Dissecting the modern academic penchant for declaring our world inherently 'meaningless,' Michael Casey points the way toward a truer, nobler humanism.

George Weigel

Michael Casey searchingly analyses the answers of influential enemies of transcedence. His masterful critique coolly exposes the dangers and horrors of "post-metaphysical" dystopias. He vindicates adherence to truth in the struggle for peace, humanity, and justice.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, William P. Reynolds Professor of History,University of Notre Dame

This is a very important book, on a very important question. . . . The author has mastered his writers and a mass of accompanying material with enviable skill and lucidity and made an important and original contribution to metaphysical analysis and exposition.

Max Teichmann, Rockefeller Fellow in International Studies at the London School of Economics

A profound examination of meaninglessness in human life-and above all, of the unhelpful attempts by modern thinkers such as Nietzche, Freud, and Rorty to devise a therapy that will protect us from it.

First Things

Fascinating. . . . Casey's critique of Rorty is one of the most pungent and compelling I've run across. . . . It is also an enormous relief to find Freud discussed intelligently rather than reductively.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Laura Spelman Rockeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago; author of Just War Against Terror