Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering

Regular price €27.50
Regular price €28.50 Sale Sale price €27.50
A01=Scott Samuelson
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
art
Author_Scott Samuelson
automatic-update
banality
bible
blues
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HP
Category=QD
christianity
compassion
confucius
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
epictetus
eq_isMigrated=2
evil
friedrich nietzsche
gratitude
grief
hannah arendt
heaven
hell
horror
humanity
inspiration
job
john stuart mill
Language_English
loss
meaning
music
nature
nonfiction
PA=Available
pain
philosophy
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
purpose
religion
responsibility
ritual
sidney bechet
softlaunch
suffering
understanding
utilitarianism

Product details

  • ISBN 9780226407081
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 04 May 2018
  • Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock

10-20 Working Days
: On Backorder

Will Deliver When Available
: On Pre-Order or Reprinting

We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!

It's right there in the Book of Job: "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward." Suffering is an inescapable part of the human condition--which leads to a question that has proved just as inescapable throughout the centuries: Why? Why do we suffer? Why do people die young? Is there any point to our pain, physical or emotional? Do horrors like hurricanes have meaning? In Seven Ways of Looking at Suffering, Scott Samuelson tackles that hardest question of all. To do so, he travels through the history of philosophy and religion, but he also attends closely to the real world we live in. While always taking the question of suffering seriously, Samuelson is just as likely to draw lessons from Bugs Bunny as from Confucius, from his time teaching philosophy to prisoners as from Hannah Arendt's attempts to come to terms with the Holocaust. He guides us through the arguments people have offered to answer this fundamental question, explores the many ways that we have tried to minimize or eliminate suffering, and examines people's attempts to find ways to live with pointless suffering. Ultimately, Samuelson shows, to be fully human means to acknowledge a mysterious paradox: we must simultaneously accept suffering and oppose it. And understanding that is itself a step towards acceptance. Wholly accessible, and thoroughly thought-provoking, Seven Ways of Looking at Suffering is a masterpiece of philosophy, returning the field to its roots--helping us see new ways to understand, explain, and live in our world, fully alive to both its light and its darkness.
Scott Samuelson has taught philosophy to a wide range of people, including at Kirkwood Community College and the Iowa Medical and Classification Center (Oakdale Prison).A He is the author of The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone.