Philosophy covers an immense range of topics, but part of its concern has always been with mortal life: how to understand it and how to live it. These essays are about life: about its end, its meaning, its value, and about the metaphysics of consciousness. Some of the topics have not received much attention from analytic philosophers, because it is hard to be clear and precise about them, and hard to separate from a mixture of facts and feelings those questions abstract enough for philosophical treatment. Such problems must be attacked by a philosophical method that aims at personal as well as theoretical understanding, and seeks to combine the two by incorporating theoretical results into the framework of self-knowledge. This involves risk. Large, relevant questions too easily evoke large, wet answers.

Every theoretical field faces a contest between extravagance and repression, imagination and rigor, expansiveness and precision. Fleeing from the excesses of the one, it is easy to fall into the excesses of the other. Attachment to the grand style can produce an impatience with demands for rigor and may lead to a tolerance for the unintelligible.