Books I have learned from, argued with, returned to, and written about in Life After.
Influence can be a disagreement as much as an agreement. These notes describe each book’s place in the manuscript.
Meaning
A book I initially resisted, then returned to. Frankl’s changing, particular meanings became part of how I thought about what gives this life meaning, now.
Introduction; Chapters 2 and 3
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Meaning
The continuing quest for a good life helped me think about how changing meanings can belong to a whole life. The work of figuring it out is part of the life itself.
Chapter 2
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Self
A foundation for thinking about flourishing, virtue, practice and the difference between a good life and a life filled with amusement.
Chapter 2; the wider framework
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Purpose
Wolf’s account of active engagement with things of worth helped me articulate Purpose. My question is what happens when a worthwhile contribution begins to consume the person making it.
Chapters 2 and 3
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Life after
Brison helped me think about rebuilding a self after a life has been shattered. The possibility of growth gives no credit to the violence that made rebuilding necessary.
Chapter 1
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Purpose
Strecher sent me into the research on purpose and its associations with health and life outcomes. Disagreeing with some of the definitions helped me make my own distinctions clearer.
Chapters 2 and 3
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The framework
A college book I returned to with new questions. Polybius’s mixed constitution helped me think about how good things need enough power to restrain one another.
Chapter 3; the book’s constitutional argument
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Meaning
Mill’s account of his breakdown and recovery gave me a way to consider why knowing what ought to make us happy is not the same as feeling happiness.
Chapter 2
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Life after
A point of disagreement as well as an influence. I examine the claim that misfortune makes us better, and why growth does not require calling the suffering good.
Chapter 1
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Life after
Part of the background reading on trauma and its effects. Life After draws on that literature while asking a wider question about rebuilding after many kinds of rupture.
Chapter 1 background reading
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Self
The relationship between what we think about and how we live sits near the beginning of the manuscript. Reflection matters, and so does learning which thoughts deserve our trust.
Opening epigraph; Self
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The wider view
One of the books in the manuscript’s wider conversation about human beings and the stories through which we understand ourselves.
Introduction background reading
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12 books