The philosopher Hubert Dreyfus and his former student Sean Dorrance Kelly have a story to tell, and it is not a pretty tale for us moderns. Ours is an age of nihilism, they say, meaning not so much that we have nothing in which to believe, but that we don’t know how to choose among the various things to which we might commit ourselves. Looking down from their perches at Berkeley and Harvard, they see the “human indecision that plagues us all.” In “All Things Shining” they offer readings of classic texts to show both how we got into this mess and how we can overcome it.

Though brief, this is an ambitious book, offering insightful readings of authors including Homer, Dante, Descartes and Kant, as well as the novelists Herman Melville and David Foster Wallace. Mr. Dreyfus and Mr. Kelly believe that great books are the “gathering places” where the major forces of a culture are focused, and so they are able to chart our descent from Homer’s gratitude before many gods to Wallace’s paralysis before a plethora of choices.

“All Things Shining” is not a book that asks, though, which Greeks would have been filled with gratitude, or which Americans have so many options that they are overcome by indecision. The philosophers stay very general, so everyday religious practices, poverty and gender dynamics play no role. This is especially unfortunate because it undermines their call to pay attention to, and be grateful for, the ordinary things around us.