 Trade In this Item for up to £1.50
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Death (Art of Living) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.50, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
"Excellent. A fine example of what popular philosophy can be: wide-ranging and thought-provoking, in little more than 100 pages. May grasps the real paradox of mortality: that the fact of death imbues our life with passion and urgency, but it is that very passion for life that makes death tragic." --Financial Times
"May draws on insights ranging from the Stoics to Heidegger with incursions into famous arguments by Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams on the way. Yet, May never loses his ability to write clearly and engagingly. Many books on death discuss a wider range of issues. Some discuss clinical definitions of death in order to resolve bioethical issues. Others discuss the morality of killing and whether abortion and euthanasia are cases of murder. This book does neither. It focuses only upon the existential significance of death and on the difference it should make to the way we live our lives. If it spends a lot of time on what may seem in the end to be simple and homely truths it does so because only be considering all the aspects of this issue and by exploring them in depth can the reader be taken on a journey that will truly be one of discovery and inspiration." --Metapsychology
"Death is scholarly enough for the academic interested in a critical examination of theory and argument concerning death, while at the same time accessible enough for the reader interested in an introduction to philosophical thought on the topic, and to philosophical thought in general. All readers will appreciate this book's ability to encourage and compel its reader to reflect on life and death in a philosophical and personal way. It is a fine achievement to make philosophy personally meaningful, and Death succeeds in this regard." --Philosophy in Review
"May draws on insights ranging from the Stoics to Heidegger with incursions into famous arguments by Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams on the way. Yet, May never loses his ability to write clearly and engagingly. Many books on death discuss a wider range of issues. Some discuss clinical definitions of death in order to resolve bioethical issues. Others discuss the morality of killing and whether abortion and euthanasia are cases of murder. This book does neither. It focuses only upon the existential significance of death and on the difference it should make to the way we live our lives. If it spends a lot of time on what may seem in the end to be simple and homely truths it does so because only be considering all the aspects of this issue and by exploring them in depth can the reader be taken on a journey that will truly be one of discovery and inspiration." --Metapsychology
"Death is scholarly enough for the academic interested in a critical examination of theory and argument concerning death, while at the same time accessible enough for the reader interested in an introduction to philosophical thought on the topic, and to philosophical thought in general. All readers will appreciate this book's ability to encourage and compel its reader to reflect on life and death in a philosophical and personal way. It is a fine achievement to make philosophy personally meaningful, and Death succeeds in this regard." --Philosophy in Review
Product Description
The fact that we will die, and that our death can come at any time, pervades the entirety of our living. There are many ways to think about and deal with death. A good number are attempts to escape its grip. However, in this book the philosopher Todd May seeks to confront death in its power and considers the possibility that our mortal deaths are the end of us, and asks what this might mean for our living. What lessons can we draw from our mortality? And how might we live as creatures who die, and who know we are going to die? In exploring these questions, May brings together two divergent perspectives on death. The first holds that death is not an evil, or at least that immortality would be far worse than dying. The second holds that death is indeed an evil, and that there is no escaping that fact. May shows that if we are to live with death we need to hold these two perspectives together. Their convergence yields both a beauty and a tragedy to our living that are inextricably entwined. May skilfully guides the reader through this emotive subject and draws on the thoughts of other philosophers and writers - ancient and modern - to put forward a candid and thought-provoking view of how we might live our lives in view of the inescapability of our dying. In the end, he argues, it is precisely the contingency of our lives that must be grasped and which must be folded into the hours or years that remain to each of us, so that we can live each moment as though it were at once a link to an uncertain future and yet perhaps the only link we have left.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a deep and careful meditation on how the fragility of life affects us. What makes this book unique, is that it takes ideas from philosophy (such as Martin Heidegger, Thomas Nagel, and Lucretius) and from religion (such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism), and interweaves them in meaningful ways that anyone can understand and pull meaning from. What May does in this book is present a wonderful - and sometimes personal - journey through some major themes and ideas of what death means to us and how it affects us, whilst drawing on different philosophical and religious views to add substance and perspective. The journey he takes the reader on gives them time to consider the implications for their own lives (there were several times when reading this book when I had to set it aside and think through what I had just read, not because it was difficult to understand, but because it was giving me a new way to look at and interpret what life meant). This is philosophy that has been humanized and made relevant for all of us.
One of the ways May gets us to ponder what life and death means, is by exploring what personal immortality might imply for how we would pursue life - how would being immortal affect how we lived? This exercise he presents to the reader adds to the insights of how we view and interpret mortal life.
If you want to explore and understand better how you think about and deal with death, then this book comes highly recommended. Regardless of your philosophical or religious orientation there is something here for all of us to learn from. You will not look at life the same way after.
One of the ways May gets us to ponder what life and death means, is by exploring what personal immortality might imply for how we would pursue life - how would being immortal affect how we lived? This exercise he presents to the reader adds to the insights of how we view and interpret mortal life.
If you want to explore and understand better how you think about and deal with death, then this book comes highly recommended. Regardless of your philosophical or religious orientation there is something here for all of us to learn from. You will not look at life the same way after.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Finding Meaning in Life by pondering Death
11 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback
This book is a deep and careful meditation on how the fragility of life affects us. What makes this book unique, is that it takes ideas from philosophy (such as Martin Heidegger, Thomas Nagel, and Lucretius) and from religion (such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism), and interweaves them in meaningful ways that anyone can understand and pull meaning from. What May does in this book is present a wonderful - and sometimes personal - journey through some major themes and ideas of what death means to us and how it affects us, whilst drawing on different philosophical and religious views to add substance and perspective. The journey he takes the reader on gives them time to consider the implications for their own lives (there were several times when reading this book when I had to set it aside and think through what I had just read, not because it was difficult to understand, but because it was giving me a new way to look at and interpret what life meant). This is philosophy that has been humanized and made relevant for all of us.
One of the ways May gets us to ponder what life and death means, is by exploring what personal immortality might imply for how we would pursue life - how would being immortal affect how we lived? This exercise he presents to the reader adds to the insights of how we view and interpret mortal life.
If you want to explore and understand better how you think about and deal with death, then this book comes highly recommended. Regardless of your philosophical or religious orientation there is something here for all of us to learn from. You will not look at life the same way after.
One of the ways May gets us to ponder what life and death means, is by exploring what personal immortality might imply for how we would pursue life - how would being immortal affect how we lived? This exercise he presents to the reader adds to the insights of how we view and interpret mortal life.
If you want to explore and understand better how you think about and deal with death, then this book comes highly recommended. Regardless of your philosophical or religious orientation there is something here for all of us to learn from. You will not look at life the same way after.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
