ABSTRACT
Compared to many areas of human inquiry, philosophy is messy. Questions such as “What is the right way to live?” not to speak of “What is beauty?” have given rise to intellectual histories of thousands of years, and to a bewildering variety of mutually incompatible answers. Nor does there seem to be any procedure by which we could adjudicate between these answers, no criteria by which theories on these matters could be tested. Or rather, these criteria are themselves the subjects of long and tortured debate. The works of many of the greatest philosophers-Plato, Aquinas, Hegel, and Nietzsche spring to mind-are extraordinarily difficult and support a number of-again mutually incompatibleinterpretations.
