In these lectures, Wolf argues that meaningfulness is a distinct dimension of a good life, irreducible to either happiness or morality. Her central slogan is that meaning arises when "subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness" — that is, when a person is actively and lovingly engaged in projects or relationships that are, independently of her feelings about them, genuinely worthwhile. This "Fitting Fulfillment" view is meant to capture what's right in two more familiar pictures while avoiding their failures: the purely subjective view (meaning is just fulfillment or passion, so a life devoted to counting blades of grass could be maximally meaningful) and the purely objective view (meaning is just contributing to something larger than oneself, regardless of whether one cares about it). Wolf thinks each view answers to a real intuition, but only the hybrid does justice to both.

Questions to keep in mind:

-Can Wolf's view survive without an account of objective value, or does the appeal to "objective attractiveness" simply relocate the hard question rather than answer it?

-Is the grass-counter's life really meaningless even if she is deeply fulfilled — and if your intuition wavers, does that support the subjectivist after all?

-Why does Wolf insist that meaning is distinct from both happiness and morality? Could a defender of a sophisticated welfare theory (or of morality's demands) absorb meaning into their framework?

-What role does active engagement play? Could someone stand in the right relation to worthwhile things passively — say, by appreciating them — or must meaning involve doing?

-Wolf claims recognizing meaning as a category matters practically for how we deliberate and how we treat others' commitments. Does anything actually change in ethical or personal life if she's right?

A good video guide to the text can be found here.