Monthly Archives: December 2015

Christopher Belshaw’s, 10 Good Questions about Life and Death

Le Penseur in the Musée Rodin in Paris

Christopher Belshaw is a Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the Open University. He received his PhD from the University of California-Santa Barbara. In his 2005 book, 10 Good Questions About Life And Death, he devotes a chapter to the question “Is It All Meaningless?” Continue reading Christopher Belshaw’s, 10 Good Questions about Life and Death

Summary of Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning

Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D. (1905 – 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, a form of Existential Analysis, and best-selling author of Man’s Search for Meaning, which belongs on any list of the most influential books in the last half-century—it has sold over 12 million copies!
According to a survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club, it is one of “the ten most influential books in America.” Continue reading Summary of Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning

Summary of Owen Flanagan’s “What Makes Life Worth Living?”

Owen Flanagan

Owen Flanagan (1949 – ) is the James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. He has done work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, ethics, moral psychology, as well as Buddhist and Hindu conceptions of the self.

In his essay, “What Makes Life Worth Living?” Flanagan does not assume “that life is or can be worth living.”[i] Continue reading Summary of Owen Flanagan’s “What Makes Life Worth Living?”

James Rachels on the Meaning of Life

Le Penseur in the Musée Rodin in Paris

James Rachels (1941- 2003) was a distinguished American moral philosopher and best-selling textbook author. He taught at the University of Richmond, New York University, the University of Miami, Duke University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he spent the last twenty-six years of his career.

The final chapter of his book, Problems from Philosophy, explores the question of the meaning of life. (It was written as Rachels was dying of cancer.) Continue reading James Rachels on the Meaning of Life