16 beyond wishful thinkingdefective as practice. Th eir practical consequences reveal their theo-
retical defi ciencies.Th e combination of our mortality with our groundlessness imparts to
human life its pressing and enigmatic character. We struggle in our brief
time in the midst of an impenetrable darkness. A small area is lighted
up: our civilizations, our sciences, our works, our loves. We prove un-
able to defi ne the place of the lighted area within a larger space devoid
of light, and must go to our deaths unenlightened.
Th ere is an unequal relation between our groundlessness and our
mortality. Th e latter is a more fundamental defect in the human condi-
tion than the former. If we enjoyed eternal and perennially rejuvenated
and embodied life in historical time, our inability to discern the ground
of our existence might not seem so daunting. We could always hope to
make progress later on, in discovering the ground of our existence. We
would always be brought back to the concerns arising out of the next
moment of existence. Our groundlessness might seem what it does to
some phi los o phers: a theoretical curiosity. It would, in the terms of the
preceding argument, amount to a merely speculative rather than an
existential groundlessness. Although it would remain baffl ing, it would
lose much of its terror.
If, however, we did understand the ground of existence, our under-
standing might or might not assuage our fear of death. Whether it
would or not would depend on our conclusions. Th ere are understand-
ings that might calm our fears: those, for example, that assure us that a
friend of ours is in charge of the universe, that he has given us life, and
that he will deliver us to death only to endow us with yet higher life but
also those that invite us progressively to submerge ourselves in the self-
making and the self- perfection of impersonal being. We have many
reasons desperately to want one of these views to be true.
A central issue in the history of religion is whether it will remain
content to perform the role of providing the consolation that we desire.
A subsequent issue is what we are entitled to hope for if we cannot rest
assured in the expectations that those consoling beliefs hold out for us.
Both issues form major concerns of the argument of this book.
We must die without grasping reasons for our existence other than
those fragments of necessity and chance that scientifi c inquiry suggests