After a bit of a delay, we’re resuming the Article Spotlight series, in which the authors of recent journal articles are invited to write brief posts here about them. As noted at the time of the first installment, the articles featured will tend to be ones judged to be of interest to a wide range of philosophers. An article’s inclusion in this series should not be construed as an endorsement of its argument or agreement with its conclusions, but rather as a way of saying, “this might be interesting to discuss.” In this month’s post, Joshua Glasgow, professor of philosophy at Sonoma State University, discusses his recent article, “The Ordinary Meaningful Life,” which appeared earlier this year in The Journal of the American Philosophical Association—the official version should be publicly available; if you can’t access it, there is a link to a preprint here. [Originally posted on December 8, 2022] The Ordinary Meaningful Life by Joshua Glasgow We celebrate being important. Why? In particular, why should you care about whether you are especially important, or great, or significant? Some branches of normativity offer easy-ish answers to this question. In particular, we probably have strong moral reason to be important in certain ways. If you can cure Covid-19, then you should, morally speaking. If you can do something that would lift millions out of poverty, then you should, morally speaking. If you can be the hero who finally invents a pillowcase that stays cool all night, then… well, then what are you doing reading this?? Get cracking, please. But many people also find themselves attracted to being important for non-moral reasons. They want to be the next Sonia Sotomayor, or Barack Obama, or Miles Davis, or Marie Curie—or Socrates—on the thought that being great would make for a better life, not just for morality nor the greater good, but also for them. That is, being extraordinarily important is supposed to be in our own interests. (The ‘we’ here is rhetorical; the drive to be important may well be culturally mediated and shaped by gender and other social norms.) Of course, as with moral demands, there are plausibly rational limits on what to give up to be one of the Greats. But that..