This book collects essays, half of which are previously unpublished, by Alan Montefiore on the role philosophy plays in the formation of the self, and how philosophical questions regarding the nature of reason, truth, and identity inform ethics and politics.

Having been a student at Balliol College, Oxford from 1948 to 1951, Alan Montefiore spent the next ten years as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the then new University College of North Staffordshire (later to become the University of Keele). In 1961 he returned to Balliol as a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy, retiring just over 30 years later. Since then, he has, among many other things, served as the first President of the Forum for European Philosophy, now the Forum for Philosophy.

Danielle Sands is Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London and Fellow at the Forum for Philosophy, LSE. Her monograph, Animal Writing: Storytelling, Selfhood and the Limits of Empathy was published in 2019.

Editor's Introduction

Danielle Sands

Part I: The Nature of Philosophy

1. Doing Philosophy (in one way or another)
2. The Idea of 'Crisis' in Philosophy
3. Frontiers of Philosophy

Part II: Reason and Paradox

4. Kant, Paradox and Meta-Paradox: Problems of Self-Identity
5. Reason and its Self-Undoing?
6. Reason and Reasoning: Truth, Truthfulness and Integrity
7. The Universal and the Particular - A Kantian Account of the Elements of Self-identity

Part III: Values and Responsibilities

8. Lévinas and the Claims of Incommensurable Values
9. The Political Responsibilities of Intellectuals
10. Doctrinal Commitments and Ecumenical Partnership

An Inconclusive Conclusion