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On the Meaning of Life (Thinking in Action)
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| List Price: | £12.99 |
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Product Description
The question 'What is the meaning of life?' is one of the oldest and most difficult questions we have ever asked ourselves. John Cottingham asks why we are so preoccupied with this question and assesses some attempts to answer it.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #135950 in Books
- Published on: 2002-11-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 144 pages
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
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.
Customer Reviews
superb insight
I read this book a while ago after picking it up at random from a friend's shelf. It is beautifully written and argued; it's deceptively easy to read and carries its argument forward so subtly that you really don't know what his conclusion is going to be until you get there. It neither argues for religion in its tradiitonal form nor against it, but leaves it up to you, the reader, to decide; how refreshing after the narrow dogmatism of Richard Dawkins or some religious apologists. Highly recommended.
