John Hick on the Role of Cosmic Optimism and Culture in the Meaning of Life

Document Type : Original Research

Authors
Ahmad Pourghasem Shadehi 1
Reyhaneh Sadat Azimi 2
Amir Abbas Alizamani 3
1 PhD Student of Comparative Philosophy, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran (Corresponding Author)
2 PhD Student of Comparative Philosophy, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran
3 Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
10.30497/prr.2016.1760
Abstract
The question of the “meaning of life” has always studied by philosophers like John Hick and led them to make an explanation regarding their philosophical bases about it. John Hick mentions “the meaning of life” in his work based on the concepts he borrows from Wittgenstein and Kant and states that the meaning of life depends on an interrelation between the human and the world. Thus, he inevitably talks about the world as a place in which the human experiences his life and then he relates the explanation of the world to the cosmic optimism. He, then, thinks that the cosmic optimism depends on religious beliefs. Therefore, he makes a turn from the question of “the meaning of life” to the question of “the world’s nature” and then, from the “world’s nature” to “the religious features which give us better judgments about the world”. The article is going to explain his point of view about the meaning of life regarding his ideas about critical realism and then, is going to consider the results and notes about it such as being allocated merely to Abrahamic religions, being not general and being no implication between cosmic optimism and religious belief.
Keywords
the Meaning of Life
the Practical Meaning of Life
John Hick
Cosmic Optimism
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Philosophy of Religion Research
Volume 13, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
November 2016
Pages 73-90