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What's it All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life |  |
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What's it All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life | |
Baggini, founding editor of the Philosopher’s Magazine, makes the rationalist-humanist assumption that reason and evidence are to be employed in the attempt to understand why we are here. He then proceeds to argue that inquiry into human origins and future human prospects does not reveal a purpose for human existence. Most confrontational to readers may be his skepticism about a God giving purpose to life. Is it plausible, he asks, to suppose that we are here to "be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground" (Genesis 1:28)? Why do we need to do this? And why would an all-powerful God create us to have us serve or worship him? Doesn’t that suggest that God is an egotistical tyrant?
The conclusion that life lacks a "higher" purpose is often accompanied by great angst. Without such an overarching direction, life seems worthless. Baggini, however, challenges this view and provides some rough guidelines about what in fact makes life valuable to people. Helping others can give life meaning, insofar as it makes for an uplifted quality of life. Happiness, construed as something other than mere immediate sensual pleasure, is also a good thing. Success in parenting, in one’s profession and in leading a morally decent existence can give life direction, too.
There is much to recommend Baggini’s book. It is clearly written and reasoned, setting out the sober view that life can be meaningful even if purposeless. The principal shortcomings are those imposed by the genre of popular philosophy—the reader is likely to fi nd that his or her particular views are not given the full attention they deserve. Nor are the author’s positive views worked out in much detail. What this means, of course, is that What’s It All About? is only a starting point for reflection.
Ken Aizawa --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
This short book recommends itself to readers of The Good Book Guide, for they are obviously discerning seekers of knowledge (and that makes them philosophers). Plato somewhere compares philosophy to a raft on which a shipwrecked sailor may reach home; Julian Baggini here shows us the way. This is a fascinating, lucid conversation - definitely not a textbook - and as such brings opinions into play. For instance, Baggini does not accept the reassuring world-view of Plato, the foundation of traditional philosophers, but suggests a less certain answer to what the world is - which gives the reader scope to consider an individual standpoint. We all want to know what we are made of in this turbulent world, in which we strive to know and to be happy. Here are fluent discussions of the distinction reason gives humankind - it makes us different from all else in the world. Is it reason which enables us to choose good rather than evil, or is that choice guided by feelings? Just as we have a natural impulse to know, so we seem impelled to be happy; can happiness be permanent success or is it merely evanescent, just brief interruptions in lives of stress and strain? The great advantage of this imaginative approach to the most important things we can know and must do is that it awakens our own reasoning - we are guided to thinking about how we will answer the most fundamental questions, rather than being spoon-fed doctrines. There's also a very helpful guide to further reading at the end of this stimulating companion... (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Useful and provocative."--Wall Street Journal
"Looking for a clear guide to what contemporary philosophy has to say about the meaning of life? Baggini takes us through all the plausible answers, weaving together Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, Monty Python, and Funkadelic in an entertaining but always carefully reasoned discussion."--Peter Singer, author of How Are We To Live
"A work of popular philosophy that is simple, serious and devoid of ostentation. The question of the meaning of life has long been a byword for pretentious rambling. It takes some nerve to tackle it in a brisk and no-nonsense fashion." --New Statesman
"Informative, thought-provoking, and entertaining in the process.The book takes a refreshingly personal approach and offers an encounter with a vigorous mind at work, puzzling through the issues in a trenchantly argued but subtly reasoned way."--New Humanist
"It's egalitarianism of style and content is admirable. There is nothing here to put off someone who has never read a book of philosophy, yet the book is doing philosophy, not just talking about it."--Scotland on Sunday
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
