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March 8, 2008
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What on earth is 42?
Shakespeare's work was the product of a life, and a life lived to the full. Meaning too might only emerge from such fulsome engagement.
To put it another way, life is a gift. It is good. It flourishes in experiences like love, explains John Cottingham, professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, and author of On the Meaning of Life. He believes that philosophy can no more provide meaning than science can.
This is because life's giftedness, its goodness and its loveliness are essentially spiritual qualities. They can be assessed by rational enquiry. But they cannot be accessed by the cool calculations of reason. They must be experienced.
To put it another way, when the poet William Blake urged us "to see a World in a Grain of Sand", he was not suggesting anything literal. Rather, his words captured something of the world transfigured through beauty and meaning.
For Prof Cottingham, this is what it means to have faith. "For in acting as if life has meaning, we will find, thank God, that it does."
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What on earth is 42?
Posted by thdyck on March 8, 2008
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