Creation of Value

In clear and concise language, philosopher Irving Singer delves into questions that beset most people throughout their lives, questions that often stir painful confusion and distress, and sometimes cause agonies of doubt and despair. He considers the role of creativity in human experience leading him to distinguish between happiness and meaningfulness, and to offer challenging ideas about what would constitute a life that is "significant", important in itself and in its consequences. Even if values pass on through generations, he claims, they must be created anew by each individual. The book provides a study of the imagination, idealization, and love in the context of humanity's attempt to define itself through the pursuit of meanings and values that it creates. The author confronts life's most troubling problems: the meaning of death; the place of anxiety in daily existence; the conditions needed by us to have a life worth living; and the possibility of a love of life in others as well as in ourselves.