ul. Mikołaja Kopernika 26, Kraków
Poland
Patrycja Kozera-Mikuła
Developmental Psychology, Volume 25 Issue 2, 2020, pp. 9-28
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843879PR.20.009.12264The concept of the MEANING OF LIFE operates in language as a polysemantic structure which must be seen against the background of philosophical, anthropological, theological, psychological, pedagogical, sociological and cultural concepts. The question about the MEANING OF LIFE, which includes the search for the essence and purpose of human existence, the human vocation, the reasons for making an effort to live and for why it is worth living, constitutes one of the crucial questions of various philosophical and religious systems, and attempts to answer it bear evidence to the wealth of the humanistic knowledge and reflection on human life. The concept of the MEANING OF LIFE is extremely vague in its nature, and it may also be included among the religious concepts that concern the reality which cannot be captured empirically. The author analyzes lexicographical sources, literature on the subject, resources of the National Corpus of Polish and the results of a survey carried out among Polish language speakers. The description of the concept of the MEANING OF LIFE, made by analyzing representative words and linguistic constructions that fall within it, as well as numerous psychological concepts, leads to indicating basic conceptual categories contributing to the concept today and to showing how the concept of the MEANING OF LIFE is currently expressed in Polish and in the humanities.