The question of the meaning of life is a timeless philosophical concern. Rooted deep in the human

heart, it has been explored by great philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas,

Pascal and Rousseau, Kant and Marx. It is so fundamental a question it has occupied intelligent

minds from outside of formal philosophical circles, by pastors and men of letters, by essayists like Montaigne and Emerson, by poets like Virgil and Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare. Indeed, one could hardly count as an educated person without having surveyed history's rich variety of answers

to the question of the meaning of life. Just to ask the question is to participate in a fundamental

human quest. Okay, what I just said is the kind of thing that's been said many times

before in books and in articles in academic and popular venues.

You've probably heard it before.

Did you write this paper?

Yes.

Oh, okay.

This is for you.

I wrote it for you.

You can interrupt me, by the way. I don't mind.

What I just said is so familiar as to be trite.

It's also entirely false.

Every single claim I made, false.

The question of the meaning of life is not a timeless philosophical concern.

No character in a platonic dialogue ever asks about the meaning of life. No Aristotelian

treatise considers it. No homily or tracked by Augustine addresses it. Aquinas never formulated

a questio about the meaning of life. None of the people I name, not Pascal or Rousseau,

Kant or Marx, Virgil, or Dante, Milton, or Shakespeare, Montaigne, or

...