Positive psychology wanders on the boundaries of what once was the territory of theology and philosophy.  In my understanding of the psychology of hope, the "E" in I-HOPE (Identity-Help-Optimism-Pathways-Ends) stands for ends or purposes that matter.  Pursuing ends and purposes that matter, that have significance beyond personal survival, pleasure and comfort--this pursuit is a necessary condition for a meaningful life.

To his credit, Martin Seligman tackles this area of thinking--albeit briefly--at the end of his book, Authentic Happiness.  He offers these definitions.

The pleasant life "is wrapped up in the successful pursuit of positive feelings, supplemented by the skills of amplifying these emotions."

The good life "is not about maximizing positive emotions, but is a life wrapped up in successfully using your signature strengths to obtain abundant and authentic gratification."  This definition may sound remarkably self-serving, but in fact these strengths include virtues such as gratitude and generosity (at least for some of us).

The meaningful life, Seligman concludes, "has one additional feature: using all your signature strengths in the service of something larger than you are."  Living all three , he asserts, "is to lead a full life" (quotes from page 249).

Why living for something or someone beyond ourselves should be a necessary condition for a meaningful life is not clear in the remaining pages of the book.  Seligman and others seek an evolutionary basis for such a supra-personal ethic, and in particular Seligman is taken by Robert Wright's arguments for human self-transcendence in Wright's book Nonzero.

In  conversation with Wright, Seligman notes that people of faith "already are leading lives they believe to be meaningful, and by my notion are meaningful" (page 257).  Seligman is focusing on the non-theists and skeptics in his efforts to construct an exclusively evolutionary account of supra-personal ethics and self-transcendence.

I'll spend more time looking at those arguments in the future.  At this moment, I want to dialogue with Seligman according to a simple canon of science.  If he concedes that people of faith have identified and live according an external source of meaning, why is that not enough for him?  Why would he choose to complexify the issue at this moment?

The principle of simplicity might encourage him to embrace a system of meaning that already works for billions of humans and which he acknowledges provides the basis for a meaningful existence.  He does not embrace such a system of meaning and seeks a more complex and less substantial source of meaning and purpose.  Curious.

He might wish to argue that people of faith find meaning in something that is not "real."  If that is the case, then his argument for seeking another source of meaning makes some sense.  His affirmation, however, that people of faith live meaningful lives is puzzling.  Is existential commitment to a possible illusions a way to live a life of meaning and purpose?  That is an odd thought for a scientist to have.

Of course, we Christians assert that our hope is rooted in something very real.  After all, every Christian hope is hope in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  And we are sure that the Resurrection is very real indeed.