In and On Friendship

Abstract

It is fitting to begin with the beginning of these essays. Berger writes of love and friendship in a way that sets my thoughts rambling. How his argument bears — as it does, oddly, far as my own interests have strayed from professional ethics — on my particular philosophical concerns, I shall remark in due course. Meantime, I must say thank you, first to the editors: I have done enough editing myself to know what a chore that is, and am most grateful to them, more deeply than I can say, for all the trouble they have taken in such an odd and unnecessary cause. And thank you, also, to all the friends who have contributed to this wide-ranging collection. “Thank you” is a dull, weak word, but I don’t know a better. Suffice is to say that for someone who was exiled from her profession for some fifteen or twenty years (depending on whether one counts as a return to one’s profession being a pariah in the U.K. — 1959–1965 — or only being a maverick in the U.S. — 1965-), it is most moving that so impressive an aggregate of colleagues should have been willing to lend their names, and thoughts, on this occasion.