Explicitness is one of the fundamental mysteries in which our lives are wrapped. If there is Something (rather than Nothing) and that Something has an order which, according to the standard story, ultimately gives rise to and sustains life, explicitness is what makes that Something, that “what is”, into something “that-it-is”. Our capacity, as conscious subjects, to make things explicit, so that what-is presents itself as that-it-is or “that-it-is-the-case” is at the heart of the mystery of human being.

Circling Round Explicitness is an endeavour to make explicitness explicit or, at least, more explicit. This ambition is rooted in the belief that the failure to acknowledge the centrality to our nature as human beings, of explicitness, more specifically the capacity to make things explicit, explains many false directions in contemporary philosophy, most importantly in the embrace of scientism.

With characteristic erudition and acuity across a breathtaking range of subjects, Ray Tallis explores how explicitness connects with fundamental ontological, metaphysical and epistemological questions, including the gap between matter and persons, the properties of the brain, the nature of ourselves as embodied subjects and as agents, the phenomenology of thought, the realm of possibility (and probability) and the ideas of reality and truth.

Although the attempt to grasp explicitness is fraught with challenges – it is an attempt to reach out to that which comprises one’s act of reaching, analagous to the endeavour to land on oneself – the task is a fascinating endeavour that takes us closer to understanding what it is to be, to be human, and our connection with the material world. In circling round explicitness, we are circling round Man, the Explicit Animal, around ourselves.