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.
Often linked to the religious issue of whether we are part of a larger,
divine scheme, even 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 asks why the question
vexes us so much and assesses some of the most influential attempts to
explain it.

John Cottingham examines the view, widely held within science, especially
since Darwin, that the cosmos is devoid of value and meaning. 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 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 on the history of philosophy, he also ponders the costs of insisting
that any path to meaning must be a narrowly rational one, and he argues that
our human need for meaning may properly be approached by drawing on shared
traditions of practice, such as social ceremonies and rites of passage, whose
value cannot be analyzed in purely intellectual terms.

Download File Size:1.28 MB

---