It is always difficult to know where to begin in philosophy. No doubt
it is best to begin at the beginning, but a major part of philosophy as I
understand it is the attempt to find out where that is.

What I am calling the quest for reality has been part of Western phi-
losophy since before Socrates was born. It is perhaps even definitive of
philosophy. It involves a very general way of thinking that continues
to exert great power. But I believe that where the inquiry starts and how
it is meant to proceed are still not well enough understood. Its appli-
cation to one particular area is the concern of the chapters that follow.
I want to try it out there, not just survey its alleged results in the ab-
stract. My aim is to develop from the inside a rich sense of what it takes
to engage in the enterprise in the right way and to see what sorts of con-
clusions can be reached. That is finally the best test of whether we can
make the project intelligible to ourselves and of the validity of what-
ever we find in carrying it out.

It would be best simply to describe the goal or point of the project,
at least in general terms, and then get down to investigating it in detail.
But I find that there is simply no saying in a few unambiguous words
what it amounts to. The most I can do by way of introduction is to cir-
cle around it and distinguish what I have in mind from more familiar
inquiries which it is not. I want to try to bring out how abstract and un-
familiar-in a word, how strange -- this philosophical project really is.

It is meant to be a quest whose goal is the nature of reality -- what
the world is really like, or how things really are. And it involves
distinguishing what is really so from what only appears to be so, or

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