What is the Meaning of Human Life?

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Rodopi, 2001 - 176 страници
This book examines core concerns of human life. What is the relationship between a meaningful life and theism? Why are some human beings radically adrift, without radical foundations, and struggling with hopelessness? Is the cosmos meaningless? Is human life akin to the ancient Myth of Sisyphus? What is the role of struggle and suffering in creating meaning? How do we discover or create value? Is happiness overrated as a goal of life? How, if at all, can we learn to die meaningfully?

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Съдържание

Preface
5
THREE
51
Struggle and Suffering
62
Deflationary Accounts of the Meaning of Life
73
Meaning and Significance
85
FIVE Value
93
Infinite Regress and Radical Subjectivism
95
Realism and AntiRealism
98
What Is Happiness?
126
Can Everyone Be Happy?
128
What Is the Relationship Between Meaningful Lives and Happy Lives?
129
Are Moral and Intellectual Virtues Needed for Happiness?
131
Is the Desired Conscious Condition Sustained Joy or Peace Enough for Happiness?
132
SEVEN Death
135
Death Is Irrelevant to Value and Meaning in Life
139
Death Gives Life Meaning
140

Objectivism and Relativism
102
Molding Alternatives
103
What If Our Values Lack Ultimate Foundations?
112
Critical Pragmatism
114
SIX Why Happiness Is Overrated
119
Happiness as Tranquility
120
Happiness and Sociology
122
Philosophy and Sociology
125
Death Deprives Life of Meaning
146
Death Is a Transition
149
Death Is Relevant But Not Determinant
152
Notes
157
Bibliography
163
About the Author 169
73
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Страница 53 - I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Страница 13 - ... Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?
Страница 13 - At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.
Страница 13 - ... without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as those of benevolence.
Страница 128 - ... and affections. The happy man is the man who does not suffer from either of these failures of unity, whose personality is neither divided against itself nor pitted against the world. Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the...
Страница 58 - Sisyphus' climbs to the summit of his hill, and each day of it one of his steps; the difference is that whereas Sisyphus himself returns to push the stone up again, we leave this to our children. We at one point imagined that the labors of Sisyphus finally culminated in the creation of a temple, but for this to make any difference it had to be a temple that would at least endure, adding beauty to the world for the remainder of time. Our achievements, even though they are often beautiful, are...
Страница 58 - But the descriptions so far also provide something else; namely, the suggestion of how an existence that is objectively meaningless, in this sense, can nevertheless acquire a meaning for him whose existence it is.

Препратки към тази книга

Being and Authenticity
Xunwu Chen
Ограничен достъп - 2004

Информация за автора (2001)

Raymond Angelo Belliotti is Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chairperson of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He received his undergraduate degree from Union College in 1970, after which he was con-scripted into the United States Army where he served three years in military intelligence units during the Vietnamese War. Upon his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Miami where he earned his master of arts degree in 1976 and doctorate in 1977. After teaching stints at Florida International University and Virginia Commonwealth University, he entered Harvard University as a law student and teaching fellow. After receiving a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, he practiced law in New York City with the firm of Barrett Smith Scha-piro Simon & Armstrong. In 1984, he joined the faculty at Fredonia. Belliotti is the author of four other books: Justifying Law(1992), Good Sex(1993), Seeking Identity(1995), and Stalking Nietzsche(1998). He has also published fifty-five articles and twenty-five reviews in the areas of ethics, jurisprudence, sexual morality, medicine, politics, education, feminism, sports, Marxism, and legal ethics. These essays have ap-peared in scholarly journals based in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. Belliotti has also made numerous presentations at philosophical conferences, including the 18th World Congress of Philosophy in England, and has been honored as a featured lecturer on the Queen Elizabeth-2ocean liner. While at SUNY Fredonia, he has served extensively on campus commit-tees and as the Chairperson of the College Senate. For six years he was faculty advisor to the undergraduate club, the Philosophical Society, and he has served that function for Il Circolo Italiano. Belliotti has been the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, the William T. Hagan Young Scholar/Artist Award, and the Kasling Lecture Award for Excel-lence in Research and Scholarship.

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