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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
Who would have thought you could clear this up in 100 pages? And some of the pages are illustrations. Pithy, clear, funny, wide-ranging--from Aristotle to the Buena Vista Social Club. What is the meaning of "life?" What is the meaning of "meaning?" What is the meaning of "what?" A five-star life changer b/c there's a lifetime of thought in the nuances and ramifications of what Eagleton has to say. And a number of beautiful and profound paragraphs. And he's very nearly persuaded me to read Wittgenstein. The answer, btw, is perfect and will make you smile.
El libro tiene ideas interesantes, pero no va mucho más allá. Lo que si hay que reconocer es que el autor tiene un sentido de la vida muy Monty Python, y utiliza los ejemplos más absurdos que haya visto:
"‘Is this your pain or mine?’ Perhaps there are several people in a room and a pain floating around in it; and as each person in turn doubles up in agony, we exclaim: ‘Ah, now he’s having it!’"
"It is also true that human beings, not least because they have language, are capable of objectifying their own existence in a way that tortoises presumably are not. We can speak of something called the ‘human condition’, whereas it is unlikely that tortoises brood under the shelter of their shells on the condition of being a tortoise. Tortoises are in this sense remarkably similar to postmodernists, to whom the idea of the human condition is equally alien".
" Even if I conjure up a vivid mental picture of a smoked herring as I pronounce the words ‘World Health Organization’, the meaning of what I have said is still ‘World Health Organization’".
"life is not meaningful, but neither is it meaningless. To claim gloomily that existence is bereft of meaning is to remain a prisoner of the illusion that it might have meaning. But what if life is just not the kind of thing which can be spoken of in either of these terms? If meaning is something people do, how can we expect the world to be meaningful or meaningless in itself? And why then should we bewail the fact that it does not present itself to us as bursting with significance? You would not lament the fact that you were not born wearing a small woolly hat. Babies being born sporting small woolly hats is just not the kind of thing one should expect to happen. There is no point in feeling down in the mouth about it. It is no cause for tragic Angst that you came into the world bareheaded. It is not a lack which you are glumly aware of as you go about your daily business".
"Whenever I hear the word pelvis, I always think of Abraham Lincoln".
"It just would not work for us to ‘construct’ tigers as coy and cuddly. For one thing, some of us would no longer be around to tell the tale. Other theorists, known as realists, would argue that we cannot see tigers as cuddly because it is not the case that tigers are cuddly".
"Those rather weird people for whom the idea of ‘having an appendix’ is just a ‘social construction’ of the human body".
"How many emotions does it take to stop a truck"?
"Marxism has nothing to say about the anal scent glands of the civet, a silence which it does not consider a defect".
"Bees do bee-like things, this is much less obvious in the case of human beings".
Pero como ya he dicho, también tiene algunas quotes bastante guays:
"Even in our most ecstatic moments, we are dimly aware that the ground is marshy underfoot – that there is no unimpeachable foundation to what we are and what we do. This may make our finest moments even more precious, or it may serve to drastically devalue them."
"to live in an awareness of our mortality is to live with realism, irony, truthfulness, and a chastening sense of our finitude and fragility. In this respect at least, to keep faith with what is most animal about us is to live authentically. We would be less inclined to launch hubristic projects which bring ourselves and others to grief. An unconscious trust in our own immortality lies at the source of much of our destructiveness".
"‘Is this your pain or mine?’ Perhaps there are several people in a room and a pain floating around in it; and as each person in turn doubles up in agony, we exclaim: ‘Ah, now he’s having it!’"
"It is also true that human beings, not least because they have language, are capable of objectifying their own existence in a way that tortoises presumably are not. We can speak of something called the ‘human condition’, whereas it is unlikely that tortoises brood under the shelter of their shells on the condition of being a tortoise. Tortoises are in this sense remarkably similar to postmodernists, to whom the idea of the human condition is equally alien".
" Even if I conjure up a vivid mental picture of a smoked herring as I pronounce the words ‘World Health Organization’, the meaning of what I have said is still ‘World Health Organization’".
"life is not meaningful, but neither is it meaningless. To claim gloomily that existence is bereft of meaning is to remain a prisoner of the illusion that it might have meaning. But what if life is just not the kind of thing which can be spoken of in either of these terms? If meaning is something people do, how can we expect the world to be meaningful or meaningless in itself? And why then should we bewail the fact that it does not present itself to us as bursting with significance? You would not lament the fact that you were not born wearing a small woolly hat. Babies being born sporting small woolly hats is just not the kind of thing one should expect to happen. There is no point in feeling down in the mouth about it. It is no cause for tragic Angst that you came into the world bareheaded. It is not a lack which you are glumly aware of as you go about your daily business".
"Whenever I hear the word pelvis, I always think of Abraham Lincoln".
"It just would not work for us to ‘construct’ tigers as coy and cuddly. For one thing, some of us would no longer be around to tell the tale. Other theorists, known as realists, would argue that we cannot see tigers as cuddly because it is not the case that tigers are cuddly".
"Those rather weird people for whom the idea of ‘having an appendix’ is just a ‘social construction’ of the human body".
"How many emotions does it take to stop a truck"?
"Marxism has nothing to say about the anal scent glands of the civet, a silence which it does not consider a defect".
"Bees do bee-like things, this is much less obvious in the case of human beings".
Pero como ya he dicho, también tiene algunas quotes bastante guays:
"Even in our most ecstatic moments, we are dimly aware that the ground is marshy underfoot – that there is no unimpeachable foundation to what we are and what we do. This may make our finest moments even more precious, or it may serve to drastically devalue them."
"to live in an awareness of our mortality is to live with realism, irony, truthfulness, and a chastening sense of our finitude and fragility. In this respect at least, to keep faith with what is most animal about us is to live authentically. We would be less inclined to launch hubristic projects which bring ourselves and others to grief. An unconscious trust in our own immortality lies at the source of much of our destructiveness".
Full range of ideas but without feeling like an opinion-less survey. Deep yet light. Meaning is life itself, eternal life is now, to live is to defer a final meaning, meaninglessness is kind of inspiring, the meaning of life is not knowing the meaning of life.
maybe the real meaning of life were the friends we made along the way :-)
neida, men summa summarum (spoiler):
meningen med livet er at livet ikke har en mening og det er helt greit.
neida, men summa summarum (spoiler):
meningen med livet er at livet ikke har en mening og det er helt greit.
informative
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
challenging
lighthearted
medium-paced
Still don't know what it is.
The thing I enjoyed most in this book was the quote from Macbeth that begins "Out, out brief candle..."
The thing I enjoyed most in this book was the quote from Macbeth that begins "Out, out brief candle..."