Abstract: Does life have a meaning, or is it just one damn thing after another? If it has a meaning, what is it? What constitutes the human quest for happiness? What is happiness indeed? Why don’t people agree about it? Can the answer be communicated in words or must it be learned from experience? Countless Russian novels and stories pose these questions. These troubling and unanswerable questions will be explored with the help of literary masterpieces by prominent Russian writers Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Solzhenitsyn.
About the speaker: Prof. V. Krishnappa is a philosopher and the Head of the Philosophy Programme at the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SoLAS). He is also the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Contemporary Ethics (MGCCE) at the RV University, Bengaluru. Prof. Krishnappa’s teaching and research interests include Ancient Greek Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tolstoy, Gandhian Ethics, philosophical and literary reading, philosophy and liberal arts education, pedagogy, and critical thinking.