I can imagine a number of reactions to the theses of this book, among them one that might go something like this: “All this is fine and at times your evocation of Mitsein even achieves a certain existential pathos. But you can hardly deny that it is vox humana all the way and that, as a result, your account remains hopelessly confined to the very life that most needs to be informed by an order of truth transcending anything to which your kind of analysis can give access. Wouldn't it be better if you simply acknowledged that fact and made common cause with the relativists and the nihilists who at least have the merit of not pretending they have anything better to offer?”

Another, quite different reaction might take the following line: “Why do you think a ‘ground of ethics’ is needed at all? Such a ground would have to be something absolute and utterly remote from the only kind of experience we have any familiarity with. As such, its status would be dubious at best and that dubiety would have to be compensated for by the kind of dogmatic rigidity that has always characterized such claims. Besides, people do not live by the kind of understanding of themselves and others that you credit them with. They live by custom and habit and by images of authority that are local and particularistic in character.