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The attitudes whose correction makes increasing our control possible are formed of beliefs, emotions, and motives whose objects are our desires. These attitudes lead us to commit ourselves to possibilities and limits we value and which guide us in our effort to satisfy of our desires. Each component of these attitudes may be mistaken and lead us to make the wrong commitment to the wrong values. Some of these commitments are unconditional and define what we regard as unthinkable; others are only conditional. The structure of our commitments forms our conception of well‐being. And the correction of attitudes depends on critical reflection on our attitudes and commitments.

At the end of ‘Persons, Character, and Morality’, Bernard Williams discusses the case of a man who, faced with a situation in which he can save only one of two people in equal peril, chooses to save his wife. Williams famously observes that a moral justification defending the man against the charge that he ought to have been impartial provides the rescuer with ‘one thought too many’. Most of Williams’ commentators agree, interpreting his remarks as a reminder that a morally good person need not, and perhaps should not, be thinking about what is morally justifiable all the time. This chapter draws and defends a more radical interpretation of Williams' remarks. One attractive ideal of love would prohibit the lover not only from thinking about morality all the time, but also from being unconditionally committed to acting according to morality all the time. This does not imply that a person is positively permitted or justified in disregarding moral requirements. It rather supports Williams's thought that ‘some situations lie beyond justification’.

This opening chapter spells out the key concepts deployed throughout the book. It also contends, against integrity skeptics of various types, that personal integrity, understood as fidelity to one’s fundamental commitments, can actually have independent moral significance. The focus is on two arguments, both revolving around unconditional commitments. The first, the unfairness argument, holds that since morality itself pushes agents to incorporate certain unconditional commitments into their self-conception, it is unfair to criticize agents who go on to treat these commitments as an independent factor in their moral deliberation. The second argument links agents’ unconditional moral commitments to their self-respect. Both arguments allow us to see why one’s integrity is not simply parasitic upon one “doing the right thing.” Rather, integrity can inform the analysis of what one morally ought to do.