The Birth And Death Of Meaning

Download or read book Birth and Death of Meaning written by Ernest Becker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology and psychiatry to explain what makes people act the way they do.

Download or read book Living Your Dying written by Stanley Keleman and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is about dying, not about death. We are always dying a big, always giving things up, always having things taken away. Is there a person alive who isn't really curious about what dying is for them? Is there a person alive who wouldn't like to go to their dying full of excitement, without fear and without morbidity? This books tells you how." -- Front cover.

Download or read book The Birth and Death of Meaning written by Ernest Becker and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Life, Death, and Meaning written by David Benatar and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-03-28 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar’s distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses. While many philosophers in the "continental tradition"—those known as "existentialists"—have engaged these issues at length and often with great popular appeal, English-speaking philosophers have had relatively little to say on these important questions. Yet, the methodology they bring to philosophical questions can, and occasionally has, been applied usefully to "existential" questions. This volume draws together a representative sample of primarily English-speaking philosophers' reflections on life's big questions, divided into six sections, covering (1) the meaning of life, (2) creating people, (3) death, (4) suicide, (5) immortality, and (6) optimism and pessimism. These key readings are supplemented with helpful introductions, study questions, and suggestions for further reading, making the material accessible and interesting for students. In short, the book provides a singular introduction to the way that philosophy has dealt with the big questions of life that we are all tempted to ask.

Download or read book The Death of God and the Meaning of Life written by Julian Young and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Ernest Becker Reader written by Daniel Liechty and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernest Becker (1924-1974) was an astute observer of society and human behavior during America’s turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Trained in social anthropology and driven by a transcending curiosity about human motivations, Becker doggedly pursued his basic research question, "What makes people act the way they do?" Dissatisfied with what he saw as narrowly fragmented methods in the contemporary social sciences and impelled by a belief that humankind more than ever needed a disciplined, rational, and empirically based understanding of itself, Becker slowly created a powerful interdisciplinary vision of the human sciences, one in which each discipline is rooted in a basic truth concerning the human condition. That truth became an integral part of Becker's emerging social science. Almost inadvertently, he outlined a perspective on human motivations that is perhaps the most broadly interdisciplinary to date. His perspective traverses not only the biological, psychological, and social sciences but also the humanities and educational, political, and religious studies. Ernest Becker is best known for the books written in the last few years before his death from cancer, including the highly praised Pulitzer Prize-winning volume The Denial of Death (1974) and Escape from Evil (1975). These late works, however, were built on a distinguished body of earlier books, essays, and reviews. The power and strength of Becker’s ideas are fully present in his early works, which underlie his later contributions and give direction for interpreting the development of his ideas. Although Ernest Becker's life and career were cut short, his major writings have remained continually in print and have captured the interest of subsequent generations of readers. The Ernest Becker Reader makes available for the first time in one volume much of Becker’s early work and thus places his later work in proper context. It is a major contribution to the ongoing interest in Becker's ideas.

Download or read book Darwinian Psychiatry written by Michael McGuire and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-04-16 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, psychiatry has operated without a unified theory of behavior; instead, it has spawned a pluralism of approaches--including biomedical, psychoanalytic, behavioral, and sociocultural models--each with radically different explanations for various clinical disorders. In Darwinian Psychiatry, Michael T. McGuire and Alfonso Troisi provide a conceptual framework for integrating many features of prevailing models. Based on Darwinian theory rather than traditional approaches, the book offers clinicians a fundamentally new perspective for looking at the etiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Writing from this innovative theoretical position, the authors discuss the origin of pathological conditions, the adaptation of symptoms and syndromes, the biological basis of social relations, and many other key concepts. This groundbreaking book will introduce those who study and are involved in the alleviation of mental suffering to an approach that will lead to radical changes in clinical practice. The authors suggest that when making diagnostic assessments, psychiatrists should evaluate not only the patients' symptoms but also their functional capacities, and that therapeutic interventions should work toward the achievement of biological goals. Providing an essential framework for understanding both everyday human behavior and a range of mental disorders, Darwinian Psychiatry will appeal to all mental health professionals and general readers interested in human psychology and behavior.