Human beings are the creatures that relate to their transience, mortality, and finitude. This leads them to self-interpretations of various kinds, but the question that humans pose to themselves in light of birth, love, and death ultimately remains open. Rainer Marten demonstrates how literary, theological, and philosophical designs that aim to answer the questions of existence and life are critically seen as expressions of their unanswerability. From antiquity to the present, poets, theologians, and philosophers have touched upon the mystery of finite human life through their poetic self-interpretation. It is the human who is able to reflect on their finitude and who begins to understand that they are more than they know and can know. Content: 1. Pandora 2. Adam and Eve 3. Buddha 4. Muhammad 5. Paul 6. Martin Heidegger: "originally.".