ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 suggests that one of the causes of our bewilderment these days is that we lack foundations for our values. In this chapter, we examine the idea of foundations more carefully. To have a foundation for our values just means that they are endorsed or underwritten by some order or being larger than us. Historically, the two most important value-foundations have been God and Nature. The chapter’s main goal is to describe how neither works any longer and that we must therefore approach our crisis without metaphysical foundations. We are adrift, and should admit as much. Even religious believers can accept this insight into our fundamental existential precarity.
