Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the 'why' of human existence.
In The Denial of Death, Becker sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after it was written..
In this way we hope to give our lives meaning.
We create in order to become immortal - to become part of something we believe will last forever.
Becker states that humans live in both the physical world and a symbolic world of meaning, which is where our 'immortality project' resides.
The book argues that human civilisation is a defence against the knowledge that we are mortal beings.
In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie - man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the 'why' of human existence
