The goodness of moral attitudes such as respect, loyalty, reciprocity, and altruism seems beyond question. What if they involve a partial rejection of goodness, however, a rejection not acknowledged by us?


What if our morality and our whole life is marked by a deep confusion, indeed by a desire on our part not to know what is actually going on between us?
This book raises and discusses these unsettling questions. It is indeed meant to be an unsettling book, questioning fundamentals taken for granted both in our everyday thinking and in philosophy. Starting from a discussion of friendship, the goodness of which is seen to lie in a wholehearted openness between people, it proceeds to uncover a dialectics of desire for, and fear of, openness at work in all our dealings with each other.


The perspective articulated should be of interest to continental and analytic philosophers alike, as well as to theologians and psychologists. Written in an engaging, non-academic style, the book should be accessible to anyone thinking about existential questions.