Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Religion and the Meaning of Life PDF full book. Access full book title Religion and the Meaning of Life by Clifford Williams. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Julian Young Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135020906 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
What is the meaning of life? In today's secular, post-religious scientific world, this question has become a serious preoccupation. But it also has a long history: many major philosophers have thought deeply about it, as Julian Young so vividly illustrates in this thought-provoking second edition of The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. Three new chapters explore Søren Kierkegaard’s attempts to preserve a Christian answer to the question of the meaning of life, Karl Marx's attempt to translate this answer into naturalistic and atheistic terms, and Sigmund Freud’s deep pessimism about the possibility of any version of such an answer. Part 1 presents an historical overview of philosophers from Plato to Marx who have believed in a meaning of life, either in some supposed ‘other’ world or in the future of this world. Part 2 assesses what happened when the traditional structures that give life meaning began to erode. With nothing to take their place, these structures gave way to the threat of nihilism, to the appearance that life is meaningless. Young looks at the responses to this threat in chapters on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Foucault and Derrida. Fully revised and updated throughout, this highly engaging exploration of fundamental issues will captivate anyone who’s ever asked themselves where life’s meaning (if there is one) really lies. It also makes a perfect historical introduction to philosophy, particularly to the continental tradition.
Author: Thaddeus Metz Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9781108457453 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 75
Book Description
This Element critically explores the potential relevance of God or a soul for life's meaning as discussed in recent Anglo-American philosophical literature. There have been four broad views: God or a soul is necessary for meaning in our lives; neither is necessary for it; one or both would greatly enhance the meaning in our lives; one or both would substantially detract from it. This Element familiarizes readers with all four positions, paying particular attention to the latter two, and also presents prima facie objections to them, points out gaps in research agendas and suggests argumentative strategies that merit development.
Author: Roy F. Baumeister Publisher: Guilford Press ISBN: 9780898625318 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 450
Book Description
Who among us has not at some point asked, what is the meaning of life?' In this extraordinary book, an eminent social scientist looks at the big picture and explores what empirical studies from diverse fields tell us about the human condition. MEANINGS OF LIFE draws together evidence from psychology, history, anthropology, and sociology, integrating copious research findings into a clear and conclusive discussion of how people attempt to make sense of their lives. In a lively and accessible style, emphasizing facts over theories, Baumeister explores why people desire meaning in their lives, how these meanings function, what forms they take, and what happens when life loses meaning. It is the most comprehensive examination of the topic to date.
Author: Tim Crane Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674982738 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
“[A] lucid and thoughtful book... In a spirit of reconciliation, Crane proposes to paint a more accurate picture of religion for his fellow unbelievers.” —James Ryerson, New York Times Book Review Contemporary debate about religion seems to be going nowhere. Atheists persist with their arguments, many plausible and some unanswerable, but these make no impact on religious believers. Defenders of religion find atheists equally unwilling to cede ground. The Meaning of Belief offers a way out of this stalemate. An atheist himself, Tim Crane writes that there is a fundamental flaw with most atheists’ basic approach: religion is not what they think it is. Atheists tend to treat religion as a kind of primitive cosmology, as the sort of explanation of the universe that science offers. They conclude that religious believers are irrational, superstitious, and bigoted. But this view of religion is almost entirely inaccurate. Crane offers an alternative account based on two ideas. The first is the idea of a religious impulse: the sense people have of something transcending the world of ordinary experience, even if it cannot be explicitly articulated. The second is the idea of identification: the fact that religion involves belonging to a specific social group and participating in practices that reinforce the bonds of belonging. Once these ideas are properly understood, the inadequacy of atheists’ conventional conception of religion emerges. The Meaning of Belief does not assess the truth or falsehood of religion. Rather, it looks at the meaning of religious belief and offers a way of understanding it that both makes sense of current debate and also suggests what more intellectually responsible and practically effective attitudes atheists might take to the phenomenon of religion.
Author: Philip Kitcher Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300210345 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 194
Book Description
Although there is no shortage of recent books arguing against religion, few offer a positive alternative—how anyone might live a fulfilling life without the support of religious beliefs. This enlightening book fills the gap. Philip Kitcher constructs an original and persuasive secular perspective, one that answers human needs, recognizes the objectivity of values, and provides for the universal desire for meaningfulness. Kitcher thoughtfully and sensitively considers how secularism can respond to the worries and challenges that all people confront, including the issue of mortality. He investigates how secular lives compare with those of people who adopt religious doctrines as literal truth, as well as those who embrace less literalistic versions of religion. Whereas religious belief has been important in past times, Kitcher concludes that evolution away from religion is now essential. He envisions the successors to religious life, when the senses of identity and community traditionally fostered by religion will instead draw on a broader range of cultural items—those provided by poets, filmmakers, musicians, artists, scientists, and others. With clarity and deep insight, Kitcher reveals the power of secular humanism to encourage fulfilling human lives built on ethical truth.
Author: T. J. Mawson Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9781108731171 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 75
Book Description
Monotheism and the Meaning of Life explores the role of God, and the relationship to the question 'What is the meaning of life?' for adherents of the main monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Exploring the various senses of 'meaning' and 'life', Mawson argues that there are various questions implicit in the notion of the meaning of life and that the God of monotheistic religion is central to the correct answers to all of them.
Author: Ngaire Naffine Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1847314821 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
The perennial question posed by the philosophically-inclined lawyer is 'What is law?' or perhaps 'What is the nature of law?' This book poses an associated, but no less fundamental, question about law which has received much less attention in the legal literature. It is: 'Who is law for?' Whenever people go to law, they are judged for their suitability as legal persons. They are given or refused rights and duties on the basis of ideas about who matters. These ideas are basic to legal-decision making; they form the intellectual and moral underpinning of legal thought. They help to determine whether law is essentially for rational human beings or whether it also speaks to and for human infants, adults with impaired reasoning, the comotose, foetuses and even animals. Are these the right kind of beings to enter legal relationships and so become legal persons. Are they, for example, sufficiently rational, or sacred or simply human? Is law meant for them? This book reveals and evaluates the type of thinking that goes into these fundamental legal and metaphysical determinations about who should be capable of bearing legal rights and duties. It identifies and analyses four influential ways of thinking about law's person, each with its own metaphysical suppositions. One approach derives from rationalist philosophy, a second from religion, a third from evolutionary biology while the fourth is strictly legalistic and so endeavours to eschew metaphysics altogether. The book offers a clear, coherent and critical account of these complex moral and intellectual processes entailed in the making of legal persons.
Author: Timothy Keller Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0525954155 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
Author: Martin Hägglund Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 1101873736 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 466
Book Description
Winner of the René Wellek Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning Herald This Life offers a profoundly inspiring basis for transforming our lives, demonstrating that our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism. Philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that we need to cultivate not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions: what matters is how we treat one another in this life and what we do with our time. Engaging with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund points the way to an emancipated life.
Author: Clifford Williams
Author: Clifford Williams
Author: Julian Young
Author: Thaddeus Metz
Author: Roy F. Baumeister
Author: Tim Crane
Author: Philip Kitcher
Author: T. J. Mawson
Author: Ngaire Naffine
Author: Timothy Keller
Author: Martin Hägglund