Even the noblest of work cannot preserve meaning under the sun. This critique dismantles the modern mythology of progress. Progress assumes that accumulation equals significance, that advancement produces value simply by virtue of expansion. Yet Solomon exposes the internal contradiction of this assumption: progress operates within time, but time erodes what progress produces. Without a Divine reference point, progress becomes a circular process that generates traces without meaning. Artificial intelligence intensifies this dynamic dramatically.

The Crisis of Meaning and the Logic of Under the Sun

The Appearance of Novelty and the Reality of Recurrence

The contemporary cultural moment is often described in apocalyptic terms. Artificial intelligence, particularly in its rapidly advancing generative and decision‑making forms, is said to confront humanity with questions so unprecedented that inherited philosophical and theological frameworks can no longer address them adequately. Human beings are told that they now face a rupture in intellectual history: intelligence need no longer be embodied, creativity need no longer be human, and agency need no longer be personal. From this perspective, AI does not merely alter what we do; it destabilizes who we are. Meaning itself, it is claimed, is now in question in ways fundamentally unlike any previous era.

Yet this rhetoric of novelty obscures more than it reveals. Historically, periods of technological acceleration almost always produce the illusion of metaphysical transformation. The tools change rapidly, but the underlying philosophical assumptions change very little. What is newly visible in moments of upheaval is not a new problem, but an old problem under intensified conditions. Artificial intelligence does not generate the crisis of meaning; it precipitates the collapse of meaning structures that were already insufficient.

This is precisely the dynamic Solomon exposes in his profound tour de force that is the Book of Ecclesiastes. Long before computational systems or machine cognition, Solomon confronted the question that underlies every modern anxiety: Can human life sustain meaning when evaluated entirely within the bounds of the created order? Solomonic wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiastes is not a reaction to a particular cultural development. It is an analysis of what inevitably happens whenever meaning is sought apart from God. Its relevance to the age of artificial intelligence is therefore not incidental but deliberate. AI is simply the latest context in which the same perennial experiment is being run again.

Under the Sun as a Deliberate Philosophical Constraint

The phrase under the sun (tahat hassemes)1 serves as the conceptual backbone of Ecclesiastes. Its recurrence is neither poetic habit nor rhetorical flourish. It marks the precise boundary of Solomon’s investigation. Everything he evaluates—wisdom, pleasure, labor, injustice, progress, mortality—is considered strictly within that inherently limited scope. Solomon avoids appeal to special revelation or explicit theological claims throughout much of the book, not because such resources are unavailable, but because in so doing he demonstrates their necessity by exhausting every epistemological alternative.

This methodological key is essential to understanding both the severity and coherence of Ecclesiastes. Solomon is not arguing that life is meaningless. He is arguing that life becomes meaningless when meaning is pursued under the sun, that is, when human existence is interpreted as a closed system of natural causes, temporal cycles, and finite horizons. In this sense, Ecclesiastes is a thorough philosophical experiment rather than an expression of despair or cynicism.

The modern equivalents of under the sun reasoning are not difficult to identify. Naturalism, materialism, and secular humanism all share the same basic commitment, that reality is self‑contained, and whatever meaning exists must arise from within the system itself.2 Artificial intelligence inherits and intensifies this commitment. AI does not introduce new metaphysical assumptions—it operates at the furthest reaches of existing ones. It embodies confidence in immanent explanation, autonomous intelligence, and self‑generating significance. Solomon’s insistence on evaluating life under the sun anticipates the exact conditions under which AI now appears disruptive. This apparent disruption does not arise because machines are unprecedentedly powerful, but because meaning has already been severed from any transcendent reference beyond the system.

Hebel: The Ontological Diagnosis

The evaluative term that Solomon’s diagnoses is hebel.3 Translated traditionally as “vanity,” the word’s semantic range includes breath, vapor, mist—something that appears solid momentarily, but dissipates upon contact. The metaphor is deliberately chosen. Hebel does not imply moral worthlessness or meaninglessness in a trivial sense. Rather, it denotes ontological insubstantiality. It is something that does not endure. When Solomon declares, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,”4 he is not making a psychological confession, but rather a metaphysical judgment. He is identifying what human projects become when they are engaged and evaluated without reference to that which transcends temporality. Wisdom, pleasure, achievement, and power may have instrumental value, but they lack durability. They cannot resist erosion by time, death, or forgetfulness. They are the inevitable victims of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.5

This diagnosis is especially important for understanding why artificial intelligence feels destabilizing in the present moment. AI systems promise efficiency, optimization, prediction, and control, yet none of these addresses the problem hebel names. On the contrary, by accelerating production and compressing time, AI intensifies the very transience Solomon identifies. The faster one can produce, the faster one can discard. The more efficiently systems operate, the more quickly outcomes lose significance. Artificial intelligence is therefore not a solution to hebel; it is a catalyst that makes hebel more visible. It exposes the emptiness of projects undertaken in a context that is already incapable of sustaining meaning.

Yithron and the Search for Enduring Gain

In contrast to hebel is the concept of yithron,6 often translated profit or advantage. Solomon repeatedly asks whether any human endeavor produces lasting surplus—something that remains after time has done its work. The question is not whether activities are enjoyable or useful in the short term, but whether they generate enduring gain. Solomon’s answer, consistently, is that they do not. Knowledge increases awareness, but not permanence. Pleasure fades. Labor passes to others. Power is temporary. Even memory proves unreliable. Under the sun, there is no yithron. Every gain is provisional, every advantage short‑lived.

This question of surplus is particularly relevant in an age obsessed with productivity and optimization.7

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¹ Ecclesiastes 1:3,9,14ff.

² Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1-6.

³ E.g., in Ecclesiastes 1:2.

⁴ Ecclesiastes 1:2.

⁵ Ecclesiastes 1:4.

⁶ E.g., in Ecclesiastes 1:3ff.

⁷ Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (Ignatius Press, 2009), 19-42.