One Beat More Existentialism and the Gift of Mortality

by Aho, Kevin

• ISBN13: 9781509546893
• ISBN10: 1509546898
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781509546916
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2022-07-13
• Publisher: Polity
• More Book Details

Summary

A keen athlete in his late forties, philosophy professor Kevin Aho hadn’t given much thought to his own mortality, until he suffered a sudden heart attack that left him fighting for his life. Confronted with death for the first time, he realized that the things he thought gave his life meaning, such as his independence or his ability to plan his own future, were in tatters.

Aho turned to those thinkers who have reflected deeply on the meaning of life and the anxiety of living when every heartbeat might be your last: the existentialists. Armed with insights from the likes of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and de Beauvoir, he found new meaning and comfort in a view of life that strives for authenticity and accepts aging and death as part of what makes life worthwhile. Existentialism asks us to face the frailty of our existence and to live with a sense of urgency and gratitude toward its manifold beauties. It is only then that we can be released from patterns of self-deception and begin to appreciate what truly matters in our fleeting, precious lives.

Author Biography

Kevin Aho is Professor of Philosophy at Florida Gulf Coast University and the author of Existentialism (Polity, 2020).

Table of Contents

Introduction: To Learn how to Die

Chapter 1: Death-Man

Chapter 2: Letting-Go

Chapter 3: A Chasm of Stillness

Chapter 4: The World has become Smaller

Chapter 5: Be the Poet of your Life

Chapter 6: The World in all its Terror

Chapter 7: This Life Countless Times

Chapter 8: Held out into Nothing



Appendix: “The Existentialists”

Notes

Bibliography