Recent developments in contemporary life, including natural catastrophes, economic crises, civil wars, and unexpected political transformations, have reawakened a heightened sense of the risks and uncertainties of human life and the limits of the resources available for moderating them. This book presents an extended meditation on a life of unsettling, by necessity and by choice, advocating living affirmatively with uncertainty. arguing against accepting any beliefs or practices as firmly settled. The key notion is that of betraying, the nonidentity of every identity with itself. The two sides of betraying are exhibited in unsettling, its risks and fears, its destructions, its revelations and transformations.