Mara van der Lugt – författare

… likt ouvertyren till Don Juan inleds filosofin med ett mollackord.Arthur Schopenhauer

Hur kan en god och allsmäktig Gud tillåta så mycket lidande i världen? Under 1700- och 1800-talet var den europeiska filosofin inbegripen i en livlig debatt om ondskans problem, som gav upphov till två konkurrerande filosofiska traditioner: optimism och pessimism.

I den här boken återvänder filosofen Mara van der Lugt till en av de mest spännande perioderna i den europeiska filosofins historia. I samtal med tidens stora namn som Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant och Schopenhauer söker hon svar på tillvarons svåra frågor: Rymmer världen mer ont än gott? Är självmord försvarbart? Varför straffas de rättfärdiga, medan de onda når framgång? Är livet över huvud taget värt att leva – eller vore det bättre att aldrig ha blivit född?

I en tid som framhåller optimism, självhjälp och positivt tänkande visar van der Lugt hur pessimismen kan återuppväckas som en källa till medkänsla, tröst – och kanske till och med hopp.

Why “hopeful pessimism” is not a contradiction in terms but a powerful source of moral and political commitmentThe climate debate is rife with calls for optimism. While temperatures rise and disasters intensify, we are asked to maintain optimism and hope, as if the real threat is pessimism and despair. In this erudite and engaging book, Mara van der Lugt argues that this is a mistake: crude optimism can no longer be a virtue in a breaking world, and may well prove to be our besetting vice. In an age of climate change and ecological devastation, the virtue we need is hopeful pessimism.Drawing on thinkers that range from J.R.R.Tolkien and Mary Shelley to Albert Camus and Jonathan Lear, van der Lugt invites us to rethink what we thought we knew about optimism and pessimism, hope and despair, activism and grief. She shows that pessimism is closely linked to a tradition of moral and political activism, and offers a different way to think about pessimism: not as synonymous with despair but as compatible with hope. Gently yet fiercely, van der Lugt argues that what we need to avoid is not pessimism but fatalism or self-serving resignation. Pessimism does not imply the loss of courage or the lack of a desire to strive for a better world; on the contrary, these are the very gifts that pessimism can bestow.What Hopeful Pessimism asks instead is that we strive for change without certainties, without expecting anything from our efforts other than the knowledge that we have done what we are called upon to do as moral agents in a time of change.

An intellectual history of the philosophers who grappled with the problem of evil, and the case for why pessimism still holds moral value for us todayIn the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, philosophers engaged in heated debates on the question of how God could have allowed evil and suffering in a creation that is supposedly good. Dark Matters traces how the competing philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism arose from early modern debates about the problem of evil, and makes a compelling case for the rediscovery of pessimism as a source for compassion, consolation, and perhaps even hope.Bringing to life one of the most vibrant eras in the history of philosophy, Mara van der Lugt discusses legendary figures such as Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Schopenhauer. She also introduces readers to less familiar names, such as Bayle, King, La Mettrie, and Maupertuis. Van der Lugt describes not only how the earliest optimists and pessimists were deeply concerned with finding an answer to the question of the value of existence that does justice to the reality of human suffering, but also how they were fundamentally divided over what such an answer should look like.A breathtaking work of intellectual history by one of today''s leading scholars, Dark Matters reveals how the crucial moral aim of pessimism is to find a way of speaking about suffering that offers consolation and does justice to the fragility of life.

An investigation of what it means to have children—morally, philosophically and emotionally“Do you want to have children?” is a question we routinely ask each other. But what does it mean to create a child? Is this decision always justified? Does anyone really have the moral right to create another person? In Begetting, Mara van der Lugt attempts to fill in the moral background of procreation. Drawing on both philosophy and popular culture, van der Lugt does not provide a definitive answer on the morality of having a child; instead, she helps us find the right questions to ask.Most of the time, when we talk about whether to have children, what we are really talking about is whether we want to have children. Van der Lugt shows why this is not enough. To consider having children, she argues, is to interrogate our own responsibility and commitments, morally and philosophically and also personally. What does it mean to bring a new creature into the world, to decide to perform an act of creation? What does it mean to make the decision that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted? These questions are part of a conversation we should have started long ago. Van der Lugt does not ignore the problematic aspects of procreation—ethical, environmental and otherwise. But she also acknowledges the depth and complexity of the intensely human desire to have a child of our own blood and our own making.