Dark Matters (eBook)

Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering

Mara van der Lugt (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
472 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-22615-6 (ISBN)

Infos

An intellectual history of the philosophers who grappled with the problem of evil, and the case for why pessimism still holds moral value for us todayIn the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, philosophers engaged in heated debates on the question of how God could have allowed evil and suffering in a creation that is supposedly good. Dark Matters traces how the competing philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism arose from early modern debates about the problem of evil, and makes a compelling case for the rediscovery of pessimism as a source for compassion, consolation, and perhaps even hope.Bringing to life one of the most vibrant eras in the history of philosophy, Mara van der Lugt discusses legendary figures such as Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Schopenhauer. She also introduces readers to less familiar names, such as Bayle, King, La Mettrie, and Maupertuis. Van der Lugt describes not only how the earliest optimists and pessimists were deeply concerned with finding an answer to the question of the value of existence that does justice to the reality of human suffering, but also how they were fundamentally divided over what such an answer should look like.A breathtaking work of intellectual history by one of today's leading scholars, Dark Matters reveals how the crucial moral aim of pessimism is to find a way of speaking about suffering that offers consolation and does justice to the fragility of life.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.9.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
• Schlagworte: addiction • ad hominem • Anecdote • Anguish • Anti-Imperialism • antinatalism • antipathy • Apathy • A priori and a posteriori • Arthur Schopenhauer • Attributes of God in Christianity • Better Never to Have Been • Beyond Good and Evil • Boredom • Candide • Christian mortalism • civil service • counterintuitive • cowardice • crisis of faith • critique • Dasein • David Benatar • David Hume • Deism • Discourses (Meher Baba) • divine law • Eclecticism • Emanuel Swedenborg • Equal Footing • Essay • Ethics in religion • Evil • Extortion • Family resemblance • Fatalism • fideism • Freud and Philosophy • Gandhism • God • Good and evil • Hard determinism • Hard problem of consciousness • Hedonism • Holism • Incest • Indication (medicine) • Justification (theology) • KANTIANISM • logical consequence • Lutheranism • Make a Difference • Manichaeism • Metempsychosis • Moral evil • Morality • Moral Rationalism • Moral Relativism • natural disaster • natural evil • Nonviolence • nuisance • Omnibenevolence • Oppression • optimism • Overreaction • pessimism • Peter Wessel Zapffe • Philosopher • philosophical methodology • Philosophy • possible world • pride • Principle of charity • Problem of evil • Profession (religious) • psychological pain • Public speaking • Pure practical reason • radical evil • Religion • SCHOLASTICISM • Sedition • Self-Help Book • seriousness • skepticism • Søren Kierkegaard • Stoicism • Suicide • The Constitution of Man • Theodicy • The Philosopher • The Problem of Pain • Thought • Torture • Trolling (fishing) • Unless • untouchability • We Are Doomed • wickedness
• ISBN-10: 0-691-22615-6 / 0691226156
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-22615-6 / 9780691226156