Why do we feel we matter? A philosopher explores our deepest, most divisive drive.

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Rebecca Goldstein argues that the human need to matter is not just a psychological quirk, but a fundamental biological drive to resist entropy. By mapping how we rationalize this instinct, she explains why our competing values often leave us unable to understand the passions that drive the people around us.

Rebecca Goldstein, a philosopher and novelist, has spent her career bridging the gap between scientific inquiry and human experience. After earning a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton, she began writing fiction that integrated intellectual struggles into the lives of her characters. Her debut novel, The Mind-Body Problem, introduced the metaphor of the mattering map, a concept that has since been adopted across fields like psychology and behavioral economics to describe how individuals organize their sense of purpose.

In her 2026 work, The Mattering Instinct, Goldstein formalizes her theory of mattering. She posits that the human longing to matter is a cognitive projection of the universal drive in living things to persist in their being and resist entropy. Because humans possess advanced cognitive capacities, we rationalize this biological imperative into a sense of what intrinsically matters. These rationalizations fall into distinct regions of the mattering map, such as socializing, heroic striving, or transcending, which help explain why people often find the motivations of others so incomprehensible.

Goldstein’s work extends beyond theory into the moral realm. By analyzing biographical vignettes of scientists, artists, and altruists, she explores which forms of mattering are morally justified. Her perspective is rooted in a commitment to philosophical rationalism and the belief that philosophy makes progress alongside science. As a prominent figure in the humanist movement, she has consistently sought to integrate her private identity with her public intellectual life, moving from her early upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish family to becoming a leading voice for secularism and humanism.

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