Introduction

This chapter contains half of the first fruits of a study, whose originating points and further horizons the author must try in this introduction to explain. The theme of personal relations is in fact one which French philosophers will naturally associate with certain movements in French philosophy which are now as far from the focus of explicit attention as only movements of the recent past can be personalism and a certain kind of existentialism. As far as possible, however, it seems better to keep such questions for what is envisaged as the next stage, which will be for all those concerned to assess their reactions towards the papers that have been written out of the other tradition and the nature of the whole enterprise. Some philosophers have made a virtue of talking to themselves; perhaps because they thought that there was nobody else worth talking to.