Meaning of Life and Death

Michael Hauskeller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK and the author of of Biotechnology and the Integrity of Life (2007), Better Humans? Understanding the Enhancement Project (2013) Sex and the Posthuman Condition (2014), Handbook of Posthumanism (2015) and Mythologies of Transhumanism (2016).

• PreludeChapter 1: Arthur Schopenhauer and the Worst of All Possible WorldsChapter 2: Søren Kierkegaard and the Despair of Not Being OneselfChapter 3: Herman Melville and the Interlinked Terrors and Wonders of GodChapter 4: Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the Hell of No Longer Being Able to LoveChapter 5: Leo Tolstoy and the Inevitable End of EverythingChapter 6: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Joy of Living DangerouslyChapter 7: William James and the Dramatic Richness of the Concrete World Chapter 8: Marcel Proust and the Only Life That Is Really LivedChapter 9: Ludwig Wittgenstein and our Hopeless Battle against the Boundaries of LanguageChapter 10: Albert Camus and the Benign Indifference of the WorldPostludeSources

Hauskeller’s excellent and original work, often brilliant, certainly among the best new philosophy I’ve read in five years, can be practical for readers ... A brief review cannot do even one of these thinker’s reflections justice. However, both readers who see the question as indeed ultimate and the sceptics of life meaningfulness will find this work so stimulating that one savours every paragraph, by the end wishing for more.