We moderns are encouraged to take an existential leap to authenticity. All good until you get stuck half way. And so begins the midlife malaise—some folks call it a crisis; Kieran Setiya sees it in the plural: a cluster of low-level calamities that need careful prising to reveal their true sources. Finding himself at the lowest part of the U-curve of life, Setiya did what any self-respecting philosopher would do—reach for age-old honed conceptual tools to fight back.