The Meaning of Life and Death: Ten Classic Thinkers on the Ultimate Question

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What is the point of living? If we are all going to die anyway, if nothing will remain of whatever we achieve in this life, why should we bother trying to achieve anything in the first place? Can we be mortal and still live a meaningful life? Questions such as these have been asked for a long time, but nobody has found a conclusive answer yet. The connection between death and meaning, however, has taken centre stage in the philosophical and literary work of some of the world's greatest writers: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Soren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, Herman Melville, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marcel Proust, and Albert Camus. This book explores their ideas, weaving a rich tapestry of concepts, voices and images, helping the reader to understand the concerns at the heart of those writers' work and uncovering common themes and stark contrasts in their understanding of what kind of world we live in and what really matters in life. Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Prelude 1 The worst of all possible worlds: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) 2 The despair of not being oneself: Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) 3 The interlinked terrors and wonders of God: Herman Melville (1819–1891) 4 The hell of no longer being able to love: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) 5 The inevitable end of everything: Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) 6 The joy of living dangerously: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) 7 The dramatic richness of the concrete world: William James (1842–1910) 8 The only life that is really lived: Marcel Proust (1871–1922) 9 Our hopeless battle against the boundaries of language: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) 10 The benign indifference of the world: Albert Camus (1913–1960) Postlude Notes Sources