Please answer the following completely and accurately:
- What does Kafka suggest in The Hunger Artist as the lesson to be learned concerning the meaning of life as illustrated by the career of the title character?
- As Deborah Solomon writes about Arthur Miller in “Emergence of Hope,” there is an underlying current of hopefulness in his otherwise dark and pessimistic play Death of a Salesman. How does Solomon see that theme unfolding in the play?
3.What is existential fear of death and how does it threaten to rob life of its meaning? How might membership and participation in something greater than oneself help us to deal creatively with this source of existential fear?
4.According to M. A. Casey, some thinkers argue that the belief in objective values as the foundation for the meaning of life actually undermines the search for meaning in life and that, paradoxically, skepticism and relativism about human values and the meaning of life actually facilitate its acquisition. Present the reasoning for this conclusion.
5.For Schopenhauer, how can the “Will to Meaning” be seen to rest on a mistake?
6.According to Frankl, what is the main objection to the thesis he calls absolutism as an account of the nature of values? How does he attempt to characterize objective values without falling into absolutism?
7.In The Respectful Prostitute, Lizzie allows herself to be coerced into signing a false affidavit on morally specious grounds. What are these considerations? Explain why they are morally irrelevant to the situation they are invoked to decide.
8.If the human essence is simply to create ourselves through the exercise of our groundless freedom, how does this result in our being “condemned to be free?”
9.According to author of “The Meaning of Life,” Terry Eagleton, how can human life have a meaning even in a Godless universe?
10.In what way is The Trial an allegory for human life in general and thus a way of stating the problem of meaning for human life?
11.How does Casey defend the “will to meaning” from the charge that it naturally leads to intolerance and persecution and thus undermines the search for meaning in life?
12.Suppose that the universe is nothing but a physical system, and human beings, including all their thoughts, feelings, and actions can be explained in wholly physical terms. How, according to Frankl, does such a scenario threaten to undermine the value of human life?
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