The essays collected here will have to speak for themselves, of course, and there is not much point in my undertaking now to summarize or to paraphrase what I think each of them says. It would, no doubt, be more appropriate for me to provide a succinct but comprehensive articulation of the general philosophical themes or ambitions (presuming that there are such) upon which the essays converge and by which, despite their having been conceived and composed separately over a period of twenty years, they are in some way unified. I am pretty sure that the convergence is there, given what I know of the personal preoccupations to which my philosophical work responds and of their ineluctability in my life. Unfortunately, however, this is not to say that I understand what I have been up to well enough to be able to give a perspicuous and straightforward account of it. Along with the fragmentary observations that I can offer here, then, I must express uneasy recognition that my prefatory thoughts are unlikely to be any sharper in their aim or firmer in their grasp than those in the essays themselves.

A number of the essays deal rather closely, in one way or another, with questions that pertain to the nature and conditions of moral responsibility. This emphasis may be a bit misleading. Morality, as I understand it, has to do particularly with how we ought to conduct ourselves in our relations with others.