ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the role in rational deliberation of the kinds of personal transformations LeRoi Jones refers to, experiences that easily strike some as bizarre and even wrong but that occasionally appear to explain acquiring of important insight and capacities. It is concerned with the rationality, individual and social, of the impossible dream. The book discusses the notion of human flourishing and human truths. It also discusses Drucilla Cornell's remarks about the significance for political understanding of the retelling of social myths and fantasies. The book describes a popular philosophical view about what it means to be acting in one's best interests, one the author take to motivate much everyday thought about interests. It addresses the epistemological role of personal relations and commitments in radical criticism and demonstrates the epistemological and metaphysical significance of recent work in this area in some feminist theory.
