Why the Meaning of Life Deserves a Place in the Undergraduate Curriculum

In 2021, the CDC reported that 42 percent of U.S. high school students felt persistently sad or hopeless, 22 percent seriously considered suicide, and 10 percent attempted it. These statistics are alarming and indicate something deeper than just a mental health crisis: they point to a vacuum in the meaning of life.

This lack of purpose is not limited to teenagers. In an article (August 25, 2023), David Brooks reported in The Atlantic on new academic programs at leading American universities designed for retired CEOs seeking meaning and purpose. Almost a decade earlier, Governing magazine described a similar initiative at Stanford University, offering retirees an opportunity "not to retire but retrain-and commit to new and meaningful projects."

However, as Brooks observes, these programs are "for the ridiculously privileged," available only to the financially secure. The average American, particularly young students, rarely gets such a chance. Our educational system has become obsessed with meritocratic metrics - credentials, optimization, and advancement - often at the expense of questions that animated the earliest civilizations: What is the purpose of life? What is our role in the moral or cosmic order? Does moral sentiment still matter for good governance or civilizational progress?

If our students are crying out for meaning, shouldn't our curricula help them grapple with it? This growing sense of despair across age and class reflects a deeper civilizational problem: we have lost a shared worldview that unites moral purpose, communal bonds, and a connection to the transcendent. Studies have often credited religion with promoting health, happiness, and community engagement. Have we underestimated its role? Perhaps yes. However, before turning to today, we should examine how earlier civilizations grappled with meaning.

Lessons from Early Civilizations: Meaning as the Foundation of Order

In ancient Mesopotamian beliefs, which encompassed the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian civilizations, one finds the role of divine authorities who controlled both the natural and moral orders. One may find such stories in the Babylonian Epic of Creation or the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as in many other similar works, which explain human limitations, divine wisdom, and moral humility.

In ancient India, during the early Vedic period, the concept of Ṛta (cosmic order) and later Dharma (moral duty) were foundational. The invincible Rta guided the divine law that governed the universe based on truth, speech, and morality. It recognized the unity of existence, and Dharma pointed to the conscience as a faculty that linked the human to the unseen realm of justice. Yajurveda and Rigveda hymns often invoke unseen powers, speaking of a single divine origin.

In the Chinese tradition, the notion of Tianming, or the Mandate of Heaven, refers to a transcendent moral authority entrusted to the emperor to establish a just rule on earth. A ruler who failed morally would lose Heaven's Mandate and be replaced. Thus making divine legitimacy conditional on moral virtue. In other words, political power must be morally accountable to a higher, invisible order.

In the ancient Greek tradition, thinkers such as Heraclitus and the Stoics invoked Logos-a rational, divine order that pervades the cosmos. Socrates claimed to be guided by a daimonic voice - a divine expression warning him against wrong action. Plato argued that the material world was a shadow of a higher realm of eternal Forms, accessible not by the senses but by rational contemplation.

These traditions reveal a shared insight: civilizations flourished when they grounded social order in transcendent meaning. Can our own education today afford to neglect this?

The Modern Break: Knowledge Without Wholeness

However, driven by material gain and radicalized thinking, the mainstream social sciences essentially betrayed that vision. Some did not hesitate to ridicule celebrated historians like Arnold Toynbee for his opinion about religion and the future of Western civilization. As one academic puts it, "The aggressive secularists who dominated postwar British academia-among them A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper-took turns to ridicule Toynbee's supposed 'mish-mash' religion and his belief that it could solve the problems of the world." Both Smith and Kant encouraged the creation of a culture in which an individual's conscience, properly cultivated, could serve as the new moral center of society. However, they ultimately created "my truth," "my race," "my nation," and "my civilization" as justifications for moral authority, often at the expense of others. In the process, the modern world has lost a universal humanistic character.

Can We Reclaim a Synthesis?

If reclaiming a synthesis means reconnecting rational inquiry with moral and spiritual wisdom, then we must revisit not only Newton and Kant but also Smith. The very disciplines that displaced religion were shaped by his effort to base ethics on sentiment. Recovering a fuller vision of meaning requires acknowledging that human sympathy, while valuable, cannot by itself sustain civilizations without some orientation toward the transcendent.

Today, the parallel with classical Greece is striking. Just as Socrates challenged the Sophists, modern universities risk reducing education to credentials. Ethical relativism thrives, yet students still hunger to explore life's enduring questions about justice, mortality, and purpose.

Education's Task Today: From Information to Formation

"The importance of the passages ... lies in the fact that they tell us of a way of life which would have brought us peace and harmony many centuries ago if humanity had fully accepted and faithfully practiced the teachings they contain. They visualize a new world where there will be no wars, where famine, disease, and racial intolerance will be no more, precisely the world for which I am fighting ..."

Mandela's words remind us that scriptural wisdom can inspire hope, resilience and vision. Universities can apply this insight by introducing interdisciplinary seminars on meaning, drawing on philosophy, religious studies, psychology, and history. They can also revive Socratic dialogue to encourage questioning rather than passive acceptance and integrate Socratic ideas in courses such as critical thinking, so it becomes a habit of mind, not a side subject.

The aim is not to prescribe a worldview, but to empower students to explore the moral and spiritual dimensions of life responsibly.

A Call to Action

If universities exist to prepare not only workers but also citizens and human beings, education must go beyond information and skills. It must cultivate wisdom, conscience, and orientation toward the transcendent. A course on the meaning of life is not a luxury. It is a necessity - equipping students with the compass they need to navigate personal despair and collective crises.

The time has come for universities to take this step: to pilot courses on meaning, to blend rational inquiry with moral wisdom, and to restore education's ancient mission - not only to inform minds but to form souls.