P. F. Strawson is one of the best-known and most influential British philosophers of the post-World War II era. Although he concedes that there are several legitimate conceptions of philosophy, his strong conviction is that the analytic approach is the most fruitful one, and all of his work exemplifies it. Within the analytic tradition Strawson is usually associated with the movement known as Oxford ordinary language philosophy, Oxford analytic philosophy, or, simply, Oxford philosophy. The members of this loosely structured movement, which also includes J. L. Austin, H. Paul Grice, and Gilbert Ryle, maintain that philosophers should pay special attention to the use in ordinary language of philosophically relevant expressions. Strawson's early work in the philosophy of language reflects this idea, but he soon realized that focusing on ordinary linguistic usage takes too much for granted and does not reveal the relationships between the most basic concepts. Those...