The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide To Life's Biggest Questions
by David Benatar /
2017 / English / EPUB
673.8 KB Download
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? Many people
ask these big questions -- and some people are plagued by them.
Surprisingly, analytic philosophers have said relatively little
about these important questions about the meaning of life. When
they have tackled the big questions, they have tended, like popular
writers, to offer comforting, optimistic answers. The Human
Predicament invites readers to take a clear-eyed and unfettered
view of the human condition.
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? Many people
ask these big questions -- and some people are plagued by them.
Surprisingly, analytic philosophers have said relatively little
about these important questions about the meaning of life. When
they have tackled the big questions, they have tended, like popular
writers, to offer comforting, optimistic answers. The Human
Predicament invites readers to take a clear-eyed and unfettered
view of the human condition.
David Benatar here offers a substantial, but not unmitigated,
pessimism about the central questions of human existence. He argues
that while our lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the
insignificant beings that we fear we might be. He maintains that
the quality of life, although 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
mitigates our cosmic meaninglessness. While it can release us from
suffering, it imposes another cost - annihilation. This state of
affairs has nuanced implications for how we should think about many
things, including 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 here offers a substantial, but not unmitigated,
pessimism about the central questions of human existence. He argues
that while our lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the
insignificant beings that we fear we might be. He maintains that
the quality of life, although 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
mitigates our cosmic meaninglessness. While it can release us from
suffering, it imposes another cost - annihilation. This state of
affairs has nuanced implications for how we should think about many
things, including 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.