What is the meaning of life? Does anything really matter? In the past few decades these questions, perennially associated with philosophy in the popular consciousness, have rightly retaken their place as central topics in the academy. In this major contribution, Nicholas Waghorn provides a sustained and rigorous elucidation of what it would take for lives to have significance. Bracketing issues about ways our lives could have more or less meaning, the focus is rather on the idea of ultimate meaning, the issue of whether a life can attain meaning that cannot be called into question. Waghorn sheds light on this most fundamental of existential problems through a detailed yet comprehensive examination of the notion of nothing, embracing classic and cutting-edge literature from both the analytic and Continental traditions. Central figures such as Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Nozick and Nagel are drawn upon to anchor the discussion in some of the most influential discussion of recent philosophical history. In the process of relating our ideas concerning nothing to the problem of life's meaning, Waghorn's book touches upon a number of fundamental themes, including reflexivity and its relation to our conceptual limits, whether religion has any role to play in the question of life's meaning, and the nature and constraints of philosophical methodology. A number of major philosophical traditions are addressed, including phenomenology, poststructuralism, and classical and paraconsistent logics. In addition to providing the most thorough current discussion of ultimate meaning, it will serve to introduce readers to philosophical debates concerning the notion of nothing, and the appendix engaging religion will be of value to both philosophers and theologians.

What is the meaning of life? Does anything really matter? In the past few decades these questions, perennially associated with philosophy in the popular consciousness, have rightly retaken their place as central topics in the academy. In this major contribution, Nicholas Waghorn provides a sustained and rigorous elucidation of what it would take for lives to have significance. Bracketing issues about ways our lives could have more or less meaning, the focus is rather on the idea of ultimate meaning, the issue of whether a life can attain meaning that cannot be called into question. Waghorn sheds light on this most fundamental of existential problems through a detailed yet comprehensive examination of the notion of nothing, embracing classic and cutting-edge literature from both the analytic and Continental traditions. Central figures such as Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Nozick and Nagel are drawn upon to anchor the discussion in some of the most influential discussion of recent philosophical history. In the process of relating our ideas concerning nothing to the problem of life's meaning, Waghorn's book touches upon a number of fundamental themes, including reflexivity and its relation to our conceptual limits, whether religion has any role to play in the question of life's meaning, and the nature and constraints of philosophical methodology. A number of major philosophical traditions are addressed, including phenomenology, poststructuralism, and classical and paraconsistent logics. In addition to providing the most thorough current discussion of ultimate meaning, it will serve to introduce readers to philosophical debates concerning the notion of nothing, and the appendix engaging religion will be of value to both philosophers and theologians.

This thesis explores what I term the question of life's ultimate meaning. I distinguish this from some other investigations into the meaning of life on the basis that I am not primarily interested in ways of making life more meaningful. I address these issues of partial meaning implicitly, but my central focus is on whether it is possible to conceive or achieve an existence the meaningfulness of which cannot be improved upon. This endeavour can be rephrased to parallel epistemological discussions of our desire to eliminate doubt in order to arrive at knowledge claims that are certain. For, just as we have a tendency to ask how a claim drafted in to provide epistemological justification for a prior claim is itself justified, we have a tendency to ask by what further criteria a goal or purpose that is meant to bestow meaning is itself meaningful. It is my hypothesis that this capacity to re-iterate a request for justification for each new candidate that presents itself calls for a candidate to be presented which disrupts our ability to carry out such re-iteration. My route into this search for such a candidate is by examination of the notion of 'nothing'. I centre this examination around the work of Martin Heidegger, whose dealings with the subject form a nexus for differing understandings of 'nothing' in many important strands of philosophical thought. Hence, I discuss analytic interpretations of 'nothing' deriving from Rudolf Carnap's criticism of Heidegger, post-structuralist reactions as found in Jacques Derrida's work, and consider some provocative remarks that Wittgenstein makes on 'nothing' as Heidegger presents it. The radicality of the search for an understanding of 'nothing' also requires attention to the methodology of such an endeavour, and indeed to whether philosophy can adequately proceed without acknowledging the possibility of its other, faith.

Is there a way to understand--and, more important, to make use of--the experiences and emotions that we usually think of as being entirely negative? How are we to make sense of life's apparent "non-sense": the loneliness, depression, anxiety, frustration, anger, apathy, and anguish that we are certain to encounter in the course of living? William F. Kraft, a practicing psychotherapist, maintains that we can use all of these experiences in the service of life and fulfillment--once we understand that they are part of the process of growth. It is only when people admit to pain and loneliness, he says, that they can begin to lead meaningful lives. The feelings of nothingness are essential for authentic living--inescapable and even necessary. Dr. Kraft discusses the experience of nothingness--as a fundamental life force and as creative suffering. Then he analyzes the language of nothingness: all the sad words for the bad emotions we meet. He explores the dynamics and meaning of "healthy" and "unhealthy," as applied to our feelings. Proposing that man discovers himself in his sense of nothingness at various stages of his life, Dr. Kraft explores the first emergence into a consciousness of nothingness, in adolescence, as a sense of boredom and cynicism. Next, he deals with the depression, loneliness, and frustration of early adulthood. In full adulthood, maintains the author, the sense of nothingness is banished by commitment and a search for authentic living. Then in middle and old age, he suggests, a positive approach must be forged for experiences of depression, guilt, anguish, and death. In his final chapters Dr. Kraft offers a new psychological approach to death and dying, which are the clearest articulations we know of nothingness. For everyone who thinks that alienation is a symptom of illness, an experience to avoid, or a sign of personal failure, this book is happy--and mandatory--reading.--Adapted from dust jacket.

The Existentialist's Guide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness is an entertaining philosophical guide to life, love, hate, freedom, sex, anxiety, God and death; a guide to everything and nothing. Gary Cox, bestselling author of How to Be an Existentialist and How to Be a Philosopher, takes us on an exciting journey through the central themes of existentialism, a philosophy of the human condition. The Existentialist's Guide fascinates, informs, provokes and inspires as it explores existentialism's uncompromising view of human reality. It leaves the reader with no illusions about how hard it is to live honestly and achieve authenticity. It has, however, a redeeming humour that sets the wisdom of the great existentialist philosophers alongside the wit of great musicians and comedians. A realistic self-help book for anyone interested in personal empowerment, The Existentialist's Guide offers a wealth of profound philosophical insight into life, the universe and everything.

When did you last allow yourself to waste time, to enjoy the pleasure of having a lie-in, to daydream, lose yourself in your favourite music, or simply to be idle? Most of us live at break-neck speed, cramming work, family, friends and endless tasks into every relentless day. We barely give ourselves enough time to sleep, let alone to stop and take stock. In this generous, life-affirming book Stephen Cottrell shows what we are missing when we listen to that inner voice that keeps driving us on. With humour and down-to-earth wisdom, he encourages us instead to hang out with our inner slob and rediscover not just the pleasures but the real benefits, the unexpected gifts and the deep truths to be found in simply messing about.

First published in French in 1943, Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’Être et le Néant is one of the greatest philosophical works of the twentieth century. In it, Sartre offers nothing less than a brilliant and radical account of the human condition. The English philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch wrote to a friend of "the excitement – I remember nothing like it since the days of discovering Keats and Shelley and Coleridge". This new translation, the first for over sixty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. What gives our lives significance, Sartre argues in Being and Nothingness, is not pre-established for us by God or nature but is something for which we ourselves are responsible. At the heart of this view are Sartre’s radical conceptions of consciousness and freedom. Far from being an internal, passive container for our thoughts and experiences, human consciousness is constantly projecting itself into the outside world and imbuing it with meaning. Combining this with the unsettling view that human existence is characterized by radical freedom and the inescapability of choice, Sartre introduces us to a cast of ideas and characters that are part of philosophical legend: anguish; the "bad faith" of the memorable waiter in the café; sexual desire; and the "look" of the Other, brought to life by Sartre’s famous description of someone looking through a keyhole. Above all, by arguing that we alone create our values and that human relationships are characterized by hopeless conflict, Sartre paints a stark and controversial picture of our moral universe and one that resonates strongly today. This new translation includes a helpful Translator’s Introduction, a comprehensive Index and a Foreword by Richard Moran, Brian D. Young Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University, USA. Translated by Sarah Richmond, University College London, UK.

The six lectures that make up this book were delivered in March 2011 at London University’s School of Oriental and Asian Studies as the Jordan Lectures on Comparative Religion. They revolve around the intersection of two ideas, nothingness and desire, as they apply to a re-examination of the questions of self, God, morality, property, and the East-West philosophical divide. Rather than attempt to harmonize East and West philosophies into a single chorus, Heisig undertakes what he calls a “philosophical antiphony.” Through the simple call-and-response of a few representative voices, Heisig tries to join the choir on both sides of the antiphony to relate the questions at hand to larger problems that press on the human community. He argues that as problems like the technological devastation of the natural world, the shrinking of elected governance through the expanding powers of financial institutions, and the expropriation of alternate cultures of health and education spread freely through traditional civilizations across the world, religious and philosophical responses can no longer afford to remain territorial in outlook. Although the lectures often stress the importance of practice, their principal preoccupation is with seeing the things of life more clearly. Heisig explains: “By that I mean not just looking more closely at objects that come into my line of view from day to day, but seeing them as mirrors in which I can see myself reflected. Things do not just reveal parts of the world to me; they also tell me something of how I see what I see, and who it is that does the seeing. To listen to what things have to say to me, I need to break with the habit of thinking simply that it is I who mirror inside of myself the world outside and process what I have captured to make my way through life. Only when this habit has been broken will I be able to start seeing through the reflections, to scrape the tain off the mirror, as it were, so that it becomes a window to the things of life as they are, with only a pale reflection of myself left on the pane. Everything seen through the looking glass, myself included, becomes an image on which reality has stamped itself. This, I am persuaded, is the closest we can come to a ground for thinking reasonably and acting as true-to-life as we can.”