ABSTRACT
Nietzsche once remarked that when people talk a lot about ‘values’ one knows that values are in trouble. The same is true of the meaning of life. That we talk, make nervous, Woody Allenish jokes, write and read books such as this one about it suggests that we are troubled by the topic. Such talk, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. For most of our Western history we have not talked about the meaning of life. This is because we used to be quite certain that we knew what it was. We were certain about it because we thought we knew that over and above this world of doubtful virtue and happiness is another world: a world Nietzsche calls (somewhat ironically) the ‘true world’ or, alternatively expressed, ‘God’.
