Overview

Sources of Significance confronts consumer capitalism and religious fundamentalism as symptoms of death denial and degenerated cultural heroisms. Advancing and synthesizing the ideas of Ernest Becker, Kenneth Burke, Hans Jonas, Erving Goffman, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Epictetus, this multidisciplinary work offers a sustained response and corrective. It outlines heroisms worth wanting and reveals the forms of gratitude, courage, and purpose that emerge as people come to terms with the meaning of mortality. Corey Anton opens a contemporary dialogue spanning theism, atheism, agnosticism, and spiritualist humanism by re-examining basic topics such as language, self-esteem, ambiguity, guilt, ritual, sacrifice, and transcendence. Acknowledging the growing need for theologies that are compatible with modern science, Anton shows how today's consumerist lifestyles distort and trivialize the need for self-worth, and he argues that each person faces the genuinely heroic tasks of contributing to the world's beauty, harmony, and resources; of forgiving the cosmos for self-conscious finitude; and of gratefully accepting the ambiguity of life's gifts.

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9781557535610

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Corey Anton is an associate professor of communication studies at Grand Valley State University. His publications appear in journals such as Philosophy and Rhetoric, Communication Theory, and Human Studies, and his other books include Selfhood and Authenticity (2001), the edited collection Valuation and Media Ecology (2009), and the forthcoming book Communication Uncovered. He is a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute and a trustee on the board of directors for both the Media Ecology Association and the Institute of General Semantics.

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