Philosophy may not tell us how galaxies are born, or what it is that makes squealing and babbling infants squeal and babble. One thing it does well, however, is show us how to question the questions that we begin with whenever we investigate something. And one thing it has tended to reveal over many years of practicing this questionable art is that the form in which we cast our original questions, and the assumptions and models these questions conceal, consistently determine the form in which we frame our answers. Starting points have a tendency to haunt us all the way through to our theoretical conclusions.

In this chapter I shall examine two widely divergent ways to frame epistemological and metaphysical questions about the nature of social and interpersonal relations.