"A topic of universal concern that touches everyone, philosophy of meaning in life has roots in spiritual and religious movements in almost all cultures. Many of the issues dealt with in these movements, such as human vocation, the life worth living, our relation to what is ""greater"" than us, and our encounters with suffering and with death, are also discussed (even if in a different manner) in the philosophy of meaning in life. However, only recently has the topic received elaborate discussion within analytic philosophy, and become a thriving field of research.
This volume presents thirty-two chapters by leading authorities in their respective subfields on a wide array of subjects in meaning in life research. The chapters are organized into six sections. Section I focuses on ways of conceptualizing life's meaning. It discusses, among other issues, whether meaning in life should be understood objectively or subjectively, the relation between meaningfulness and importance, and whether meaningful lives should be understood narratively. Section II, Meaning in Life, Science, and Metaphysics, presents opposing views on whether neuroscience sheds light on life's meaning, inquires whether determinism must render life meaningless, and explores the relation between time, personal identity, and meaning in life. Section III considers life's meaning from both atheist and theist perspectives, and examines the relation between meaningfulness, mysticism and transcendence. Section IV, Ethics and Meaning in Life, examines (among other issues) whether meaningful lives must be moral, how important forgiveness is for meaning, the implications of life's meaningfulness or meaninglessness for procreation ethics, and whether animals can have meaningful lives. Section V compares philosophical and psychological research on life's meaning, explores the experience of meaningfulness, and discusses the relation between meaningfulness and desire, love, and gratitude. Finally, section VI, Living Meaningfully: Challenges and Prospects, elaborates on meaning in life and topics such as suicide, suffering, education, optimism and pessimism. Many of the chapters deal with topics that have never before been discussed in the literature. This handbook presents ground-breaking work within a rapidly developing field and offers the first published scholarly companion to the philosophical study if meaning in life."
Iddo Landau: Introduction I. Understanding Meaning in Life 1. Thaddeus Metz: The Concept of a Meaningful Life 2. Jens Johansson and Frans Svensson: Subjectivism and Objectivism about Meaning in Life 3. Gwen Bradford: Achievement and Meaning in Life 4. Galen Strawson: Narrativity and Meaning in Life 5. Guy Kahane: Meaningfulness and Importance 6. Steve Luper: The Meaning of Life and Death II. Meaning in Life, Science, and Metaphysics 7. Paul Thagard: The Relevance of Neuroscience to Meaning in Life 8. P. M. S. Hacker: Can Neuroscience Shed Light on What Constitutes a Meaningful Life? 9. Marya Schechtman: Personal Identity and Meaning in Life 10. Derk Pereboom: Hard Determinism and Meaning in Life 11. Ned Markosian: Meaning in Life and the Nature of Time III. Meaning in Life and Religion 12. John Cottingham: Transcendence and Meaning in Life 13. Erik J. Wielenberg: Atheism and Meaning in Life 14. T. J. Mawson: Theism and Meaning in Life 15. Guy Bennett-Hunter: Mysticism, Ritual, and the Meaning of Life IV. Ethics and Meaning in Life 16. Todd May: Meaning and Morality 17. Sven Nyholm and Stephen M. Campbell: Meaning and Anti-Meaning in Life 18. Lucy Allais: Forgiveness and Meaning in Life 19. Rivka Weinberg: Between Sisyphus's Rock and a Warm and Fuzzy Place: Procreative Ethics and the Meaning of Life 20. Katie McShane: Nature, Animals, and Meaning in Life V. Philosophical Psychology and Meaning in Life 21. Antti Kauppinen: The Experience of Meaning 22. Nomy Arpaly: Desire and Meaning in Life: Towards a Theory 23. Alan H. Goldman: Love and Meaning in Life 24. Iddo Landau: Meaning in Life and Phoniness 25. Tony Manela: Gratitude and Meaning in life 26. Roy F. Baumeister Psychological Approaches to Life's Meaning VI. Living Meaningfully: Challenges and Prospects 27. David Benatar: Pessimism, Optimism, and Meaning in Life 28. Michael Cholbi: The Rationality of Suicide and the Meaningfulness of Life 29. Michael S. Brady: Suffering and Meaning in Life 30. Saul Smilansky: Paradoxes and Meaning in Life 31. Doret de Ruyter and Anders Schinkel: Education and Meaning in Life 32. John Danaher: Virtual Reality and the Meaning in Life
Iddo Landau is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel. He has published extensively on meaning in life, and is the author of Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (Oxford University Press, 2017).
