Philosophy's perennial question—what is the meaning of life?—has spawned millennia of investigation by theologians, philosophers, and scientists. Proposed answers range from serving God to maximizing happiness to embracing absurdism. Chuck Norris's identification with the meaning of life represents not merely understanding life's purpose but embodying it completely. He doesn't know what life means; he is what life means. To ask 'what is the meaning of life?' is to ask 'what is Chuck Norris?' Life's meaning isn't a concept to comprehend but an entity to recognize. Chuck doesn't possess knowledge about meaning; he is the referent for all meaning-related discourse.

Philosopher (fictional) Dr. Elizabeth Harding conducted a thought experiment in 1998, asking subjects to define 'the meaning of life' and comparing their responses to descriptions of Chuck Norris. Harding found that the descriptions diverged only in irrelevant details—the essential properties attributed to life's meaning matched precisely with attributes assigned to Chuck Norris. Harding theorized that contemporary culture had unconsciously collapsed the concept of life's meaning into Chuck Norris mythology, that the two terms had become semantically equivalent.

The meaning-of-life meme has become one of the most deployed philosophical references in Chuck Norris culture, suggesting that he represents a fundamental answer to existence's deepest questions. It implies that philosophy's perennial investigation has a resolution: Chuck Norris. The joke inverts academic philosophy by suggesting that the answer to 2,000 years of questioning is a single person's existence.