Gillian Rose wrote this meditation on love, philosophy, and mortality knowing she was dying of ovarian cancer. The British philosopher, one of the most original thinkers of her generation, refused both sentimentality and despair in examining what it means to love imperfectly and to live knowing we will die. Rose reflects on her three marriages, her Judaism, her battles with illness, and her intellectual formation, weaving together memoir and philosophy in prose of startling clarity. She recounts her painful relationship with her mother, her discovery of Hegel, and her struggles with the academic establishment that often dismissed her work as too difficult or unclassifiable. The book argues against what Rose calls 'Holocaust piety'--the tendency to place the Holocaust beyond understanding or representation--insisting instead on the difficult work of comprehension. She critiques contemporary philosophy's retreat from systematic thinking while defending the necessity of metaphysics against postmodern skepticism. Throughout, Rose maintains that love requires accepting the other's independence and acknowledging our own capacity for failure. Written with extraordinary intellectual courage, the book refuses the consolations of easy wisdom. Rose died in 1995 at fifty, shortly after completing the manuscript and converting to Christianity. Her final work stands as testimony to philosophy as a way of life rather than merely a profession.