The Creation of Value, vol. 1: v. 1 (Meaning in Life S.)

"Meaning in life,"writes philosopher Irving Singer, "and the meaning in our own lives, result from creative efforts on our part. It is not a prior reality awaiting our discovery. Though we talk about a 'search' for meaning, what we are seeking is primarily a mode of creativity that will make our lives meaningful."

In clear, concise and direct language, Singer delves into the questions that beset most people throughout their lives, questions that often stir painful confusion and distress, and sometimes cause agonies of doubt and despair. Singer's patient consideration of the role of creativity in human experience leads 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.

In The Creation of Value, the first volume of his trilogy on the good life, Singer studies the nature of imagination, idealization, and love in the context of humanity's attempt to define itself through the pursuit of meanings and values that it creates. Singer confronts life's most troubling problems: the meaning of death, the place of anxiety in daily existence, the conditions needed for us to have a life worth living, and the possibility of a love of life in others as well as in ourselves.

Irving Singer is professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His many books include 'The Goals of Human Sexuality', 'Mozart and Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas', 'Santayana's Aesthetics', his acclaimed trilogy 'The Nature of Love', and now the completed 'Meaning in Life' trilogy.