"These expert and accessible essays range very widely, covering not only the familiar Anglo-American and Continental figures but thinkers from the Eastern tradition as well. Among the delights of the book are the many happy juxtapositions its alphabetical ordering presents. Thus the profound metaphysician Spinoza appears next to the profound anti-metaphysician Wittgenstein, and then one essay later we are given Zhuangzi – more familiarly, Chuang Tzu – a sage of an entirely different kind. Altogether a fascinating and enlightening collection." John V. Canfield, University of Toronto