ABSTRACT
The final chapter again asks the opening question: what is going on when we give or ask for examples? It attempts to summarise the arguments from the previous chapters, indicating that to a large extent examples might be the primary material through which we can be told to think, and it relates this point to analogous suggestions made by Wittgenstein, Anscombe and Moi. It is also emphasised that thinking should not be construed as mere thinking, isolated from the contexts of naturally employing examples for purposes such as resorting to them, desperately looking for them, playing with them or their spontaneous unsolicited intrusions. Finally, it is pointed out that especially the spontaneous intrusions of examples should prompt us to do as much justice to them as possible, rather than looking quickly for a generality that they exemplify. For they often are (though sometimes not openly), in a complex sense, our own examples, and failing to do justice to them may then amount to a failure to do justice to one’s own life and the people and events in it.
