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.
Table of Contents
Chapter One:The Question
The Questions that Won't Go Away
Science and Meaning
Something rather than Nothing
A Religious Question?
Meaning After God
Man, the Measure of All Things?
Variety, Meaning and Evaluation
What Meaningfulness Implies
Meaning and Morality
Humanity and Openness
Chapter Two:The Barrier to Meaning
The Void
The Challenge of Modernity
The Shadow of Darwin
Science, Religion and Meaning
Evolution and 'Blind' Forces
The 'Nastiness' of The Evolutionary Mechanism
Matter and Surplus Suffering
The Character of the Cosmos
Chapter Three:Meaning, Vulnerability and Hope
Morality and Achievement
Futility and Fragility
Religion and the Buoyancy of the Good
Vulnerability and Finitude
Spirituality and Inner Change
Doctrine and Praxis
From Praxis to Faith
Coda:Intimations of Meaning
