In which I introduce and define the central idea of the book, that of an epiphany; discuss numerous examples; and consider different developments of the idea or something like it in history, and in Iris Murdoch, William Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, C. S. Lewis, James Joyce, and others.

I propose a programme of research in ethical philosophy, into the peak-experiences or wow-moments that I, following James Joyce and others, call epiphanies. As a first pass, I characterize an epiphany as an (1) overwhelming (2) existentially significant manifestation of (3) value, (4) often sudden and surprising, (5) which feels like it "comes from outside"-it is something given, relative to which I am a passive perceiver-which (6) teaches us something new, which (7) "takes us out of ourselves", and which (8) demands a response. Often the correct response is love, often it is pity, or again creativity. It might also be anger or reverence or awe or a hunger to put things right-a hunger for justice; or many other things. It may be something that leads directly to action, but it may also be something that prompts contemplation; or other responses again. Since epiphanies are what I call a focalcase category, not all of the conditions listed above have to be fulfilled by all instances of epiphanies. In order to allow the reader to get a better grip on which range of phenomena may count as an epiphany, I examine in some detail several examples from literature, in particular from works by Murdoch, Hopkins, Wordsworth, C.S. Lewis, and by James Joyce.

Metaethics tends to take for granted a bare Democritean world of atoms and the void, and then worry about how the human world that we all know can possibly be related to it or justified in its terms. I draw on Wittgenstein to show how completely upside-down this picture is, and make some moves towards turning it the right way up again. There may be a use for something like the bare-Democritean model in some of the sciences, but the picture has no standing as the basic objective truth about the world; if anything has that standing, it is ordinary life. I conclude with some thoughts about how the notion of bare, "thin" perception of non-evaluative reality feeds a number of philosophical pathologies, such as behaviourism, and show how a "thicker", more value-laden, understanding of our perceptions of the world can be therapeutic against them. Keywords Metaethics. Moral philosophy. Moral realism. Moral subjectivism. Wittgenstein. Thick concepts. Behaviourism. Problem of other minds What has to be accepted, the given, is-so one could say-forms of life. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, II, p. 226) I noticed once again how all thought among us had become "something other than human life".

Individual deliberations under conditions of serious deception are generally agreed to be invalidated by that deception. So political deliberations under conditions of serious deception should also be agreed to be invalidated. The UK’s referendum on membership of the EU was a flawed process of public deliberation precisely for this reason – that the public debate about the referendum involved serious deception. I raise the question what should be done about such public deceptions, and suggest a restrained form of legal remedy.

In which I defend my rejection of the theory-building approach to ethical philosophy, and having said what my own approach is not, begin to develop a positive characterisation of what it is. This draws on Bernard Williams’s approach in some ways, but an anti-theorist does not need to base her position on Williams’s internal reasons thesis, which I reject.