--- Rebecca Newberger in conversation with David Edwards about Mattering, Philosophy Bites podcast, June 2026
Four major strategies:
- Socializers
- Transcenders
- Heroic strivers
- Competitive mattering
Cf. recent book, Competitive mattering
From the transcript
Host 1 [David Edwards]: And in your own case, you said that you abandoned transcendental mattering and you took up learning mattering. The idea that the more that you learn, the better, and perhaps you can even contribute to the corpus of knowledge. And you’ve never had any doubts about that, so you remain that this is a legitimate way of mattering.
Guest [Rebecca Newberger]: It seems worthwhile to me. I’ve certainly had doubts that I had anything to contribute, you know, and that’s another way that our mattering projects can fail us. They can fail us personally. They can make us feel like failures constantly. And I’ve often thought that that was true of my mattering project.
Guest: But of just trying to at least learn everything and trying to fit it together coherently even without making any contribution, that seems to me worthwhile. Knowledge seems to me of value. You know, justice, knowledge, compassion, beauty. These are things that are worthwhile if your mattering project is to either cultivate the appreciation of these things or maybe even to add to them. That’s a good thing.
Guest: And it might lead to a tremendous amount of frustration and disappointment. I mean, look at Wittgenstein’s life. The heartache, the misery that he went through, even though he contributed a great deal. And then he says at the end of his life, Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life. Because he was doing what he thought mattered and struggling and and that’s what we’re really after.
Guest: We’re not after happiness. Happiness is vastly overrated. We wanna do something worth the doing. We don’t wanna waste our lives.
