Mattering to Others

What is the meaning of life? People have been asking themselves this question for millennia, and yet, in scholarly circles, it is a query that has garnered a questionable reputation: it’s too difficult and subjective, they say, too arbitrary and unserious, but more than anything else: it’s impossible to answer. In this book, at once comprehensive and accessible, philosopher Michael Zichy shows that the opposite is the case. The question of the meaning of life does not just have a personal and existential dimension, it also has an eminently political and social aspect that has previously been ignored. This lends the question a great deal of contemporary relevance and urgency. And it makes it possible to give a clear answer!

In a careful and engaged dialogue with tradition, Zichy elaborates an original approach that does justice to the existential profundity of the question of meaning, highlighting its political significance. In the end, Zichy suggests in his precise and sensitively argued conclusion, life is about mattering to others, for the right reasons and for its own sake. This insight has consequences for our collective life as social beings.