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The Human Predicament

A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions

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The Human Predicament

By: David Benatar
Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
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About this listen

Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortality be an improvement? Would it be better to hasten our deaths by suicide? Many people ask these big questions—and some people are plagued by them. Analytic philosophers have said relatively little about these important questions. The Human Predicament invites listeners to take a clear-eyed and unfettered view of the human condition.

David Benatar here offers a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism about the central questions of human existence. He argues that while our lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the insignificant beings that we fear we might be. He maintains that the quality of life leaves much to be desired in even the best cases. Worse, death is generally not a solution; in fact, it exacerbates rather than mitigates our cosmic meaninglessness. While it can release us from suffering, it imposes another cost—annihilation. This state of affairs has nuanced implications for how we should think about many things, including immortality and suicide, and how we should think about the possibility of deeper meaning in our lives. Ultimately, this thoughtful, provocative, and deeply candid treatment of life's big questions will interest anyone who has contemplated why we are here, and what the answer means for how we should live.

©2017 Oxford University Press (P)2023 Tantor
Consciousness & Thought Movements Occult Spirituality
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For enthusiasts.

Excellent guide for understanding soft nihilism and philosophical pessimism. Benatar's text is accessible to anyone irregardless of their previous knowledge on: meaning, death, suicide.

Life is bad, but death is worse - most times...

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