The human predicament: a candid guide to life's biggest questions
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY, United States of America
Oxford University Press
[2017]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Inhaltsverzeichnis Klappentext |
| Physical Description: | xix, 264 Seiten |
| ISBN: | 9780190633813 |
Staff View
MARC
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Record in the Search Index
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| adam_text | CONTENTS
Preface xi
A Readers Guide xv
1. Introduction 1
Lifes big questions 1
Pessimism and optimism 4
The human predicament and the animal predicament 8
To tell or not to tell? 9
2. Meaning 13
Introduction 13
Understanding the question 16
The (somewhat) good news 27
Meaning sub specie hominis 27
Meaning sub specie communitatis 28
Meaning sub specie humanitatis 30
Conclusion 33
3. Meaninglessness 35
The bad news 35
The theistic gambit 36
Natures “purposes” 45
Scarce value 47
Discounting the cosmic perspective 51
vili Contents
Focusing on terrestrial meaning 56
Sour grapes and varieties of meaning worth wanting 58
Conclusion 62
4. Quality 64
The meaning and the quality of life 64
Why people s judgments about the quality of their lives are
unreliable 67
The poor quality of human life 71
Why there is more bad than good 76
Secular optimistic theodicies 83
Conclusion 91
5. Death 92
Introduction 92
Is death bad? 96
Hedonism (and its discontents) 98
The deprivation account 101
Annihilation 102
When is death bad for the person who dies? 110
The symmetry argument 118
Taking Epicureans seriously? 123
How bad are different deaths? 128
Living in the shadow of death 135
6. Immortality 142
Delusions and fantasies of immortality 142
Sour grapes 149
Conclusion 160
Contents
7. Suicide 163
Introduction 163
Responding to common arguments against suicide 169
Suicide as murder 169
Suicide as irrational 173
Suicide as unnatural 174
Suicide as cowardice 176
Interests of others 177
The finality of death 179
Broadening the case for suicide 182
A more accurate assessment of life s quality 183
Does meaninglessness in life warrant suicide? 190
Restoring an individual s control 194
Conclusion 198
8, Conclusion 200
The human predicament in a nutshell 200
Pessimism and optimism (again) 204
Responding to the human predicament 207
notes 215
bibliography 247
INDEX 257
Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our
inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortality
be an improvement? Would it be better, all things
considered, to hasten our deaths by suicide? Pvlany
people ask these big questions —and some people
are plagued by them. Surprisingly, analytic philoso-
phers have said relatively little about rhese impor-
tant questions about the meaning of life. When they
have tackled the big questions, they have tended,
1 ike popular writers, to o ffer comforting, optimistic
answers. ^Tbe Human Pr^edicament invites readers to
take a clear-eyed and unfettered view of the human
condition.
ID avid Benatar here offers a substantial, but not
unmitigated, pessimism about the central ques-
tions of human existence. He argues that whi le our
lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the
insignificant beings that we fear we might be. He
maintains that the quality of 1 i fe, al though less bad
for some than for others, leaves much to be desired
in even the best cases. Worse, death is generally not a
solution; in fact, it exacerbates rather than mitiu;ates
our cosmic meaninglessness. While it can release us
from suffering, it imposes another cost—annihila-
tion. This state of affairs has nuanced implications
for how we shouId think about many things, includ-
ing immortality and suicide, and how we should
think about the possibility of deeper meaning in
our lives. Ultimately, this thoughtful, provocative,
and deeply candid treatment of life’s big questions
will interest anyone who has contemplated why we
are here, and what the answer means for how we
should live.
David Benatar is i roft*ssor of
l*}!՞! losophy at University O € CJ «ipe
I w n , Sout ii Africa. lie is the author
of Setter՜ iSTeue?՜ to lJa*rje Seen: ~T fae
I la m? of (doming Into Existence (3006),
and The Second Sexism: discrimination
Si gain st A/lcn ami Soys (20 t 2. ).
|
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| spelling | Benatar, David 1966- Verfasser (DE-588)1037383451 aut The human predicament a candid guide to life's biggest questions David Benatar New York, NY, United States of America Oxford University Press [2017] © 2017 xix, 264 Seiten txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Life Meaning (Philosophy) Sinn (DE-588)4133154-0 gnd rswk-swf Sinn (DE-588)4133154-0 s DE-604 Digitalisierung UB Regensburg - ADAM Catalogue Enrichment application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=029755671&sequence=000001&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Inhaltsverzeichnis Digitalisierung UB Regensburg - ADAM Catalogue Enrichment application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=029755671&sequence=000002&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Klappentext |
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| title | The human predicament a candid guide to life's biggest questions |
| title_auth | The human predicament a candid guide to life's biggest questions |
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| title_full | The human predicament a candid guide to life's biggest questions David Benatar |
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| title_short | The human predicament |
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