Gerhard Richter's probing examination of survival unfolds the premise that survival is not merely something that is added to 'normal' life, an extension of sorts, but can rather be an intensified form of life itself. From a philosophical perspective, survival thus marks the point of departure for questioning this most intense and essential experience of living. Although rich reflections on the question of survival are to be found in the philosophical and essayistic tradition, the occasion for Richter's study was more immediate: this book emerged from under the pressures of the pandemic that brought before our eyes the fragility not only of corporeal life but also of the social world in which we dwell, from its structures to its cultural practices. Recent global crises have intensified the necessity of reading the palpable transience of a "world-feeling" together with theoretical examinations of survival and the vulnerability of life. Richter's mode of access to this constellation is a genuinely essayistic one: rather than seeking to establish a monolithic concept of survival, he takes careful analytic measure of its manifold meanings. Through an historical arc that extends from Nietzsche via Bloch and Freud to Jean-Luc Nancy and Werner Hamacher, Richter pursues the manifold implications that survival can bear, from living on to intensified living and living toward that which is to come. Entering into this spectrum of meanings makes it clear that survival always must be read again anew, since it—irreducibly—"ever yet solicits understanding for the first time.”