Maximizing Making Meaning

Making Meaning is the first book to develop the idea of making meaning, defined as "having positive impact with one's actions." This is the greatest idea since everything has a meaning (an effect or relationship). It asks the life-or-death question does my life have enough meaning to continue to live it?

This book answers this question by developing the following main sources (or avenues) of making meaning: 1) loving relationships, 2) a sense of community, 3) genuine dialogues, 4) ful- filling work, 5) possessions, 6) appreciating artworks, 7) search for God and 8) intangibles or non- physical realities consisting of our highest values such as goodness, beauty, free will, justice and big truths. I explain and argue at length for this

source of intangibles, potentially the biggest.

Making Meaning maintains that it ought to be thought of as objective or external standards to judge everything and to live by instead of the current highly subjective or wishy-washy relative ones.

This book then attacks three major challenges to making meaning: 1) widespread meaninglessness, 2) nihilism and 3) extreme relativism. I propose

three absolute absolutes to resolve these challenges.

Finally, I define "the meaning of life" mostly in terms of the sources. A brief summary of the meaning of life from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

concludes the book.

Bob Lichtenbert has taught philosophy for over forty years A philosophical in various colleges. Since 1988, he has published his journal, "The Meaning of Life." He now reviews plays but has reviewed and written about all the arts in various publications. Bob earned his M. A. and Ph. D. in philosophy-the only real Ph. D.!--from Tulane University in New Orleans. After teaching in North Adams, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South Carolina, Dr. Lichtenbert now lives in his hometown, Chicago. His wife, Mary, is deceased. He has two children, Amy and Steve.