lives have been exceptionally meaningful in some respects may remain haunted by their past. Certain sorts of misdeeds – those that involve significant, irreparable damage – leave life marred in such a way that the negative remains, even in the face of all the meaningful deeds of life.
On November 1, I had stopped eating and was prostrate in bed … It was then that a small vessel was brought into the room, and I felt my heart leap with newfound joy. It was a painted Karatsu jar … what particularly caught my eye was the repair work that had been done on the piece. It was astonishing how much it enhanced the beauty of the jar … The flaw in the jar had clearly occurred in the kiln. The piece had been badly split during firing, creating a disjointed gap in the surface … There had been no attempt to disguise it, but rather gold-dusted lacquer had been amply employed to repair it … natural deformation has raised the distortion to the level of spontaneous beauty … Is there not anyone who would not be lost in thought looking upon this work? From it I received much food for the heart.
What is the Good Life? (Qu'est-ce qu'une vie réussie?) belongs to the narrative of disenchantment genre. The bulk of the book chronicles the waning of the transcendent
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