Overview
The question 'What is the meaning of life?' is one of the most fascinating, oldest and most difficult questions human beings have ever posed themselves. In an increasingly secularized culture, it remains a question to which we are ineluctably and powerfully drawn. In this acute and thoughtful book, John Cottingham assesses some of the most influential attempts to explain it, ranging from the bleak existentialist view to the religious demand that human beings amount to something more than Pascal's 'imbecile worms of the earth'. He asks what is involved in the 'disenchantment' of the natural world by science, and argues that, properly understood, modern cosmology and evolutionary theory need not foreclose the possibility of ultimate meaning. He also reflects on the paradox that the very impermanence and fragility of the human condition may lend support to the quest for a 'spiritual' dimension of meaning. Drawing skilfully on a wealth of thinkers, writers and scientists from Augustine, Descartes, Freud and Camus, to Spinoza, Pascal, Darwin, and Wittgenstein, On the Meaning of Life breathes new vitality into one of the very biggest questions.
Full Product Details
Author: John Cottingham (University of Reading, UK)
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
Dimensions:
Width: 12.90cm
, Height: 1.10cm
, Length: 19.80cm
Weight: 0.294kg
ISBN: 9780415247993
ISBN 10: 0415247993
Pages: 136
Publication Date: 14 November 2002
Audience:
College/higher education
,
General/trade
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
On the Meaning of Life would serve well as a textbook for units of lower-level philosophy courses on this issue; general readers would also profit from it. It is concise and clear, and would provide an excellent starting point for discussion with students.. <br>-Jason Kawall, Colgate University <br>
On the Meaning of Life would serve well as a textbook for units of lower-level philosophy courses on this issue; general readers would also profit from it. It is concise and clear, and would provide an excellent starting point for discussion with students.. -Jason Kawall, Colgate University
"'Cottingham summarises arguments about morality, evolution ... with clarity.' - Steven Poole, The Guardian 'Students are often disappointed with contemporary philosophy for not engaging with the ""big questions"". They would not be disappointed with this book...The strength of this book lies in the way it handles a mass of philosophical, scientific, literary and religious thought.' -Church Times 'Elegantly written and accessible...Readers will appreciate Cottingham's clarity and his willingness to enter some difficult and complex areas of debate.' - The Philosophers' Magazine 'Lucid and provocative, rich with references and ideas . . . Cottingham takes things remarkably far for our day and age.' - International Philosophical Quarterly 'I strongly recommend this book to philosophers, theologians and educated readers. It is a distillation of much experience, scholarship and reflection and it is rare to find so much contained in so few pages. Whatever else I read in the coming months this will be one of my books of the year.' - John Haldane, The Tablet '[An] admirable, concise and lucid book.' - Reviews in Religion and Theology 'If Cottingham is brusque he can also be invigorating, and he focuses very effectively on the most fertile question in the so-called philosophy of life: that the ""precariousness of human life and happiness"" is exactly what makes our life interesting.' - Jonathan Ree, Times Literary Supplement"
