Abstract

This book is at once incisive and exploratory, interpretive and historic scholarship. It appeals to both general and specialized readers. It uniquely takes a common philosophical theme, the meaning of life, and traces it through many philosophers’ and novelists' works. Sometimes the theme is buried and implicit, and offers a plausible distillation of each author's view. The result is a title that may sound like a self-help book’s—except the contents expand in manifold directions rather than narrow to easy advice. The reader, not spoon fed, is provided only one advice: Read these, and decide for onerself, especially if none of them answers sufficiently for each reader. Philosophers represnted include Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard. Nietzche, James, Wittgenstein, Novelists include Melville, Tolstoy, Proust, and Camus.