What is the meaning of life? In today''s secular, post-religious scientific world, this question has become a serious preoccupation. But it also has a long history: many major philosophers have thought deeply about it, as Julian Young so vividly illustrates in this thought-provoking second edition of The Death of God and the Meaning of Life.
Three new chapters explore S-ren Kierkegaard-s attempts to preserve a Christian answer to the question of the meaning of life, Karl Marx''s attempt to translate this answer into naturalistic and atheistic terms, and Sigmund Freud-s deep pessimism about the possibility of any version of such an answer. Part 1 presents an historical overview of philosophers from Plato to Marx who have believed in a meaning of life, either in some supposed -other- world or in the future of this world. Part 2 assesses what happened when the traditional structures that give life meaning began to erode. With nothing to take their place, these struc
