What’s the meaning of life? With Predrag Cicovacki

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Mar 26, 2025 Ethics Untangled

Short Description:

Never let it be said that we don’t tackle the big questions on this podcast. This week we’re discussing no less a subject than the meaning of life, with Predrag Cicovacki. 

Predrag is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross (USA), where he has been teaching since 1991. 

He has served as a visiting professor in Germany, Russia, Luxembourg, Serbia, France, and India. 

He’s interested in problems of good and evil, violence and nonviolence, philosophy of war and peace, and ethics. 

In 2021, in the midst of very difficult personal circumstances and a global pandemic, Predrag set to work on a book called The Meaning of Life: a Quick Immersion. It’s a great book: very clear, heartfelt, personal and full of insights. I hugely enjoyed reading it, and enjoyed even more the opportunity to talk to Predrag about it.

I asked Predrag to recommend some further reading and, in line with the general vibe of this episode, he suggested that you might like to reconnect with a book that meant a lot to you in childhood or adolescence. For Predrag, it’s The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. The first one that came to mind for me was The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. What about you?

In the Professor’s Own Words:

In this conversation for the University of Leeds podcast Ethics Untangled, I discuss one of philosophy’s oldest and most personal questions: What makes a human life meaningful? Drawing on my book The Meaning of Life: A Quick Immersion, we consider meaning not as something simply discovered or arbitrarily invented, but as something that emerges through our interaction with reality and with one another. The discussion explores four fundamental pillars—merit, luck, gratitude, and inspiration—and asks how relationships, attentive perception, personal calling, and our responses to life’s inevitable obstacles can help us find a meaningful way through the world.

Listen to the full interview by clicking the link:
YouTube – Ethics Untangled