This book commemorates the intellectual contributions of Greg Kavka. I wanted to say something to celebrate his person. He lived a life full of character, courage, strength, love, caring, and even satisfaction. And he did so despite enduring an astonishing series of misfortunes.

I met Greg twenty-six years ago, when he first came to UCLA. It was not love at first sight. I thought I wouldn't like him. He seemed boyish and oldfashioned. I saw my mistake within a week of knowing him. I had mistaken the boyishness for lack of awareness or sophistication. What drew us together was an impatience with pretension and an enjoyment of UCLA basketball. Gradually, weekends between our families became a regular matter. We developed a four-way friendship. It was just a matter of spending time together in simple pursuits. It was Greg's way. He was aggressively unpretentious in his tastes – Pepsi instead of wine, pizza rather than salmon, Sports Illustrated before the New Yorker, loafers not Guccis, basketball over Proust.

We went through some hard times. One misty winter's night in Pacific Palisades, I had to tell him that his tenure case was in trouble. He was not given tenure because a few senior philosophers saw the boyishness as I first did and failed to recognize his intellectual power and persistence. Most of his adversaries have since acknowledged their mistake. He took the news with an objectivity and dispassionateness that characterized all his responses to adversity.