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The essay is at its core a criticism of a significant tendency in contemporary philosophy, which has been coined moral rationalism. It started out as a commentary on an article by Harry Frankfurt, called Rationalism in Ethics, in which the tendency in contemporary moral philosophy to reduce the domain of morality to that of reason is critically judged, but soon took off into directions unthought-of by Frankfurt. The aim of the inquiry became twofold. Firstly, to advocate a certain style of doing moral philosophy, one in which analytic argument is restored to its proper place in the philosophical hierarchy, namely as being but a tool to gain more clarity on what we already are, and not as being an all-powerful lever with which to lift ourselves up to a platform from which to judge, as if from a vacuum, the concrete contexts in which we are immersed. Secondly, to highlight a phenomenon that is highly undervalued in current ethical debate, that of moral contingency. Contingency refers to the morals intrinsic vulnerability, the fact that it is prone to unforeseeable shifts and breakdowns, which might make all we love turn into its opposite. One of the main things the inquiry purports to do is to show that this basic fact might be reacted to in different ways, and how different attempts to cope with it have resulted in different existential positions. I begin with a general outline of moral rationalisms main tenets and Frankfurts criticism of it, to which I add some considerations of my own. From this, we move to the genealogical question of how a theory as outlandish as moral rationalism managed to become popular in the first place. My contention is that its deeper causes lie neither in mere philosophical confusions, nor in any practical problems, but in a less obvious moral unease, namely the fear of contingency. Contrary to moral rationalism, I claim that contingency is not only a possible source of terror but also of the most profound meaningfulness.