Title: Aristotle on a Meaningful Life [Andrius Bielskis, Existence, Meaning, Excellence: Aristotelian Reflections on the Meaning of Life]
Abstract:Andrius Bielskis's book is a novel and ambitious endeavour to address the problem of the meaning of human existence-the question of the meaning of lifethat has been formulated by many modern and conte...Andrius Bielskis's book is a novel and ambitious endeavour to address the problem of the meaning of human existence-the question of the meaning of lifethat has been formulated by many modern and contemporary philosophers.To tackle this question Bielskis critically engages with a number of celebrated European thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Jürgen Habermas.Bielskis rejects criticisms, advanced by some analytical philosophers, that the question about the meaning of life is a nonsense question, but he, nevertheless, applies analytical argumentation throughout his book by challenging the modern and contemporary continental answers to this question.But, at the same time, Bielskis is also committed to a historical approach to philosophical analysis (and to historical materialism).He argues that the question should be posed against the historical background of the present since "the horizon of human life is history and culture," "human life is marked by temporality and historicity" and "our identities and our ability to understand ourselves are always historical." 1 Indeed, the recurrent theme of the book in all chapters is to answer the question of whether life is worth living and whether it has any meaning.This, of course, is not a new question.What is new is that the author tries to answer the question by offering a novel and critical interpretation of Aristotle's moral and political philosophy, arguing persuasively that neo-Aristotelian philosophy provides a viable answer to the questions that have been raised by the aforementioned Euro-1 A.Read More