ABSTRACT
Anyone trying to think their way more persistently than they usually do through some issue that is causing them peculiar puzzlement and concern may find themselves crossing one of the main frontiers into the world of philosophy. Such an issue may be one of the very sense and point of the activity in which they find themselves engaged. Or, again, it may the bafflement that they confront when they find themselves in mutually uncomprehending conflict over some matter of vital importance with those whose understanding of the essential and seemingly familiar concepts at stake seem to be strangely but crucially different from their own. Two only too possible examples of conflict are: (i) that which may arise between those to whom it seems obvious that no-one can freely and deliberately pursue a course of action that they genuinely believe to be morally wrong – and those, on the other hand, to whom it seems clear that this is something that can happen only too often, and (ii) that can occur between those whose different understanding of the relations between (recognition of) fact and (judgments of) value may lead to only too active dispute as to whether the facts of one’s family or otherwise given identity may carry with them any strictly indisputable obligations concerning one’s main choices in life.
