The chapters in this book are all, one might say, about ways of thinking about ethics, politics, and religion in the light of Gödel. Given that we are the limited and weak animals we are, and given that we live in a society, here in Europe at any rate, which has been subjected to over two thousand years of Platonic and Christian education, it seems to us perfectly natural to be concerned with the consistency of what we believe, and also with the consistency of the ways in which we act. It also seems natural for us to try to get a “vue d’ensemble,” a global overview of, ideally, the whole of the universe and of the world which we inhabit. Similarly, what could be more unexceptional than to think that I have a life to live as an individual and that it is of great importance for me to get a “complete” global overview of that life as a whole, if only to try to make it (overall) “good” (in whatever sense of that term is applicable)?
