 The development of this proper understanding begins by examining the ‘vulgar’ notion of moral responsibility and the apparent threats to it posed by the philosophical doctrines of determinism and indeterminism, threats which he argues evaporate once we examine the reality of human action. (A prominent theme in the book is that everyday moral thought is not to be overturned by moral philosophy.) It proceeds by turning to the question ‘Why should I be moral?’, which he answers by suggesting that the moral end for each of us is self-realization. What this is, is then gradually unfolded through examination of representative philosophical theories each of which is rejected as unsatisfactory because of its one-sided concentration upon particular features of the moral life. Nevertheless, he thinks, each theory captures something important which must not be forgotten in the proper understanding he aims at. For example, in the third essay, ‘Pleasure for Pleasure’s Sake’, a still-classic critique of hedonistic utilitarianism, Bradley argues that its individualism is insupportable, as is its hedonistic conception of happiness as a pleasurable state identifiable independently of the means by which it is attained (so that it could in principle be achieved more conveniently than through moral behaviour). But purged of these errors, the essential utilitarian insight of the importance of happiness as the point of morality can be retained. Likewise, in the next essay’s examination of a Kantian (if not quite Kant’s) ethics of duty, he argues that from this conception of morality we should abandon, as the result of a false abstraction, its idea that duty should be done just for duty’s sake. We can, however, retain the insight that morality requires the performance of individual duties, provided we are clear that their obligatoriness arises from the nature of each duty rather than from some formal principle.