My recent post, Why Does the World Exist?, elicited some extraordinarily thoughtful comments from readers. Kevin wrote Continue reading The Past, Present, and Future of The Meaning of Life
Monthly Archives: August 2022
Derek Parfit on Why The World Exists
Derek Parfit 1942-2017
A reader asked me to clarify Derek Parfit’s distinction—made in my last post—between a local and a cosmic possibility. Here are Parfit’s exact words on the distinction: Continue reading Derek Parfit on Why The World Exists
Why Does the World Exist?
Jim Holt’s book, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story, tackles the question that Martin Heidegger characterized as the greatest in all philosophy and William James called the darkest in all philosophy—why is there something rather than nothing? Continue reading Why Does the World Exist?
Summary of the Harvard Grant Study
A Harvard study followed 268 undergraduates from the classes of 1938-1940 for 75 years, regularly collecting data on various aspects of their lives. The findings were reported in a recent book by the Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant: Continue reading Summary of the Harvard Grant Study
Gibran – “Life is an island …”
When I was about 18 years old I read the following words by the Lebanese artist, poet, and author Kahlil Gibran in a short collection of his writing entitled The Voice of the Master.
Life is an island in an ocean of loneliness, an island whose rocks are hopes, whose trees are dreams, whose flowers are solitude, and whose brooks are thirst. Continue reading Gibran – “Life is an island …”