EXCERPT It’s an indisputable fact that many things do in fact matter to us—what we have for breakfast, the well-being of our loved ones, the twists and turns of geopolitics — but we aren’t here concerned with whether we care about these things, but why, which means on the one hand explaining such care, and on the other seeing if it can be justified. Ultimately, we want to know if there is good reason to care about anything at all. But there are two ways of parsing this question: Impersonal Formulation: Why do things have value? Personal Formulation: Why does life have meaning? When we ask why ‘things’ have value, there are different sorts of things we could have in mind. For instance, we might be talking about objects (e.g., ‘This tool is useful’), events (e.g., ‘That performance was beautiful’), or states (e.g., ‘It is good that you’re reading this essay’). I’ll group these together under the heading of ‘objects’, in so far as they are opposed to actions (e.g., ‘You did the right thing’).…