The world is 'everything that is the case,' says Wittgenstein. But might it be otherwise? Does this 'everything' include the possible other ways it might be? Or even just the existence of those other possibilities in the minds of individuals?

The whole must be the true, Hegel asserts. If we can grasp the whole picture, we will have grasped the truth. But in what sense is this 'whole' a normative concept? Is truth then no more than a fully comprehensive understanding of what already is? If so, in what sense does it differ from science? Opening our eyes on another pallidly unsatisfying day, are we to find comfort in the explanations of molecular biology and psychoanalysis? But this world goes on, and exceeds our understanding as it does so, and we turn inwards as before to find the reasons for our sense of lack.