The Mattering Instinct
How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
“The Mattering Instinct is a masterpiece. I wept, I laughed out loud, I came face-to-face with the wellsprings of my life, but mostly I marveled at Rebecca Goldstein’s genius. This book should ignite a revolution.”
―Martin Seligman, best-selling author of Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being
The Mattering Instinct
How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
“The Mattering Instinct is a masterpiece. I wept, I laughed out loud, I came face-to-face with the wellsprings of my life, but mostly I marveled at Rebecca Goldstein’s genius. This book should ignite a revolution.”
―Martin Seligman, best-selling author of Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being
The Mattering Instinct not only offers a new framework for understanding yourself and others that can yield practical insights. It also offers a way of understanding the most irresolvable divides that separate us, which are ripping our society apart.
“The Mattering Instinct is an extraordinary and urgent book. Rebecca Goldstein helps us to see that so much of our lives, and so much of human history, is driven by the need to matter. As technology weakens our social ties and frees us from needing other people, the crisis of mattering will explode. Giving everyone a generous universal basic income will not help. This book, and its delineation of multiple paths to mattering, will.”
―Jonathan Haidt, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Anxious Generation and The Righteous Mind
About the Author
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher, writer, and public intellectual. She is the author of ten books of acclaimed fiction and non-fiction, including 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity.
She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University and has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, her work has been supported by the MacArthur “Genius” grant and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting Institute, Radcliffe Institute, Council of Learned Societies, and the National Science Foundation. In 2015, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. She lives in Boston and in Truro, Massachusetts.
