One of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary philosophy is the question of the lifeworld. It often appears as a world of everyday action, from which philosophy springs, yet without being able to merge into it. On the occasion of Hans Blumenberg's 90th birthday, Suhrkamp Verlag is now presenting an estate text in which the philosopher takes a far more radical approach to the problem. Blumenberg understands the lifeworld not as a factual world or an everyday world, but as the world as it would be if there were no unanswered questions, no unsatisfied needs, no unsecured statements in it. In this world of self-evidence, philosophy is not yet possible or no longer necessary. Blumenberg's comparisons range from Kant's "thing-in-itself" to the black holes of astronomers to the state of wish-less happiness, and they are always surprising.