Whistling through the darkness
It is an existential, uncertain age, one in which the old coping mechanisms no longer apply. That’s the central concern that Philosophy Department Chair Sean Dorrance Kelly and his former teacher, Hubert Dreyfus, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, discuss in their new book “All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age.” The book, which has garnered significant attention since its publication in January and even landed Kelly on “The Colbert Report,” uses literature as a lens through which to understand how humans have given meaning to their lives from antiquity to the present. It’s only natural, Kelly said, for people to ask themselves questions like “What constitutes human excellence?” and “What is the best way to live a life?” But those questions prove particularly troublesome in this age, he said, because religion no longer provides many people with a shared set of values...