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Intro -- THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION AN ESSAY IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXPIRATION OR THEORY IN THE ERA OF SOPHISTICATED MINDLESSNESS -- THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION AN ESSAY IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXPIRATION OR THEORY IN THE ERA OF SOPHISTICATED MINDLESSNESS -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- PREFACE: TWO NOTES -- NOTE 1: THE ABSENT PRESENCE -- NOTE 2: CRITICISM AND JUDGMENTALNESS -- INTRODUCTION: FRACTAL VERSUS FRAGMENT -- Chapter 1 A CONCLUSION -- Chapter 2 FROM PROTO-MODERNITY TO PSEUDO-MODERNITY: KANT AND HIS DESCENDANTS -- TOO MUCH, TOO SOON (SCHOPENHAUER) -- PHENOMENAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL TURN (HEGEL AND HUSSERL) -- PHENOMENOLOGY OF DECEPTION (MERLEAU-PONTY AND VIRILIO) -- Chapter 3 THE POLITICS OF RE-PRESENTATION. A COLLECTION OF FRACTALS -- PHILOSOPHY IN THE ERA OF SOPHISTICATED MEANINGLESSNESS -- Chapter 4 EPILOGUE OR AFTER THE END -- Chapter 5 FROM SOPHISTICATED MEANINGLESSNESS TO SOPHISTICATED PRIMITIVISM -- THE ORIENT DREAMING OF THE OCCIDENT, THE OCCIDENT DREAMING OF THE ORIENT -- THE PRESENT OF OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS -- Chapter 6 THE STATE OF MINDLESSNESS. THE RISE OF THE PSEUDO-MODERN WORLD -- RECURRENCE AND DOMINATION OF THE NON-WORLD -- NARROW-MINDED AND IRRESPONSIBLE -- SOCIOPATHY AND IDIOCY -- INCONSISTENCY, DOUBLE STANDARD, HYPOCRISY -- HATRED, REACTION, AND REVENGE -- INFERIORITY COMPLEX -- Chapter 7 IDEOLOGIES OF THE NON-WORLD. THE POST-COLONIAL AND THE SUBALTERN -- OPTIONAL APPENDIX: THE ORACLES SPEAK! (FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE OCEANS) -- INDEX -- Blank Page

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Alternative Table of Contents -- Aimlessness -- Aimlessness and Literature I -- Aimlessness and Literature II -- Aimlessness and Collage I -- Aimlessness and the Nomad I -- Aimlessness and Method I -- Aimlessness and the Nomad II -- Aimlessness and Collage II -- Aimlessness and Collage III -- Aimlessness and Travel I -- Aimlessness and Idleness I -- Aimlessness and Life I -- Aimlessness and Literature III -- Aimlessness and Travel II -- Aimlessness and Death -- Aimlessness and Death -- Aimlessness and Method II -- Aimlessness and Life III -- Aimlessness and Travel III -- Aimlessness and Idleness II -- Aimlessness and Attention I -- Aimlessness and the Nomad III -- Aimlessness and Attention II -- Aimlessness and Idleness III -- Aimlessness and Method III -- Aimlessness and Attention III -- Acknowledgments -- Works Cited -- Index

After the World War-1, there spread chaos and disillusionment in society, faith got shattered and life became meaningless. Jean-Paul Sartre's version of Existentialism is based on this meaninglessness and absurdity. Man faces an absurd and meaningless existence in this chaotic world. Thus these two are the main tropes of Sartre's philosophy. T. S. Eliot also lived in that chaotic age and composed his long narrative poem The Waste Land (1930) after the World War. This poem is based on the consequences of the war that caused absurdity and chaos depriving human life of real significance and value. This study explores and analyses these aspects of meaninglessness and absurdity in The Waste Land (1930) in the light of Sartre's philosophy and contends to say that almost all of the characters presented in the poem encounter meaningless and chaotic lives. Their lives are without any real purpose and are quite insignificant in a chaotic and disorderly world. So the land is full of the waste only. This meaningless life is nothing but a heap of the waste. By presenting this picture of chaotic life, Eliot intends to forward a solution in the form of rebirth of the lost religious faith and moral values. This research is significant because the aspects of meaninglessness and absurdity accurately relate to our current times where human beings face real existential threat and the significance of life is being lost. This awareness may lead to an immediate solution. Moreover, this study may provoke further research in this area in order to bring out the relevance of literary texts to all times and human life everywhere.

This book thematizes the mystical figure of the abyss by examining the abyss as the dialectical process of the self's reconstruction followed by its dispossession. It traces such process in Neoplatonic mysticism, German idealism, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy with the end of politicizing the mystical figure from the standpoint of coloniality

I. Introduction -- 1. Berlin's Distinction -- 2. MacCallum on Positive and Negative Liberty -- 3. The Strategy of the Argument -- II. The Freedom to do a Particular Thing: The Objective Side -- 4. Restraint and Incapacity -- 5. Coercion -- 6. Coercion and the Wage Agreement -- 7. The Probability of Doing ? -- III. The Freedom to do a Particular Thing: The Subjective Side -- 8. Belief and Information -- 9. Psychological Barriers, Autonomy, and Freedom -- 10. The Desire to Do ? -- IV. Personal Freedom -- 11. Berlin's Five Factors -- 12. The Number and Variety of Alternatives -- 13. The Probability of the Alternatives -- 14. The Value of the Alternatives -- V. Social Liberty -- 15. The Characterization -- 16. Outlines of a Positive Libertarian Social Program -- 17. A Positive Approach to Speech -- 18. Redistribution -- 19. Left and Right Libertarianism -- VI. Criticisms of Positive Liberty -- 20. That Positive Liberty Extends the Notion to Meaninglessness -- 21. Liberty and its Conditions of Exercise -- 22. Liberty and the Conditions that Give it Worth -- 23. "Liberty" in Ordinary Language -- 24. The Special Evils of Restraint and Coercion -- 25. Human Rights, Coercion, and Non-Aid -- VII. The Value of Liberty -- 26. The Consequences of Liberty -- 27. Intrinsic Value Defined -- 28. The Intrinsic Value of Autonomy and Liberty -- 29. Value and the Structure of Positive Liberty -- 30. An Egalitarian Argument for Positive Liberty -- VIII. The Costs and Limits of Liberty -- 31. Decision Costs -- 32. Personal Costs and Paternalism -- 33. Social Costs -- 34. Individual Decision and Collective Decision -- Notes.

In this article, the author argues that Africana critical theory or Black existential philosophy is the philosophical discourse that critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world. However, although Africana critical theory shares similar concerns and themes such as existence, consciousness, trepidation, meaninglessness, hopelessness, fear, despair, servility, and abasement with European existentialism, there are important distinctions between them. For example, although European existentialism is, as Gordon says, "predicated on the uniqueness of the individual as well as on a universalist conception of humans and their obligation to self," Africana critical theory or Black existential philosophy is predicated on the liberation of all Black people in the world from oppression.

Humanism, Antitheodicism, and the Critique of Meaning in Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion develops a distinctive approach to pragmatist philosophy of religion, and more generally to pragmatist investigations of the human search for meaning, by emphasizing what may be considered two closely interrelated main features of this tradition: humanism and antitheodicism. Humanism here emphasizes the need to focus on religion as a human practice within human concerns of meaningfulness and significance, as distinguished from any metaphysical search for cosmic meaning. Antitheodicism, in turn, stands for the refusal to accept any justification, divine or secular, for the experiences of meaninglessness that individuals undergoing horrendous suffering may have. Developing a critical form of pragmatism emphasizing these ideas, Sami Pihlström explores the relations between pragmatism and analytic philosophy in the philosophy of religion, especially regarding the question of religious meaning, as well as the significance of literature for philosophy of religion, with particular emphasis on William James's pragmatism.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- PART I: Frankfurt -- 1. Weber: Rationalization, disenchantment and charisma -- Bureaucratization -- Loss of freedom -- Life in the iron cage -- Loss of meaning -- Disenchantment and loss of meaning -- Charisma and change -- Weber as transmitter of the Romantic critique of the Enlightenment -- 2. Horkheimer and Adorno: The irrationality of reason -- The Marxist heritage -- What is critical theory? -- Traditional theory -- Critical theory -- Loss of meaning -- The rise and fall of objective reason -- The way we are now -- Two objections to the alleged meaninglessness of modernity -- Loss of freedom -- The culture industry -- How dated is Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of the culture industry? -- The irrationality of enlightenment -- Is negation enough? -- The distorting effect of Marxism -- Max Weber's self-deception -- 3. Habermas: In defence of enlightenment -- Habermas' response to his predecessors -- Good rationalization -- Discourse ethics -- Problems with discourse ethics -- Good rationalization and the lifeworld -- Bad rationalization: system -- Uncoupling -- Colonization -- Consequences of colonization -- The task -- Loss of meaning -- Loss of freedom -- 4. Marcuse: Eros and utopia -- Diagnosis -- Advanced industrial society's methods of selfpreservation -- Soul control: the media -- Further methods of soul control -- One-dimensionality -- Eros and Civilization: why Freud? -- What Freud says -- Freud's mistakes -- Aggression, the death instinct, and the Nirvana principle -- Fantasy as the vision of a new world -- The content of fantasy -- Is Marcuse utopian in a pejorative sense? -- Closing the gap between here and there -- Kant, Schiller, and the aesthetic basis of a repression-free society

The article presents the topic of arguments of the existence of God in the works of Russian religious philosophers of the second half of the 19th — the first half of the 20th century. This topic is found in the discourse of Russian religious philosophy in three variants: putting forward arguments for the existence of God, analysis of Kant's criticism of the proofs for the existence of God, statements about the meaninglessness of the proofs for religious consciousness. In all variants, there is an inextricable connection between Russian philosophers' argumentation and their metaphysical propositions. The discourse of Russian religious philosophy itself should be considered a way of contextual demonstration of the significance of metaphysical propositions for religious consciousness. The topic was not only a moment of strengthening the epistemological status of religious knowledge in relation to scientific knowledge, but it had also the importance of philosophizing to form religious worldview. Using the examples of the analysis of both the proofs of the existence of God and their criticism, which is found in the works by S.N.Bulgakov, V.I.Nesmelov, V. S. Solovyov, E.N.Trubetskoy, B.N.Chicherin, and S.L.Frank, the pragmatics of their discourse is revealed — it was aimed not at finding some new ways to substantiate the existence of God with rational means, but at substantiating the necessity of religious faith for the human reason — the faith is not only the main element of religious consciousness, but also a metaphysical principle of cognition of God. The study of the contexts of the appeal of Frank and other Russian philosophers to the topic of the ontological argument leads to the conclusion that such an appeal was associated with the demonstration of the relevance of their metaphysical constructions with the Christian religion.

The paper draws attention to one feature of Andrey Bely's philosophy. In his works, along with the concept of symbol, he uses the concept of emblem as a philosophical term, which seems unusual. The author of the paper emphasizes that in Bely's philosophical system priority is given to the philosophy of culture, and the most fundamental problem is the existential gap between unity and plurality, between God and the world, between the internal requirement of significance, value and perfection of the results of human creation and the visible meaninglessness, unsystematic and chaotic nature of civilization. The Russian thinker seeks to build an ontological "world between", a connecting structure, the role of which should be played by a symbol. But as a result of Bely's attempts to combine R. Steiner's esoteric philosophy with the logic of neo-Kantianism, it turns out that the symbol in his constructions became incomprehensible and imperceptible. So there is a need for an additional element, which becomes the emblem, acting as the external surface of the symbol. The emblem in Bely's philosophy is a form of present existence, through which cultural reality is created, constructed and cognized.

In recent years, some theorists have raised their distrust in metaethical research. Such worries include concerns about the intelligibility of metaethical discourse; claims about the meaninglessness of metaethical discussions; and finally the idea that metaethical debates are to be addressed by substantive theorizing only, namely that metaethical discussions are actually dealt by engaging in first-order, normative discourse. According to these worries, metaethics is either useless or just is a part of normative ethics and metaethicists are either hopeless, or simply in denial about what they are doing. Prominent examples of such convictions are Roanld Dworkin [Dworkin 1996, 2011] and Catherine Korsgaard [Korsgaard 2003]. I call this "metaethical quietism". Such aggressive attitude has also been prominent in mainstream political philosophy since Rawls. According to Rawls, political philosophy should not engage with questions of the ontology of morals, or metaethics in general, to be more practically useful. In this paper, I question whether quietism can be successful and argue that metaethical inquiry may be useful to normative theorizing. The paper proceeds as follows: first, I consider and rebut Dworkin and Korsgaard's arguments for metaethical quietism. Second, I compare them to Rawls's political liberalism and argue that, despite some common aims, Rawls's approach differs significantly from theirs. Finally, I consider whether metaethics can be useful to political philosophy. In attacking metaethics, Dworkin and Korsgaard have different aims. The first wants to rule out all forms of scepticism about values made possible by defending any kind of Archimedeanism. A theory is Archimedean if it purports to "stand outside a whole body of belief and to judge it as a whole from premises or attitudes that owe nothing to it" [Dworkin 1996, 88]. The latter, on the contrary, presents a theory of the practical function of moral concept as a broad charge against moral realism, intended as a metaphysical theory about normative entities, which exist independently of moral concepts. Despite such differences, they can be considered metaethical quietists for they share three main claims: 1) there is no metaethical grounding for normative ethics, thus morality is autonomous; 2) we should give up on metaphysics, moral theories need to be metaphysically light ; 3) moral philosophy is to provide normative judgments and practical solutions to moral problems and, thus, moral philosophy is to be considered eminently practical. Considering these three points, it might be possible to wonder whether Rawls's political liberalism should be considered a form of metaethical quietism. Indeed, holding that non-moral theses are irrelevant to the justification of moral theories, Rawls defends moral theory as a discipline independent from any philosophical inquiry [Rawls 1974]. Moreover, proposing a freestanding conception, neutral towards any moral and philosophical doctrine to provide the basis for an overlapping consensus, political liberalism explicitly aims not to appeal to any metaphysics to sustain itself [Rawls 1993]. Finally, political liberalism employs political constructivism, which "deliberately stays on the surface, philosophically speaking" [Rawls, 1985]. However, despite these apparent similarities, there is a fundamental difference between Rawls's account and Dworkin and Korsgaard's metaethical quietism. Although Dworkin and Korsgaard present their positions as if they were opposing metaethics as a theoretical enterprise, they cannot help to work within its field. Dworkin presents a two-step argument against metaethics contending that the distinction between normative and metaethical claims dissolves because it is not possible to have a metaethical proposition neutral about the content of substantive moral claims. Metaethics fails to be neutral, the argument goes, if two conditions apply: if it is possible to find a plausible normative interpretation of metaethical claims; and it is also possible to demonstrate that metaethical claims are philosophically distinct from normative propositions. Contra Dworkin, it is important to stress that providing cases in which the two conditions apply is not enough to prove that all possible metaethical claims are in fact normative. Consider the following proposition "there is a right answer to the question whether X is morally right". This is a distinct metaethical claim, not committed to any normative view for it is consistent with both X being morally right, or X being morally wrong. More generally, it is possible to wonder whether anti-Archimedeanism can be defended without taking an Archimedean standpoint: does not anti-Archimedeanis need Archimedean leverage to be consistent? If Dworkin says that his anti-Archimedeanist position is indeed metaethical, his account is self-refuting. If he succeeds in showing that anti-Archimedeanism is actually a part of normative philosophy, it is not clear why he engages in a debate he considers non-existent. Korsgaard, on the contrary, argues for a sharp contrast between theoretical and practical reasonings, which have different kinds of content. In this sense, theoretical reasoning purports to describe reality, whether practical reasoning refers to the solution of a practical problem. Korsgaard seems to think that since theoretical and practical reasoning are different in content and metaethics regards itself as a theoretical discipline, it is misplaced. Indeed, moral concepts are practical and, thus, "there is [no] difference between doing metaethics and doing normative or practical ethics." [Korsgaard 2003, 121] However, if Korsgaard is aiming to go "beyond" metaethical debates, it is not clear why she engages with and directly challenges traditional metaethical theories, such as realism and expressivism. Moreover, it is possible to argue that Korsgaard is just defending a peculiar metaethical theory, a sort of response-dependence realism [McPherson 2010]. Dworkin and Korsgaard endorse metaethical quietism in order to defend the idea that normative ethics is autonomous in the sense of not being influenced by non-moral theories. However, their views cannot really do without metaethics, so I now consider whether Rawls's political constructivism can achieve such aim. Rawls claims the autonomy of political philosophy and he maintains his political conception to be "robust", so that changes in other related fields of inquiry do not challenge its justification. In this sense, Rawls is more radical than Dworkin and Korsgaard for he argues for the independence of political philosophy not only from metaethics, but also from substantive moral theories. Moreover, he does not question the value of metaethics per se: from his point of view, citizens can discuss metaethical questions as much as they want. However, a political philosopher who wants to provide a solution to a practical problem (in his case that of the stability for the right reasons in liberal pluralistic societies) needs to avoid such questions. Metaethical issues are misplaced in political philosophy because they rely on a different ground. This is why political constructivism does not compete with moral intuitionism or Kantian constructivism. It simply does not engage with questions about the nature of moral propositions. Here Rawls's proposal resembles Rorty's invite to "stop the debate" for it pragmatically does not work [see, Rorty 1982], and his attempt to reconcile different worldviews looks like a Wittgensteinian therapy for liberal societies. I call this, "philosophical quietism". It seems that quietism wants to secure the independence and autonomy of normative theory. The discussion above shows that such a strategy is at least problematic. And if metaethics can be considered an independent field of inquiry (though it may not be neutral) it seems that there are certain problems, relevant also to political philosophy, that need to be addressed by metaethical inquiry to be correctly evaluated. One the most long-standing problems in political philosophy is that of disagreement in pluralistic society, but disagreement is a traditional and inescapable subject for metaethicists. Indeed, it makes a difference whether disagreement is dealt from a relativistic, subjectivist, or objectivist perspective for this affects how moral disputes are to be considered and handled. If emotivism turns out to be correct disagreements are to be settled by persuasion, whereas if moral realism is true a posteriori argument are going to be weighted more than if error theory is correct. The point is that if political philosophers are to address the problem of disagreement, metaethical understanding is fundamental to assess the object of inquiry. Different understandings of disagreement, let them be more ore less consistent with our experience, imply different normative answers. In this sense, disagreement is a paradigmatic case for the need of metaethical understanding in political philosophy.

Part I. Laying the Groundwork -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Understanding "Meaning" -- 3. African Metaphysical Thought: What We Mean and Why It Is Important -- Part II. African Conceptions of Meaning in Life -- 4. Some Traditional African Conceptions of Meaning in Life -- 5. Rejecting the Obsolete -- 6. Accounts of Life's Meaningfulness from a Contemporary African Perspective -- 7. Passionate Yearning Theory as a Theory of Meaning in Life -- Part III. The Meaning(lessness) of Life -- 8. A "Concept" of the Meaning of Life -- 9. Death and Meaninglessness -- Part IV. Living with Meaninglessness -- 10. The Path of Meaninglessness: Beyond Ada Agada's Consolationism -- 11. The Philosophy of Indifference: An Introduction -- 12. Indifference and the Future of Human Existence: Towards an Anti-Natalist Destiny and Specie Suicide? -- 13. Conclusion. .