About this title: We have all wondered about the meaning of life. But is there an answer? And do we even really know what we're asking? Terry Eagleton takes a stimulating and quirky look at this most compelling of questions: at the answers explored in philosophy and literature; at the crisis of meaning in modern times; and suggests his own solution to how we might ...
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Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. This book is in fine condition. The binding is tight and pages are clean. It appears to have not had use. The dust jacket is in fine condition with minor bumps and scuffs. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
Date Published: 2007-03-29
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780199210701. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: BRAND NEW HARDBACK. 216x138 mm. (200) we have all wondered about the meaning of life. but is there an answer? and do we even really know what we're asking? terry eagleton takes a stimulating and quirky look at this most compelling of questions: at the answers explored in philosophy and literature; at the crisis of meaning in modern times; and suggests his own solution to how we might rediscover meaning in our lives. (Hardback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: Good in Good jacket. 12mo. Hardcover. Sound, clean & nice copy, light edgewear, writing at first inside page. Jacket is bright & clean, light to moderate rubbing/edgewear. Not price clipped. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand, Cary, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: As New/Very Good. 5" x 7" Tall 0199210705 187 pages. A small volume dedicated to the whopper of all questions, "What is the meaning of life? " In his quest for the answer, Eagleton examines the proposed solutions of other philosophers, writers and anyone else who has dared to ponder the age-old puzzle. This book may not provide you with a crystal-clear answer to your life, universe and everything, but it will provide you much food for thought. read more
Description: Very Good or better. Remainder, may have marks on edge, otherwise like new-Because of our high volume, we can not accurately describe each book, so we list the MINIMUM condition you can expect; most are better than the condition listed. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr, Cary, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. Philosophy. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at the question and offers his own surprising answer. Clean text, sound binding. Nice hardcover, Dj. 187 pages. Contact Steels for more Philosophy titles. Bookseller since 1973. read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: New. A spirited and stimulating book by the university professor Terry Eagleton, which dares to ask and answer the ultimate question. Eagleton shows how centuries of thinkers and writers-including Marx, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare, Satre and Beckett-have... read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PR
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: New. The phrase "the meaning of life" for many seems a quaint notion fit for satirical mauling by Monty Python or Douglas Adams. But in this spirited, stimulating, and quirky enquiry, famed critic Terry Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at th... read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780199210701ISBN:0199210705
Description: Bargain Price New Book. SubTitle/Content: "With sparkling effrontery, panache & deft footwork, Eagleton moves from ironic flippancy & caustic demolition to resolute affirmation" [i.e. after surveying the past problems with the question, he answers it! ] 2007. 187pp. read more
"TOTALLY enjoyed this well written book. highly recommended but only for those who want to sort out the reality of this serious question that continues to haunt human imagination."
"Terry Eagleton , a long time literary critic of Marxist training (Marxist Literary Criticsm, Literary Theory, Illusions of Post Moderism) and Catholic church moral rigor and one of the best explicators of the dually condensed and convoluted intersections of literature, philosophy and political action, has give us all a small, witty, tersely choice gift with his new book, more correctly an essay, called The Meaning of Life. Eagleton's intent, despite what one might assume, isn't to cast a disparaging glare at what has to be simultaneously the most over- asked and least answerable question issued forth, continually, but the swelling ranks of the Middle Brow readership.
Eagleton is one of the few truly fine stylists in Leftist literary criticism, an intellectual who is able to translate the most involuted and deferring theoretical quagmires in elegant, comprehensible English, and who is likewise able, and blessedly inclined to make the murky suppositions of other academics sweat by insisting that notions of reading deal , finally, with a book's perceptible idea, and that analysis of the workings have something to do with a reader's experience of the text they've finished and seek to fruitfully ponder. He steers clear of the stalling abstractions of Frederick Jameson, and more clearly addresses the same idea advanced by the increasingly oracular Harold Bloom--the investigation into how Literature helps us think about ourselves and our deeds in the world.
The author does not sneer, deride, nor deride the question, although more than a little of his prickly wit bubbles up from under the surface of his elegantly poised writing. It's a question he takes seriously--it must be important,since queries into grander, greater (or lesser) significance in our existence have been debated for as long as humans could write and record their knowledge and history-- but he is one who is rather tired of the various sophistries that have absorbed the question and tried to force it into submission. He is short fused with the New Agers, who's dreamy capitulation of personal responsibility to whispering drives are useless to most of us who find ourselves denied celestial epiphanies in ruthless material plain, and Eagleton is equally contemptuous of post-modernist theorizers who would argue, abstrusely, thickly, blockheadly, that the Meaning of Life is a merely a social construction and that one is finely better off, by implication, attempting nothing to change one's state and purpose and instead enjoy the spectacle of observing the culture collapse upon itself. An attractive aspect of Eagleton's progressive dissections of concepts and the language that gives them form is a tangible humanity; he refuses to slide into pessimism with the false assurance that the population is too stupid or deluded to do better by themselves and their fellows, or that the quest for meaning of our deeds is delusional. There is a series of skewerings , interrogations and elucidations of the basic elements of the need to define the life worth living-- the rise of the need for metaphysical certainty as expressed in religion, philosophy and political thought, and the latter day "eclipse of meaning" as modernism and postmodernism seem to fragment phenomena into a incoherent multi-verse that could be be authoritatively unified under banner of general noble purpose.
The thrust of the book, we find, is that seeking the answer to what The Meaning of Life is is less an attempt to find that patch of wise and fertile soil on which one may advance their lives with a given purpose, but that that it is a way of life. Far from being static, the genuine quest for coherence, meaning, a means by which to measure one's best intentions and making them effectively congruent with their actions, is in itself the purpose of being alive and productive, above and beyond the biological imperative.
The species is quite capable of much nastiness and unmistakable evil, but we are likewise capable of great works of art , compassion, charity. That capacity, after the pseudo systems of philosophical side streets have been blocked off, the sweetness of new age thought turns into a fouling stench, and the apocalyptic ravings of religious extremes reveal themselves as useless to the question to what one does in this life that's useful, Eagleton considers the open mind interested in the ongoing need for the good to be the thing which we must prize over all."
"It is difficult to judge a book with a title such as this one fairly. While I'm sure no one would expect Eagleton to actually tell them what the meaning of life is, the desire to be shown some new angle on the issue is on one's mind nevertheless. I expected Eagleton to go over the usual issues of what it means to ask or say something like "the meaning of life", and he did, but the limited conclusions one may put forward on this topic inevitably lead to disappointment, perhaps through no fault of the author himself. However, it must be said that Eagleton does a decent job of it, does so with a sense of humor, and with much more of the latter than one would expect. So in trying to be as fair to him as I can here, but feeling that he could have delved a little deeper, I will have to say that it was a good but not a very good book-good enough for an enjoyable summer read."
"I love these serious, intellectual, attempts to look at all the big questions, in this case "the meaning of life". Anyone who wants a good view of the possibilities, and a bit of the history of philosophy will enjoy this book."
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