Dialogues on the Meaning of Life by Hauskeller, Michael;

Short description:

What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Can life be meaningful at all, and if it can, what exactly makes it so? This new volume in the Philosophical Dialogues on Contemporary Issues series addresses these questions through fictional dialogues and the lives of ordinary people.

Long description:

What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Can life be meaningful at all, and if it can, what exactly makes it so? This new volume in the Philosophical Dialogues on Contemporary Issues series addresses these questions through fictional dialogues that relate the theoretical problems that philosophers tend to focus on to the lives of ordinary people, the concerns they have, and the problems they face.

Overseeing the seven dialogues presented in this book is the Socrates-like character, Richard Roe, a middle-aged man who has recently lost his son to COVID-19, a tragedy that sets him out on a quest to understand what makes people pursue the goals they do to give their lives meaning. Guided by an engaging set of characters and a captivating narrative, readers are invited to reflect on various contemporary issues. Among them are our common obsession with fame and celebrity, the disturbing tendency of people to rally behind morally obnoxious causes and people, mental crises as a response to the perceived meaninglessness of life, scientific efforts to halt the aging process and to postpone death indefinitely, and the future of work in an age of increasing automatization. This book shows how such issues are intimately connected to both our ability and our desire to live a meaningful life.

Dialogues on the Meaning of Life is an accessible introduction to complex philosophical issues raised by theism, atheism, nihilism, transhumanism, well-being, human rights, and theories about death and friendship, and offers an easy-to-follow approach to core questions surrounding the nature of our existence.

Key features include:

• Provides an accessible introduction to the philosophical debate on the meaning of life.


• Connects abstract philosophical issues to the concrete concerns of ordinary people.


• Develops and conveys key insights through an engaging narrative.


• Shows the practical relevance of philosophical theory.

“If you want to know what philosophers have been saying recently about what makes life meaningful, but don’t want to trawl though acres of dull academic prose in obscure publications, then this is the book for you. Hauskeller has successfully adapted philosophy’s most influential and engaging format, the Platonic dialogue, to take you on a journey around Liverpool with a Scouse version of Socrates, as he tries to get answers out of a motley crew that includes a nihilist, a transhumanist, a vicar and an antitheist.”

-- James Tartaglia, Professor of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Table of Contents:

Introduction  Prologue  1. First Dialogue  2. Second Dialogue  3. Third Dialogue  4. Fourth Dialogue  5. Fifth Dialogue  6. Sixth Dialogue  7. Seventh Dialogue  Further Reading.