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I have worked on this book for many years. It has been a solitary project , reflecting interests and concerns that have appeared to be my own. Still, there are some people whose responses to parts of this project have aided or encouraged me. First, I would like to thank Stewart Umphrey for working with me on previous stages of this work when I was a student at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. Thanks also to the organizers of the Conference on the Virtues at the University of San Diego for showing interest in the first essay I wrote on the topics discussed in this book, and to Alasdair MacIntyre for the interest he showed in aspects of my work that relate to his project and Martha Nussbaum for encouraging comments on the original sketch of this project. Emily Hauptmann’s comments on an essay that was a spin-off of this book while it was in progress were insightful and helpful. Charles Young’s comments on chapters 2, 3, and 6 were incisive and usefully critical. I wonder if I have responded well enough to them. Alasdair MacIntyre’s comments on chapter 3 were thought-provoking. I hope I have answered his questions about that chapter in the other chapters of the book. I do not think that any author is fully responsible for the contents of his or her work, since I do not think culture works that way. Instead, I think culture creates a work as much as a work contributes to culture. To the extent, though, that an author is responsible for what he or she writes, I, and none of those just mentioned, am responsible for the guiding themes, claims, and intellectual preoccupations in this book. Because I took them to be different enough from those found in other recent books on Aristotle, I set out to write this book, little knowing the number of topics I would have to consider in order to bring the book to what counts for a conclusion. ix A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Thanks to Trina Bertelson and Beth Blankenship at Bold Print, an independent bookstore near my apartment in Reno, for conversations on Sunday afternoons during breaks I took from writing this book. Judy Potter provided me with lovely surroundings in a rental apartment overlooking a wooded canyon and the San Francisco Bay during a sabbatical year I spent working on this project. Thanks, Judy, for helping me have a pleasant year and to the University of Nevada, Reno, for providing me with the sabbatical to work on the book. Thanks to the previous owners of my house on Gordon Avenue in Reno for creating the beautiful setting in which I completed the book and, at the University of Nevada, Reno, to my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, especially Department Chair, Tom Nickles, and to Bob Mead, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, for providing me with the pleasant and well-equipped office that is the other venue in which I worked on this book in its final stages. Thanks to MP for discussions that have deeply influenced and shaped this book; to the members of Temple Sinai (Reform), especially Rabbi Myra Soifer and fellow members of the Choir and Music Havurah , for providing me with a context in which to lead a religious life; and to the members of SPECTRUM Northern Nevada, especially present and past board members, for moral support and encouragement in political activities that took place during the final stages of this book. Thanks, finally, in memory, to my mother and father, Gail and Irving Achtenberg, for providing me with models of pursuing difficult projects and thinking in new frameworks. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...

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