The histories of Darwinism, relativism, empiricism, phenomenology, feminism, cognitive philosophy and deconstructionism are all subjected to radical reassessment. The thought of Hamilton, Newman, Mill and Spencer is compared with that of Frege, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Monod, Dennett, Dawkins, Eagleton and Miller. The author argues for a traditional view, deriving largely from Newman, of the unity and autonomy of individual human beings.

He suggests that science and literature depend on persons being actively and responsibly present to each other, that freedom is always interpersonal, and that in great literature we can discover the workings of this deep mutuality and its enemies.