Abstract

Existential crises come in different flavors, but they're typically evoked by confrontations with mortality and accompanied by feelings of existential angst. The English philosopher Bernard Williams (1929–2003) argues that immortality would not be a good thing and that an endless life would become so excruciatingly and unbearably boring that all of us would want “out” at some point. This is exactly what happens in The Good Place. The idea that death makes life meaningful seems to be one of the major moral lessons of The Good Place. Naturalists (about meaning) think that individual human lives can still be meaningful even if the human species wasn't created for a purpose. The Good Place seems to weigh in on the side of naturalism. The underlying message of existential crises in The Good Place is that the key to a meaningful life is to be a morally good person.