Needs, Values, Truth [antikvár]

Preface (1987)In this collection, essays that are not new have all been revised, either by the correction of selected sentences or paragraphs (as in the case of I, VI, VII, IX) or (at the other extreme, represented by VIII) by abridgement and editing of what was there bef ore and the addition of new sections or notes or longer notes. In every case, the aim was to do the least that was necessary, or slightly less than that.In one or two special cases, an opinion I no longer hold has been allowed to stand because there seemed to be a point in registering the option to entertain that opinion and entering the appropriate réservation in a subséquent essay (with a cross reference at each place).Where I found that the same point was made in more or less the same words in different essays, I have usually let the répétition stand. Those whom such repeated passages do not even convince may see it as an aggravation of the offence if I quote William James' preface to the Will to Believe: 'Apology is also needed for the répétition of the same passage in different essays. My excuse is that one cannot always express the same thought in two ways that seem equally forcible'. But I calculate that the self-containment that this preserves for each essay will be a more durable service to the reader than any mitigation of the annoyance of répétition might have been.Taken together, the essays printed in this book steer me, and the reader perhaps, towards certain sorts of conclusions. But these conclusions do not enjoy the status of 'results'. Especially in the case of the group comprising Essays II, III, IV, and V, I