By interpreting the essayistic mode as distinctively responsive to scepticism, Erin Plunkett provides an account of some of its exemplary modern practitioners that sheds new light on the epistemological, metaphysical and ethical dimensions of their chosen form, and thereby on a persistently overlooked but repeatedly renewed philosophical tradition.

Stephen Mulhall, Professor of Philosophy, New College, University of Oxford, UK

This is a timely and highly illuminating book that should widen the focus of contemporary Anglophone philosophy. By revealing the significance of the form of philosophical writing in a series of historical examples from Montaigne to Cavell, Plunkett sheds new light on key issues in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics in both the analytical and European traditions.

Andrew Bowie, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and German, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

In this perceptive and illuminating study, Erin Plunkett identifies a genre of writing that is literary and philosophical at once, and which unites such otherwise disparate thinkers as Hume and Kierkegaard. She convincingly demonstrates that the essay (or 'attempt') is a form well-suited for examining our condition of contingent finitude, and thereby for clarifying human existence. A Philosophy of the Essay makes an elegant case for reflective authors whose work remains true to life.

Rick Anthony Furtak, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Colorado College, USA