قراءات إضافية | معنى الحياة: مقدمة قصيرة جدًّا

(١) أرسطو وأخلاق الفضيلة

The text of Aristotle most relevant to this book is the Nicomachean Ethics, available in Penguin Classics in an edition by Jonathan Barnes (Harmondsworth, 1976). Jonathan Barnes has also published a useful introduction to Aristotle in the Very Short Introduction series (Oxford, 2000), though not much of it deals with his ethical thought. See also D. S. Hutchinson, The Virtues of Aristotle (London, 1986), and Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge, 1988).

More general studies of ethics relevant to the book’s argument can be found in Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (London, 1968) and After Virtue (London, 1981). A more recent, illuminating study is Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford, 1999).

(٢) شوبنهاور

Schopenhauer’s major work, and the only one referred to in this study, is The World as Will and Representation, ed. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (New York, 1969). Useful introductions to Schopenhauer are to be found in Patrick Gardiner, Schopenhauer (Harmondsworth, 1963), and Brian Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford, 1983). A briefer account is to be found in Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford, 1990), ch. 7.

(٣) نيتشه

Works by Nietzsche cited in this study are The Will to Power (New York, 1975), Beyond Good and Evil, and The Birth of Tragedy. The latter two works can be found in Walter Kaufmann (ed.), Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York, 1968), a convenient selection of Nietzsche’s texts. Classic introductions to his thought are Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, and Antichrist (New York, 1950); R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy (London, 1964); and Arthur C. Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York, 1965). See also Keith Ansell Pearson, Nietzsche (London, 2005), and Michael Tanner, Nietzsche (Oxford). A more substantial study is Richard Schacht, Nietzsche (London, 1983).

(٤) فيتجنشتاين

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in London in 1961, is available in abridged form in Anthony Kenny (ed.), The Wittgenstein Reader (Oxford, 1994). See also Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, 1953), and Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch (Chicago, 1980).

For introductions to Wittgenstein’s thought, see D. F. Pears, Wittgenstein (London, 1971), and Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein (Harmondsworth, 1973). Two more recent introductions, both lucid and helpful, are A. C. Grayling, Wittgenstein (Oxford, 1988), and Ray Monk, Wittgenstein (London, 2005). Monk is also the author of an excellent biography, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London, 1990). A more advanced but equally rewarding study is G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Oxford, 1980).

(٥) الحداثة وما بعد الحداثة

There are various allusions throughout the book to these cultural movements, which the reader might like to have further elucidated. For modernism, Peter Conrad’s monumental Modern Times, Modern Places (London, 1998) is worth dipping in and out of. An excellent theoretical study is Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air (London, 1982). See also Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism (London, 1989), and T. J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea (New Haven and London, 1999).

For postmodernism, see Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis, 1984); Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn (Ithaca, NY, 1987); David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford, 1990); and Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity (London, 1998). Briefer studies of the trend are to be found in Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, and Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford, 1996). A more difficult and substantial study is Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC, 1991).

(٦) ماركس

Marx’s views on ‘species being’ and human nature are to be found mainly in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. This is reprinted among other places in L. Colletti (ed.), Karl Marx: Early Writings (Harmondsworth, 1975). For commentaries on these matters, see Norman Geras, Marx and Human Nature (London, 1983), and Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford, 1990), ch. 8. The essay by Louis Althusser most relevant to my argument is ‘On Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in Lenin and Philosophy (London, 1971).

(٧) فرويد

Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Harmondsworth, 1973) is one of the best introductions to some of his general concepts. His discussion of the death drive is to be found among other places in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. J. Strachey, International Psycho-Analytical Library, ed. E. Jones, 4 (London, 1950). The theme is developed by Norman O. Brown in Life Against Death (London, 1959). For more general accounts of Freud, see Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Chicago and London, 1959), and Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy (New Haven and London, 1970).

(٨) أعمال أخرى

The following works are also referred to in the book:

Julian Baggini, What’s It All About? (London, 2004).
Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, 1969).
John Cottingham, On the Meaning of Life (London, 2003).
Terry Eagleton, Against the Grain: Selected Essays 1975–1985 (London, 1986); William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1986); and Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Oxford, 2003).
Frank Farrell, Subjectivity, Realism and Postmodernism (Cambridge, 1996).
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York, 1962).
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (London, 1998).
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (London, 1958), and Nausea (Harmondsworth, 1963).
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy (London, 1994).
Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London, 1991).