Overview

Stephen Clark's philosophical work has always been inspired by images and arguments drawn from science fiction, as well as by the long Platonic tradition of philosophy. In these papers (written between 1983 and 2023) on the writings of Kipling, Orwell, Lovecraft, Tolkien, and others, the recurring theme is an examination of the apparent conflict between the world as we are compelled to think it and our need for faith in the reality of humane values: on the one hand, the world revealed through scientific theory and exploration is immensely larger, older, stranger (and often grimmer) than either the world of our everyday dealings or that envisaged in the spiritual traditions; on the other, our knowledge of that strange world seems to depend on their being a real rational order of existence which is mirrored in our rational imaginings. What might this conundrum say about the possibilities of ""life after death,"" an ""objective moral order,"" ""alien life,"" the nature of consciousness, and whatever ""new civilization"" may emerge as our present civilizations decay? That is the core of this path-breaking work.

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STEPHEN R. L. CLARK is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, and an honorary research fellow in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol. At present, he is concerned mainly with the development of Neo-Platonic philosophy, the understanding and treatment of non-human animals, and the varieties of neurodiversity. His most recent publications relevant to these themes include How to Live Forever (1995), G. K .Chesterton: Thinking Backwards, Looking Forwards (2006), Philosophical Futures (2011), Can We Believe in People: Human Significance in an Interconnected Cosmos (2020), and How the Worlds Became: Philosophy and the Oldest Stories (2023).

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