The Human Predicament
A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
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Narrated by:
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Dennis Kleinman
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By:
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David Benatar
About this listen
Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortality be an improvement? Would it be better to hasten our deaths by suicide? Many people ask these big questions—and some people are plagued by them. Analytic philosophers have said relatively little about these important questions. The Human Predicament invites listeners to take a clear-eyed and unfettered view of the human condition.
David Benatar here offers a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism about the central questions of human existence. He argues that while our lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the insignificant beings that we fear we might be. He maintains that the quality of life leaves much to be desired in even the best cases. Worse, death is generally not a solution; in fact, it exacerbates rather than mitigates our cosmic meaninglessness. While it can release us from suffering, it imposes another cost—annihilation. This state of affairs has nuanced implications for how we should think about many things, including immortality and suicide, and how we should think about the possibility of deeper meaning in our lives. Ultimately, this thoughtful, provocative, and deeply candid treatment of life's big questions will interest anyone who has contemplated why we are here, and what the answer means for how we should live.
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- By Douglas on 12-14-13
By: Frans de Waal
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning
- By: Viktor E. Frankl
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Viktor Frankl is known to millions of listeners as a psychotherapist who has transcended his field in his search for answers to the ultimate questions of life, death, and suffering. Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning explores the sometimes unconscious basic human desire for inspiration or revelation and illustrates how life can offer profound meaning at every turn.
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Unconscious Religiousness and the Ultimate Meaning
- By Mirek on 12-07-08
By: Viktor E. Frankl
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Stay
- A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It
- By: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Narrated by: Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness.
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Informative but oddly dispassionate
- By Scott on 01-07-14
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Breaking the Spell
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.
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Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
- By Don Caliente on 07-14-14
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Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
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A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
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Deep Thought
- 42 Fantastic Quotes That Define Philosphy
- By: Gary Cox
- Narrated by: Richard Mitchley
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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As Douglas Adams points out, if there is no final answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" 42 is as good or bad an answer as any other. Indeed, 42 quotes might be even better! Gary Cox guides us through 42 of the most misunderstood, misquoted, provocative, and significant quotes in the history of philosophy, providing witty and compelling commentary along the way.
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Best philosophy intro ever
- By Fabian on 04-14-18
By: Gary Cox
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Mind and Cosmos
- Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
- By: Thomas Nagel
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.
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Intellectual honesty at its finest
- By Alice Walker on 02-15-18
By: Thomas Nagel
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About Behaviorism
- By: B.F. Skinner
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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About Behaviorism is about the controversial philosophy known as behaviorism, written by its leading exponent.
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Refreshing and concise
- By Autumn and Sam on 07-30-22
By: B.F. Skinner
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What It Means to Be Moral
- Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life
- By: Phil Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others.
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Praise for Faith No More
- By Amazon Customer on 12-08-19
By: Phil Zuckerman
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What listeners say about The Human Predicament
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- Oyinda
- 02-20-24
great book
great book about topics we don’t speak about enough. definitely an interesting read that will make you think.
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