As
Benatar explains in the first paragraph of this book’s introduction,
"Among the biggest questions are ones about life and whether it has
meaning, about our mortality, and about whether the response to our condition
should be cheery, morose, or indifferent."  The major philosophic (and yet practical) questions
addressed by the essays in this collection include: (a) What is the meaning of
life? (b) Is being born a good thing? 
(c) What about death?  (d) Is
suicide rational?  (e) Is immortality
desirable?  and (d) Is either optimism
or pessimism about life warranted?

Benatar notes that these six questions do not
exhaust the existentialist’s field of concerns.  Related issues not addressed in this book include those of
personal identify, free will, and the existence of God(s), and of course
general questions about the ultimate nature of reality. However, the six
questions of this collection are obviously elemental and are prime fodder for
what Benatar terms "analytic existentialism." 

Most of book’s essays — 22 of
the 25 included — were written in past 30 years, and all but one were
extracted from the published works of well-respected philosophers and
thinkers.  (One essay was written
specifically for this volume.) The three selections from prior centuries
include brief works from Hume, Kant and Schopenhauer.

Benatar notes that perhaps the
most profound existential question of all is whether life has, or can have,
meaning.  Few of us, even
non-philosophers, would disagree that it is the issue from which all the rest
of life’s practical and philosophic questions derive.  There are at least two senses of the question — whether it is
possible, desirable, and rational for individuals to have a (subjective) feeling
of being meaningful; and whether
meaningfulness is, or can be, an objective condition irrespective of whether or
not one feels that one’s life has meaning.

The book’s second section
addresses the issue of creating new life. 
Producing children may not at first seem a philosophic issue, but upon
closer consideration it becomes apparent that if the self-conscious life is
primarily one of suffering, delusion and/or meaninglessness, only to be rounded
out with permanent nonexistence, then creating new people seems hardly an
admirable activity.  On the other hand,
if a person’s existence has no external significance and if all traces of its
woes will dissipate completely in time — at the end of the universe if not
sooner — then perhaps the morality of creating new conscious beings is itself
a moot issue.

Although most of us fear and seek
to avoid it, death may not be so bad after all.  For one thing it is the so-called great equalizer, which
indiscriminately erases good and bad from all lives.  All those mistakes and harmful acts of our youth, along with all
the dalliances, pleasures and satisfactions of our adult years, are wiped clean
at death, at least as far as the individual consciousness is concerned.  Yet if this is so, how can one claim his or
her life has meaning?  Must meaning have
an enduring quality?  Thus death, either
by natural process or suicide, presents philosophic challenges.  Essays by two modern-day apologists for the
ancient Greek philosophers, Epicurus and Lucretius, are included to address the
problem of death.

Benatar introduces the issue of
suicide with reference to Camus’s well-known claim that suicide is the only serious
philosophic question.  As Benatar
observes that although evolutionary forces likely select for those who tend to
survive long enough at least to produce offspring, "if one’s pursuits
really are absurd and one’s life quite pointless, it may be only an irrational
love of life that keeps most of us from suicide" (p. 12). 

In tackling the issue of
immortality, Benatar has chosen essays that consider not whether it is possible
— an issue that would perhaps benefit more from empirical evidence than from
rational analysis — but whether or not it is desirable.  Although
referenced earlier in the book’s section on meaning, the myth of Sisyphus comes
naturally to mind here.  Sisyphus of
course is immortal, but must spend his eternity engaged in a pointless,
recurring activity.  Would such
immortality be desirable?  Even though
most of us will not suffer Sisyphus’ fate (extreme suffering combined with the
awareness that it will never cease), we certainly can and do on occasion become
bored with life, short though it is; and if we were immortal we might
eventually become bored even if we experienced everything that can be experienced.  The authors of the three articles in this
section provide a broad consideration of all sides of the issue.

Benatar has thoughtfully
concluded his collection with three essays addressing the rarely considered
question of whether adopting an attitude of optimism or pessimism is rational
and reasonable.  While one of the three articles
in this section is highly skeptical (Schopenhauer’s, of course) of the
reasonableness of optimism, another posits good reason to have a cheerful
attitude.

All the essays in this collection
will be wholly accessible to non-philosophers — even the article by
Schopenhauer — not in small part because Benatar provides a brief explanatory
introduction to each essay.  These
introductory gems go a long way toward making this collection coherent, as they
not only prepare the reader to understand the essays, but also demonstrate how
each essay relates to the others and to the overarching issues of life, death,
and meaning.  In addition, Benatar
appends to each essay several relevant questions for the reader to consider.

For laypersons, especially those
struggled as undergraduates with annoying, seemingly irrelevant concepts made
doubly obscure by crusty old philosophers, this collection of insightful,
well-written essays will certainly be refreshing.

© 2005 Keith Harris

Keith
Harris, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and supervises the research
section of the Department of Behavioral Health, San Bernardino County,
California. His interests include the empirical basis for psychotherapy
research (and its design), human decision-making processes, and the shaping of
human nature by evolutionary forces.

Categories: Philosophical