Full answer
The question of life's meaning has been central to philosophy for over 2,500 years, and no consensus has emerged — which is itself significant. Different frameworks offer genuinely different answers rather than variations on the same theme. Understanding the main positions is more useful than expecting one to win.
Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia — often translated as "flourishing" — argues that meaning comes from living in accordance with one's highest capacities: developing virtue, engaging with meaningful work, and participating in a community. This is not happiness as pleasure but as the full expression of human potential. Most modern positive psychology, including Martin Seligman's PERMA model, descends directly from this tradition.
Existentialists like Sartre and Camus argued the opposite: the universe has no inherent meaning, and the recognition of this absurdity is the starting point. For Sartre, the absence of given meaning is freedom — we are "condemned to be free" and must create our own values and purposes. Camus's response to absurdity was rebellion: choosing to live and act fully despite the absence of cosmic guarantees.
Modern neuroscience adds a different layer: meaning is partly a neurological phenomenon. Studies using fMRI show that activities perceived as meaningful — caregiving, creative work, helping strangers — activate the brain's reward systems more durably than hedonic pleasures. Psychologist Viktor Frankl, drawing on his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, concluded that meaning can be found even in the most extreme suffering through chosen attitude and purpose.