Clifford Williams, <i>Religion and the Meaning of Life: An Existential Approach</i> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Pp. vi + 189. £22.99 (Pbk). ISBN: 978-1-108-43298-6

The 'existential' approach flagged up in the book's subtitle signals that the author proposes to address the problem of life's meaning not so much via abstract analysis or conceptual mapping, but focusing instead on the 'lived realities' of the human condition as we confront the inevitable structural challenges of life such as boredom, emotional trauma, and the fear of death.From the outset, then, the reader is invited to participate in an emotionally engaged style of philosophizing, which focuses on the 'facts the heart can feel', in Camus's phrase (4) -though as the author points out, this does not deny a key role for the intellect in pinpointing and diagnosing the obstacles and threats to meaning, and thereby facilitating the search for remedies.A paradigm case of the threat to meaning comes from boredom -not mere banal everyday boredom, but 'existential boredom' -that terrifying and pervasive sense that Tolstoy described when he found, at the age of fifty, that although he continued to breathe and eat and sleep, he felt that there was 'no life' in him because he had no desires whose satisfaction he would have found reasonable (31).Such bleak indifference can lead to agony, despair, frustration, rebellion, or even suicidal feelings.Yet there is an alternative, one whose importance is eloquently highlighted throughout Williams's argument: such distressing feelings can, paradoxically, be interpreted in a positive light, as 'calls from eternity'.Drawing heavily on Kierkegaard, the thought here is that rather than seeking to evade or bemoan such feelings, we might construe them as a divine call to be transformed (39).Instead of futile attempts to escape boredom, the alternative is that we become emotionally open to the possibility of a radical change of outlook, so that activities that might previously have seemed insignificant are now seen to be replete with meaning and value (41).A substantial chapter of the book is devoted to describing the kinds of activity that are indeed vehicles for meaning, picking out in particular the achievement of worthwhile goals, creativity, the cultivating of virtues and enriching emotions (such as reverence and gratitude), and the giving and receiving of love.Much of the material here overlaps with what one finds in secular philosophical discussions of the ingredients of a meaningful life, and this is consistent with Williams's admirably open-minded insistence that the topic of the meaning of life is one where 'theists and nontheists can learn from each other' ( 2).Yet