Ellen Keohane

As a late-career individual stands on the threshold to retirement, they may ask themselves whether they have “had enough”. In this analysis, I explore this important ethical question using Wolf’s (2010) conception of meaningfulness as that which both subjectively engages and contributes objective value. I analyze the correlation between having a sufficient reason to persist in one’s career and the persistence of the meaningfulness of it, claiming that one no longer has sufficient reason to continue in the career if it is no longer sufficiently meaningful. To do this, I divide the “had enough” question into having “gotten enough” (in terms of satisfying categorical desires) and having “given enough” (in terms of imperfect duties to contribute value) and use the distinction between telic and atelic activities to describe the content of the desires and duties. I finish my analysis by describing how the pre-retiree can use these same concepts to envision a sufficiently meaningful retirement. In my view, the idea that meaningfulness is an important source of reasons to persist in a career is an underexplored philosophical topic. My aim is to help clarify one elusive source of reasons to work at a problematic threshold point in late career.

In this paper, I explore an effect of a very specific life event: a “cliff-edge” retirement. I look at the concept of ground projects and show how cliff-edge retirements create ill-shaped projects reflecting the loss of important workplace benefits such as purposeful work and social collaborations. This type of retirement prematurely closes the ground project before its natural conclusion. I argue that attempts to recover it will likely prove difficult, inauthentic and will not remedy the project’s wrongful shape.