Ebook: Melancholic Joy: On Life Worth Living

Today, we find ourselves surrounded by numerous reasons to despair, from loneliness, suffering and death at an individual level to societal alienation, oppression, sectarian conflict and war. No honest assessment of life can take place without facing up to these facts and it is not surprising that more and more people are beginning to suspect that the human story will end in tragedy.
However, this focus on despair does not paint a complete and accurate picture of reality, which is also inflected with beauty and goodness. Working with examples from poetry and literature, including Virginia Woolf and Jack Gilbert and the films of Terrence Malick, Melancholic Joy offers an honest assessment of the human condition. It unflinchingly acknowledges the everyday frustrations and extraordinary horrors that generate despair and argues that the appropriate response is to take up joy again, not in an attempt to ignore or dismiss evil, but rather as part of a “melancholic joy” that accepts the mystery of a world both beautiful and brutal.
The world presents us with myriad reasons to despair, from the individual and everyday (e.g., loneliness, suffering, and death), to the social and historical (e.g., alienation, oppression, conflict), to the metaphysical and cosmological (e.g., the inexorable working of entropy). No honest assessment of life can take place without facing up to these facts. Thus, it is not surprising that many people, including many philosophers, come to suspect that the human story ultimately plays out as a tragedy. However, these inducements to despair do not paint the full picture of reality, which is also shot through with beauty, wonder, and goodness. Working with engaging and accessible examples, diverse expressions of poetic and literary insight, and clear philosophical arguments, this book argues that the appropriate response to the darkness that quite rightly extinguishes naive joy is to take up joy again, not in an attempt to recover lost innocence but rather as part of a “melancholic joy” that accepts the inscrutable mystery of a world that is both beautiful and brutal. It offers a unique, and uniquely honest, assessment of the human condition, one that is honest and sensitive enough to sorrow at the presence of unjustifiable, pervasive evil, and wise enough to express gratitude and even love for the gratuitous beauty and grace that suggest something “more.”