Sartre's existentialism faces the evil in human existence and sees that humans are responsible for it. He doubts man can make moral progress, yet he embraces the possibilities for human life. Mankind is radically free and responsible. In every moment we choose ourselves; beyond this, we find no instructions for our lives. No external authority gives life meaning, so Sartre's existentialism is boldly atheistic. For most objects, "essence precedes their existence." But humans must continually create what they are in every moment; human existence precedes essence. "Existence" hides behind the way we see and talk about it. Conscious life is a type of "Nothingness"; we determine what we now are by the way we project the "not yet" of the future (we are not what we are, and we are what we are not.) Anguish before the future is one way we experience our radical freedom. We're not determined by outside forces; we constantly choose and rechoose ourselves with no assurance that we have a continuing identity or power. So we set up determinisms to ease our minds. An unstable and unpredictable human condition afflicts all human relations. We can't escape our involvement with others; conflict is inevitable. Death is the ultimate limit; the end of consciousness is the end of meaning.
Through interviews with twelve distinguished philosophers-including atheists, agnostics, and believers-Talking God works toward a philosophical understanding and evaluation of religion. Along the way, Gary Gutting and his interviewees challenge many...
Twenty-seven years ago, Matthieu Ricard gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism-not as a detached observer but by immersing himself in its practice under the guidance of its greatest living masters. Years later, this proj...
Kierkegaard wasnt really a philosopher in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He didnt write about the world, he wrote about life, about how we live and how we choose to live. His subject was the individual and...
Renowned psychiatrist and educator Armand Nicholi here presents a fascinating comparison of the beliefs of Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. For all the variety of specific religious beliefs, there are fundamentally only two kinds of people: believe...
In 2006, Christianity Today voted The God Who Is There as one of the top fifty books that have shaped evangelicals.
For decades, The God Who Is There has been the landmark book that changed the way the church sees the world. In Francis Schaeffers r...
Orthodoxy was named as one of Publishers Weekly's 10 indispensable spiritual classics of the past 1500 years. It is the personal journal of one man's search for understanding culminating in his conversion to Catholicism. Written with wisdom and wit,...
Narrator: John Franklyn-Robbins Published: 09/17/2013
Aurelius Augustinus was a key figure in the transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. He lived at a time when no distinction was made between philosophy and theology, and the purpose of both was to show the way to wisdom, happiness, an...
With the same passionate scholarship and analytical audacity he brought to the character of God, Jack Miles now approaches the literary and theological enigma of Jesus. In so doing, he tells the story of a broken promise–God’s ancient c...
Following the extraordinary success of the New York Times bestseller Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas latest book offers inspirational and intellectually rigorous thoughts about the great questions surrounding us all today.
The Greek philosopher Socrates f...
Narrator: Eric Metaxas and the contributing authors Published: 10/13/2011
