Living Philosophy: Reflections on Life, Meaning and Morality

The mystery of birth and death, of fate and destiny, of the nature of wisdom, and of the meaning of life itself have preoccupied philosophers since time immemorial. In this collection of philosophical essays - including those on Birth and Death , Virtue and Human Flourishing , The Need to Sleep , Sex , Truth and Reality , Vanity and Destiny , and The Fear of Death - Christopher Hamilton reflects on the nature of morality and its relation to experience; on the individual mind and its place in philosophy; and on the strangeness of life itself. Drawing widely on literature and philosophy, and grouping many of its reflections on thoughts found there - from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, from Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, Kafka, Jean-Paul Satre, D.H. Lawrence and others - Living Philosophy has some affinities with the philosophy practised by such figures as Martha Nussbaum, Stanley Cavell and Peter Winch. The book attempts to develop a way of approaching philosophy that opens up room not so much to answer the pressing questions as to deepen our sense of what those questions are.