Christianity and theology aside, human life is severe in many ways, and, adding injury to insult, human death is no easier. Candor requires that we acknowledge as much, even though we humans seem to be unable to improve our predicament in any lasting way. If some children are sheltered from life’s severity for a time, reality eventually intrudes, painfully and undeniably. This intrusion prompts humans to undertake all kinds of conduct for the sake of self-defense or at least temporary relief. Psychologists talk of human “coping mechanisms” and “diversionary tactics” in this connection.

Many people fold in the face of life’s severity and settle for a kind of despair or hopelessness about human life. Bertrand Russell, for instance, recommended that a human life should be based “only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair” (1903, pp. 45–46). (It is doubtful that Russell was able to follow his own recommendation, given his aim to “instill faith in hours of despair,” but that is a separate matter.) This book contends that life’s severity does not underwrite a life of unyielding despair.