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It is not satisfactory for us simply to affirm a denial of meaning in life. Such affirmation still entails giving some meaning to the denial. The suspension of meaning is more significant than an affirmation of meaning or meaninglessness. It is in this sense that the believer is first of all a philosopher, and not a theologian. Anxiety over death reveals the “existential” aspects humankind, that is, “Dasein’s existence structure.”

Since it has been found that the biases towards the near and the future are irrational, it follows that people who are rationalists, in the sense that their dominant aim is to lead a life in which they have only rational attitudes, must rid themselves of these biases. But since it has also been found in these chapters that these biases involve the bias towards the perceived and the mechanism of spontaneous induction, this amounts to getting rid of the latter two as well. This chapter argues that getting rid of the bias towards the perceived exposes one to a sense of the meaninglessness of life, in which local matters dwindle into insignificance in a cosmic perspective, and that getting rid of the mechanism of spontaneous induction exposes one to a sense of the precariousness of life, a pervasive sense of insecurity. Therefore, this aim is at odds with the satisfactionalist aim of maximizing the desire-fulfilment of one’s life. Hence, the first of three dilemmas or conflicts between two fundamental aims are encountered: the rationalist and the satisfactionalist aims.

In 1988, Cicely Saunders published a journal article on spiritual pain, reproduced here. She examines how in the care of the individual in pain, there must be attention to the body, to the family, and to the patient's inner life. For this, expertise in symptom control is required, as well as group understanding, together with an ability to make sense of the inner concerns and values of the person. Above all, there is a need to engage with ‘the whole area of thought concerning moral values throughout life’ — this she defines as ‘the spiritual’. Where a desolate sense of meaninglessness is encountered by the person at the end of life, here, she declares, one finds the essence of ‘spiritual pain’.

Theism can be an existential hypothesis confirmable by empirical evidence only if the reference of the proper name ‘God’ can be spelled out in words that are mostly used literally. However, it is argued in Chapter 7 that all psychological terms characterizing God are used in an irreducibly analogical manner, because by claiming that God is bodiless, theists annul the very conditions for applying psychological predicates to another entity literally. The term ‘person’ as applied to God cannot be used literally either. But if theism can only be formulated in terms that are used in irreducibly analogical ways, it conveys virtually nothing by what it says, so that it cannot be an existential hypothesis that is confirmable by empirical evidence. Richard Swinburne’s attempts to show that theism can be stated in words, most of which are used literally, are criticized, as are his philosophical arguments for substance dualism, which are meant to show that even human identity consists in the continuing life of a spirit, which can exist without a body.

It is not enough just to remain fearful in the face of death, or to draw back before “the cup.” Christ, like all humankind, passed from fear to anxiety. From a recoil before what is imminent (fear), he goes on to pose the question of nothingness and of the possibility of meaning (anxiety). But he does not remain simply in this position of taking what is human in charge. Far from simply shutting himself up in his anxiety, he addresses the Father in a cry of dereliction. The Son is he who suffers from anxiety and passes it to the Father.

The chapter considers the argument that, when taken in the context of the cosmos at large, we emerge as tiny, ineffectual, and, hence, insufficient. On the background of the whole universe, whatever we do is negligible and, therefore, meaningless. But this argument supposes that only a life that affects the whole universe can be considered meaningful. The chapter argues that there is no reason to accept this highly perfectionist supposition. The discussion distinguishes between perspectives, on the one hand, and standards, on the other, and claims that we can have a wide perspective that considers a life in the context of the cosmos while holding standards that do not require that life to affect the whole cosmos.

This chapter gives a sense of certain discourses that were capable of challenging the powerful and familiar trope of provincial meaninglessness. The main authors of fiction addressed here are Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky and, more briefly, Nikolai Leskov, both of whom imagine geographies that are not organized around a simple provinces–capital divide. Melnikov focuses explicitly and exclusively on a particular region (the Volga), and his fiction is read alongside the tradition of local scholarship that fostered his intensely local point of view. Leskov, by contrast, often imagines Russian space as open and uncentered, populated by wanderers and off-the-grid characters whose movements take little account of the provintsiia-stolitsa opposition. Both writers resist the polarized symbolic geography that is this book's focus, and although their resistance takes different forms, they share an interest in specific places that they invest with specific meanings. And yet this chapter argues, when it comes to reception and canonization, a nuanced representation of Russian space seems not to have worked to either writer's advantage.

This chapter argues that, for Anton Chekhov, certain particularities of place matter in a way they often do not for other writers. It considers where, how, and how much. In other words, the chapter asks if Chekhov's provinces stand for the provinces, or if they stand for something else. A previous chapter has argued that for Gogol the provinces never really stand for the provinces, since his symbolic geography never allows us to imagine that a better life might be found in some other real place. But Chekhov's provinces, notwithstanding their clearly and even insistently symbolic import, are often locations that we could imagine pinpointing on a map of Russia: the specificities of place do matter in Chekhov's world, if in subtle ways. And perhaps most importantly, a place's meanings can change over time.

In 1973, Donald Davie attributed the famous difficulty of Prynne’s poetry to its etymological ‘logic’. More recently, Prynne himself proposed that we read poetry with ‘mental ears’, listening for latent etymological connections. This chapter considers how etymology can be used to read Prynne’s poems, focusing specifically on morphological patterns such as the splitting of words across line endings and the repetition of roots or affixes. Such patterns are consistent across Prynne’s large and varied oeuvre; detailed readings are given here of The White Stones (1969), Unanswering Rational Shore (2001), and Kazoo Dreamboats (2011). These readings find that Prynne’s poetic language communicates on the boundary between meaningfulness and meaninglessness, where every word disrupts and is disrupted by its history.

The chapter discusses a particularly popular approach to category mistakes: the meaninglessness view, according to which category mistakes are infelicitous because they are meaningless. A range of arguments are presented against the view. One central argument concerns principles of compositionality, and it is argued that while adopting a certain version of type-theoretic semantics provides the most promising avenue for defenders of the view to handle compositionality, this approach does not succeed in supporting the view. Other arguments raised against the view concern synonymy facts; embeddings of category mistakes in propositional attitude ascriptions; and uses of category mistakes in metaphors. Finally, some positive motivations in favour of the view are presented but dismissed, and the meaninglessness view as a whole is rejected.

This chapter examines the structure of the concept of alienation as well as the problems associated with its critique. Three important points are discussed. First, alienation is tied to the problem of a loss of meaning; an alienated life is one that has become impoverished or meaningless, but it is a meaninglessness that is intertwined with powerlessness and impotence. Second, alienation is (therefore) a relation of domination, but of a kind that is not captured by standard descriptions of unfreedom and heteronomy. Third, alienation means disconnectedness or alienness, but an alienness that differs from simple relationlessness. The chapter also considers alienation as a diagnostic concept and some problems to which the theory of alienation is vulnerable. In particular, it explores alienation in relation to objectivism, perfectionism, and paternalism, along with poststructuralism and its critique of the subject. Finally, it analyzes Michel Foucault's rejection of essentialist appeals to human nature and the very idea of subjectivity that appears to underlie the critique of alienation.

This chapter argues that it would be wisest to posit the cinema of Richard Linklater as the cinematic bridge between European Modernism and American Postmodernism—the “little space in between” Godard and Tarantino. Yet the collaborative, cooperative working practice that renders communities and couples onscreen is rather particular to Linklater, whose way of exploring limited time-frames by limited means results in films in which “somehow it all feels true and accurate in a composite sort of way”. Because Linklater is prompted to make his financial and creative limitations as part of his craft, his cinema often reflects the experience of a specific time from all sides. Although none of them are nostalgic, they are all fleeting, immanent, transient, and ephemeral. Any leaning towards nostalgia is curtailed by meaninglessness in Waking Life (2001), and by madness in A Scanner Darkly (2006).

The rise of mass education has led to mass research—quantity dominates quality. A ruthless institutional competition for status, plus academics pushing to get published in the ‘right’, career-enhancing journals, has led to the fetishization of journal outputs even when they are of little meaning or value to society. This situation is now endemic within the system of academic research and publication, and is strongly driven and sustained by academics themselves, even when they are unwilling to admit it. Academics, both individually and collectively, exercise considerable control over the content and nature of social science research, its scrutiny, assessment, and dissemination. They also have considerable control over the practices of various scientific institutions, including universities and their departments, funding bodies, conferences, and publications. Social science researchers underestimate and diminish their own responsibility for this state of affairs and sometimes prematurely adopt a victim position, blaming an impersonal system.

Kierkegaard is interested in the problem of the meaninglessness of life. He regards this as an important modern phenomenon that must be taken seriously. This chapter begins a treatment of the second part of The Concept of Irony, where Kierkegaard examines different forms of what he calls “modern irony.” The positions that he looks at are very similar to that of the modern nihilist. We examine this analysis to see what insights it might hold for the modern problem of the absence of meaning in the twenty-first-century world. This chapter introduces Kierkegaard’s contemporary Johan Ludvig Heiberg, who tried to alert his age to the crisis of nihilism and subjectivism in a way that anticipates some of Kierkegaard’s considerations. This chapter goes through Kierkegaard’s critical assessment of Hegel’s understanding of Socrates and history to see where Kierkegaard follows Hegel and where he strikes out on his own.