This volume addresses the question of how the great philosophers of the past might have reacted to contemporary discussion around the meaning of life. This edited collection includes over thirty chapters each focusing major philosophical figure from the history of philosophy, and imaginatively engages with the topic from their perspective.

List of contributors; Preface; Chapter 1 Confucius, Richard Kim and Joshua W. Seachris; Chapter 2 The Buddha, Mark Siderits; Chapter 3 Vya-Sa, Arindam Chakrabarti; Chapter 4 Socrates, A.C. Grayling; Chapter 5 Plato, David Skrbina; Chapter 6 Diogenes, Will Desmond; Chapter 7 Zhuangzi, David E. Cooper; Chapter 8 Aristotle, Monte Ransome Johnson; Chapter 9 Epicurus, Catherine Wilson; Chapter 10 Koheleth, Thaddeus Metz; Chapter 11 Epictetus, A.A. Long; Chapter 12 Sextus Empiricus, Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson; Chapter 13 Avicenna, Nader El-Bizri; Chapter 14 Maimonides, Alfred L. Ivry; Chapter 15 Aquinas, Edward Feser; Chapter 16 Montaigne, Stephen Leach; Chapter 17 Descartes, John Cottingham; Chapter 18 Spinoza, Genevieve Lloyd; Chapter 19 Kant, Terry F. Godlove; Chapter 20 Schopenhauer, Robert Wicks; Chapter 21 Kierkegaard, Mark Bernier; Chapter 22 Marx, Amy E. Wendling; Chapter 23 Mill, Frans Svensson; Chapter 24 Nietzsche, Raymond Angelo Belliotti; Chapter 25 Ortega, Pedro Blas González; Chapter 26 Wittgenstein, Reza Hosseini; Chapter 27 Heidegger, Wendell O'Brien; Chapter 28 Sartre, Joseph S. Catalano; Chapter 29 Beauvoir, Jonathan Webber; Chapter 30 Weil, Lissa Mccullough; Chapter 31 Ayer, James Tartaglia; Chapter 32 Camus, William McBride; Chapter 33 Murdoch, Bridget Clarke; Chapter 34 Fanon, Samuel Imbo; Chapter 35 Rorty, Alan Malachowski; Postscript: The blue flower; Bibliography; Index