"Because we are massively imperfect rational animals, we err - continuously Apologies are, according to Nick Smith, an artifact of human intellectual organization that allows is to cope with our perpetually flawed engagements with one another at both the individual and institutional level. They allow us to go on sharing the world Smith's account of apologies is without equal - packed with fine-grained discriminations, pointed examples (real and imaginary, and pitch-perfect judgments of depth and scope (variously generous and skeptical). Smith's dense taxonomy of the forms, functions, and conditions of apologies brings the discussion of this topic to a new level. In providing us with "the gritty details of apologetic meaning, Smith has put us all in his debt. All future discussions of apologies will start here."
-J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research