Seeking Meaning and Making Sense
Seeking Meaning and Making Sense
An engaging collection of short essays that range across philosophy, politics, general culture, morality, science, religion and art. The focus is on questions of Meaning, Value and Understanding. Topics include: Making sense of religion, of society, of evil, of art and science, and of nature. Read Seeking Meaning and Making Sense.
Opinions and reviews
“Professor Haldane’s essays are serious in the way that the great writers of the Scottish Enlightenment were serious. He asks what it means to be human in the twenty-first century, and what ethical obligations our idea of humanity imposes on us. They are provocative in the best, and only useful, sense of the word: inviting the reader to consider and respond to his arguments. Their range is wide, extending from a disquisition on the morality of stem-cell research to a very funny parody of “The Da Vinci Code”.
— Alan Massie, author The Thistle and the Rose, columnist Spectator, etc.
“This volume provides further evidence that John Haldane is our finest contemporary philosophical journalist. No other recent figure has written as elegantly or as insightfully about the contemporary landscape of ethics, religion and the post-modern search for meaning. And surely no one other than Professor Haldane could use such materials as the Toy Story films and the British pantomime to gently instruct us about such weighty matters as Pope Gregory the Great’s revolutionary teaching on religion and representational art.”
— David Solomon, University of Notre Dame.
“[Haldane] writes seriously and with care for detail, providing interest and thoughtful enjoinder, rather than spurious argument; and sometimes gleams with a delightful sense of humour … absorbing and very worthwhile”.
— Franciscan.
“John Haldane has established himself as a philosopher who has something to say to the non-specialist … [He] shows a keen appreciation of contemporary British life, not least its moral and intellectual health, arguing for the view that they are closely related … There is a breadth that is impressive: bioethics, aesthetics, the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment, the British Union, the problem of evil …”
— New Blackfriars.
“A delightful, entertaining and quietly provocative little book … the engaging clarity with which he tackles the wide range of subject matter, would make this book a valuable resource around which to build discussion … highly recommended for all thinking people”.
— Reviews in Religion and Theology.
