The Meaning of Lives

This study examines how the process of reading and writing other people's lives implicates readers and authors in what is ultimately an endeavour of autobiographical introspection and reflection. The book starts from the assumption that the use of writing and reading about individual lives in recent scholarship in religion, the human sciences and literary biography has greatly revived interest in the personal, concrete and meaningful side of the study of world religions. The author traces the works of some important contributors to the genre including William James, Erik Erikson, Martin Buber, Henry Murray, Gamaliel Bradford and others, and seeks to show how their biographical methods influenced their conclusions about the nature of religious experience.