Abstract

The word “nihilism” today is everywhere. A staple of common speech ever since its coinage by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in the eighteenth century, is there any other term of philosophical provenance more descriptive of our times? Finding Meaning: Essays on Philosophy, Nihilism, and the Death of God deepens the longstanding and ongoing debate about the problem of nihilism. Drawing upon a wide range of philosophical and theological schools, traditions, and figures, the eleven specially commissioned essays by international scholars enrich the discussion of how to meet the challenge of nihilism. Fundamental problems and topics include the existence of God, the origins and status of morality, the nature and meaning of history, the relation between reason and faith, the status and role of philosophical knowledge, the place of art and religion in society, the future of modernity, the nature of postmodernity, the perils of technology, the specter of transhumanism, and the history of philosophy from Augustine to Kant and Hegel, Nietzsche to Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, and Heidegger to Sartre and Camus. Based on a popular series of online essays published at London artist and philosopher Richard Marshall’s 3:16 AM, Finding Meaning is essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy and theology, and for anyone with a genuine interest in making sense of what it means to be human in an age of nihilism.