From Question to Quest: Literary-Philosophical Enquiries into the Challenges of Life - Hardcover

"This is truly a work of imaginative thinking. It confronts the great questions in a world in which we are all too often content with avoiding them in our obsession with particularity. It listens attentively to the great masters of philosophy and literature which have gone before, but knows that we can never truly think until we have summoned the courage to think for ourselves ... I really enjoyed reading this book!" -Prof David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow; Changyang Chair Professor, Renmin University of China "This book is a perfect illustration of Whitehead's famous metaphor of the flight of an aeroplane. The authors start from the ground of solid observation of, and literary insights into, the challenges of everyday life; then they take a flight into the thin air of speculative thinking, using the resources of philosophy. And then, again, they land for a renewed and fresh interpretation of thorny issues, including suffering, death and immortality. An inspiring quest and a splendid work!" -Prof Jan Van der Veken, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

In facing up to life and its challenges, questions inevitably arise. Different situations provoke specific questions-mostly trivial but frequently fundamental-always seeking some kind of answer. While the transition from question to quest is a rather natural one for human beings and the need for answers is a serious human demand, the quest itself is significant, precisely because it is a human task. This book offers a number of literary-philosophical enquiries into these challenges of life. But it is the one set of quests-stimulated, deepened and widened by literature and philosophy as well as developed in a literary and philosophical way. Among the topics covered are: the search for meaning in life, the quest for wisdom, the aim of moral striving, the need for community life, the importance of relationships, the challenge of suffering, the desire for deliverance, and the longing for immortality.