Human Predicaments ─ And What to Do About Them

In his latest work, philosopher John Kekes delves into anthropological, historical, and literary material far beyond the usual confines of philosophical works in order to explore the serious and deep problems of our lives. These problems are serious because they prevent us from living as we think we should, and they are deep because they force us to choose between conflicting possibilities of life, each of which we have good reasons to value. Living as we think we should depends on finding reasonable ways of coping with these problems, making difficult choices, and resolving our conflicts. Central to each chapter is a comparison between our conventional approach to coping with one of the problems of life and a quite different approach followed by other people at other times, places, or in other cultures. These comparisons enable us to see that decision-making is an ideal only in our evaluative framework and that the possibilities of life are richer and more varied than we often recognize in our context. These comparisons enrich our lives, allow us to be less parochial, and to become more thoughtful about how we see the possibilities of life.

John Kekes is the author of many books, most recently The Human Condition andHow Should We Live?, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press.