The philosopher and author of How Should We Live? presents “a clear and provocative discussion of issues such as boredom, hypocrisy, evil, and innocence” (Stephen Mulhall, University of Oxford). In this book, John Kekes draws on anthropology, history, and literature to offer practical insights into the common predicaments we all face in our daily lives. Each chapter offers new ways of thinking about a common, fundamental problem, such as facing difficult choices, uncontrollable contingencies, complex evaluations, the failures of justice, the miasma of boredom, and the inescapable hypocrisies of social life. In each case, Kekes discusses how others in different times and cultures have approached similar issues. Kekes examines what is good, bad, instructive, and dangerous in the Hindu caste system, Balinese role-morality, the sexually charged politics of the Shilluk, the religious passion of Cortes and Simone Weil, the fate of Colonel Hiromichi Yahara during and after the battle for Okinawa, the ritual human sacrifices of the Aztecs, and the tragedies to which innocence may lead. In doing so, he enlarges our understanding of the possibilities available to us as we struggle with the common obstacles of modern life.

Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortality be an improvement? Would it be better, all things considered, to hasten our deaths by suicide? Many people ask these big questions -- and some people are plagued by them. Surprisingly, analytic philosophers have said relatively little about these important questions about the meaning of life. When they have tackled the big questions, they have tended, like popular writers, to offer comforting, optimistic answers. The Human Predicament invites readers 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, although less bad for some than for others, 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.

The book is a critical analysis of Vikram Seth's novels with special reference to Human Predicament. The book talks about all the characters of Vikram Seth's novels from human predicament perspectives. The book also talks about psychological and spiritual dimensions of human predicament. The author has thoroughly discussed the various facets of human predicament and how a person feels when he is passing through this stage of his life.

Since Socrates, teaching has been a difficult and even dangerous profession. Why is teaching such hard work? In this provocative, witty, sometimes rueful book, Cohen writes about the predicaments that teachers face and explores what responsible teaching can be. He focuses on the kind of mind reading teaching demands and the resources it requires.

The term 'African Potentials' refers to the knowledge, systems, practices, ideas and values created and implemented in African societies that are expected to contribute to overcoming various challenges and promoting people's wellbeing. This collection of articles, focused on African societies, is based on the idea that 'Africa is People'. In this book, African people are placed at the centre of the discussion. The book's contributors, all of whom believe in African people and their potentials, consider women, minors and young people, people with disabilities, entrepreneurs, herders, farmers, mine workers, refugees, migrants, traditional rulers, militiamen and members of the political elite, and examine their predicaments and potentials in detail. Africa is people, and African potentials can be found only in African people themselves.

The second volume in a trilogy advancing a systematic philosophical theology, this book explores the realities of human existence articulated by religion. Religion, writes Robert Cummings Neville, articulates existential predicaments and provides venues for ecstatic fulfillment. Like its companion volumes treating ultimacy and religion, Existence advances a systematic philosophical theology to address first-order questions found in the array of Axial Age religions. Issues arising in the major religious traditions are explored through a complex array of philosophical approaches. This second volume shows religion to be the engagement of ultimate realities common to all human beings. Neville finds five problematics relative to ultimate boundary conditions of the human world: the contingency of existence, living under obligation, the quest for wholeness, engagement with others, and the meaning or value in life. Common to all human beings and hence “religion,” the engagement with realities is also historically and culturally bound, becoming simultaneously socially constructed “religions.” Readers will find Neville’s philosophical theology both bold and enlightening, running counter to dominant intellectual trends while richly informed by a long and fruitful engagement with theology, philosophy, and religion, East and West.

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. David Benatar presents a startling challenge to these assumptions. He argues that people systematically overestimate the quality of their life, and suffer quite serious harms by coming into existence.