This book is the latest addition to the Odéon series, a multidisciplinary series devoted to original works and translations by European writers in the areas of literature, criticism, philosophy, history and politics. An English translation of the German best-seller _Abschied vom Prinzipiellen_, the book offers a series of essays that present a philosophy of human morality critical of philosophical utopianism. Marquard, widely considered the heir of Gadamer, Habermas, and Blumenberg, describes his role as "skeptical philosopher" and discusses the 18th-century formation of such themes and disciplines as aesthetics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of history, the nature of myth and attempts to account for it, and hermeneutics.