This book constitutes a defence of a discipline in danger of being neglected. Warnock addresses areas of inescapable public concern: the philosophy of biology and medicine; the philosophy of education; and the uses of academic philosophy. In each area her concern with public issues and her analytic sophistication lead to perceptive and accessible interventions, collected together in the form of linked lectures. The lectures demonstrate the kinds of use to which a life-long habit of philosophical thought may be put when problems, moral, legal or epistemological, arise in the public sphere. The book, in its entirety, represents a clear and provocative attempt to highlight both the past failures and the future hopes for the philosophical discipline. As such it will be of interest to all philosophers.