Some philosophers have thought that life could only be meaningful if there is no God. For Sartre and Nagel, for example, a God of the traditional classical theistic sort would constrain our powers of self-creative autonomy in ways that would severely detract from the meaning of our lives, possibly even evacuate our lives of all meaning. Some philosophers, by contrast, have thought that life could only be meaningful if there is a God. God and the Meanings of Life is interested in exploring the truth in both these schools of thought, seeking to discover what God could and couldn’t do to make life meaningful (as well as what he would and wouldn’t do). Mawson espouses a version of the ‘amalgam’ or ‘pluralism’ thesis about the issue of life’s meaning – in essence, that there are a number of different legitimate meanings of ‘meaning’ (and indeed ‘life’) in the question of life’s meaning. According to Mawson, God, were he to exist, would help make life meaningful in some of these senses and hinder in some others. He argues that whilst there could be meaning in a Godless universe, there could be other sorts of meaning in a Godly one and that these would be deeper.
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Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Notes Bibliography Further Reading Index
The book is very well and very closely argued, with an admirable use of modern philosophical resources, and it is written with humour and acuteness. Anyone who thinks about the meaning of life would have their thinking clarified and enriched by this excellent book.
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A highly original contribution to one of the key questions in philosophy of religion – is there any meaning in life? - by an internally renowned Oxford scholar.
While philosophers have traditionally fought for one corner in the 'God debate', this book is highly distinctive in proposing an 'amalgam' model for approaching questions of God and the meaning of life
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781474212540
Publisert
2016-10-20
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Academic
Vekt
423 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
UU, UP, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
240

Forfatter

Biographical note

T. J. Mawson is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Peter's College, Oxford University. He is the author of Belief in God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (2005).