Life, Sex and Ideas The Good Life without God

by Grayling, A. C.

• ISBN13: 9780195162523
• ISBN10: 0195162528
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

"A distinctive voice somewhere between Mark Twain and Michel Montaigne" is how Psychology Today described A.C. Grayling. In Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, readers have the pleasure of hearing this distinctive voice address some of the most serious topics in philosophy--and in our daily lives--including reflections on guns, anger, conflict, war; monsters, madness, decay; liberty, justice, utopia; suicide, loss, and remembrance. A civilized society, says Grayling, is one which never ceases having a discussion with itself about what human life should best be. In this book, Grayling adds to this discussion a series of short informal essays about ethics, ideas, and culture. A recurring theme is religion, of which he writes "there is no greater social evil." He argues, for instance, that liberal education is better than religion for inculcating moral values. "Education in literature, history, and appreciation of the arts," he says, "opens the possibility for us to live more reflectively and knowledgeably, especially about the nature and variety of human experience. That in turn increases our capacity for understanding others better, so that we can treat them with respect and sympathy, however different their outlook on life." Thought provoking rather than definitive, these essays don't tell readers what to think, but only note what has been thought about how it is best to live. A person who does not think about life, the author reminds us, is like a stranger mapless in a foreign land. These brief and suggestive essays offer us the outlines of a map, with avenues of thought that are a pleasure to wander down.

Author Biography

A.C. Grayling is a British literary journalist and university professor of philosophy, who contributes the weekly column "The Reason of Things" to The London Times and writes frequently for Financial Times and The New York Review of Books. He is a Reader in Philosophy at Birbeck College, University of London, and Supernumerary Fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. His books include Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
Moral Matters
Emotion	p. 3
Moral Education	p. 6
Emancipation and Ethics	p. 11
Symbols	p. 16
Religion	p. 20
Credulity	p. 24
Fasting	p. 27
Meat	p. 30
Evil	p. 33
Luxury	p. 36
Games	p. 39
Marriage	p. 42
Sex	p. 45
Benevolence	p. 60
Morality	p. 63
Public Culture
Identity	p. 69
Cultures	p. 72
Conservation	p. 76
Teachers	p. 82
Intellectuals	p. 84
Community and Society
Politics	p. 91
Voting	p. 94
Utopia	p. 97
Profit	p. 101
Power	p. 104
Protest	p. 106
Justice	p. 109
Liberty	p. 112
Pluralism	p. 116
Anger and War
Anger	p. 121
Conflict	p. 124
Guns	p. 126
War	p. 129
War's Causes	p. 132
Western Victories	p. 135
Triumph	p. 138
Safety	p. 141
War Crimes	p. 144
Vengeance	p. 146
Capital Punishment	p. 148
Bystanders	p. 151
Slavery	p. 154
Experience	p. 157
Grief and Remembrance
Suicide	p. 163
Loss	p. 166
Obsequies	p. 169
Remembrance	p. 172
Nature and Naturalness
Naturalness	p. 177
Nature	p. 181
Monsters	p. 184
Madness	p. 187
Clones	p. 193
Decay	p. 196
Reading and Thinking
The Essay	p. 201
Reading and Reviewing	p. 206
Biography	p. 215
Becoming Philosophical	p. 219
Philosophy	p. 228
Reality	p. 231
Values and Knowledge	p. 234
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