• An intelligent, witty, and refreshingly approachable guide to the ultimate question
• Ties in philosophy and literature - from the 12th century scholastics to Marx, Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Beckett
• Reveals how the the philosophy of language can be applied to questions of any kind, how meaning can be understood and applied, and where the limits of questioning lie
• Eagleton suggests that the problem of the meaning of life arose with modernity. He looks at the cultural and philosophical reasons for this, and examines the meaninglessness that appears to plague our times - from 'New Age softheadedness' to fundamentalism
• After surveying a variety of possible candidates, Eagleton suggests his own, perhaps surprising, conclusion to the answer to the meaning of life

 
Philosophers have an infuriating habit of analysing questions rather than answering them', writes Terry Eagleton, who, in these pages, asks the most important question any of us ever ask, and attempts to answer it.

So what is the meaning of life? In this witty, spirited, and stimulating inquiry, Eagleton shows how centuries of thinkers - from Shakespeare and Schopenhauer to Marx, Sartre and Beckett - have tackled the question. Refusing to settle for the bland and boring, Eagleton reveals with a mixture of humour and intellectual rigour how the question has become particularly problematic in modern times. Instead of addressing it head-on, we take refuge from the feelings of 'meaninglessness' in our lives by filling them with a multitude of different things: from football and sex, to New Age religions and fundamentalism. 

Many of the readers of this book are likely to be as sceptical of the phrase "the meaning of life" as they are of Santa Claus', he writes. But Eagleton contends that in a world where we need to find common meanings, it is important that we set about answering the question of all questions; and, in conclusion, he suggests his own answer.