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Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate

Unfashionable Essays

Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her penetrating analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself—all come under her keen scrutiny in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate.

"The virtue of Haack’s book, and I mean virtue in the ethical sense, is that it embodies the attitude that it exalts. . . Haack’s voice is urbane, sensible, passionate—the voice of philosophy that matters. How good to hear it again."—Jonathan Rauch, Reason

"A tough mind, confident of its power, making an art of logic . . . a cool mastery."—Paul R. Gross, Wilson Quarterly

"Few people are better able to defend the notion of truth, and in strong, clear prose, than Susan Haack . . . a philosopher of great distinction."—Hugh Lloyd-Jones, National Review

"If you relish acute observation and straight talk, this is a book to read."—Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa)

"Everywhere in this book there is the refreshing breeze of common sense, patiently but inexorably blowing."—Roger Kimball, Times Literary Supplement

"A refreshing alternative to the extremism that characterizes so much rhetoric today."—Kirkus Reviews

240 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2000

Philosophy: General Philosophy

Philosophy of Science

Women's Studies

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1: Confessions of an Old-Fashioned Prig
2: "We Pragmatists ...": Peirce and Rorty in Conversation
3: As for that phrase "studying in a literary spirit" ...
4: "Dry Truth and Real Knowledge": Epistemologies of Metaphor and Metaphors of Epistemology
5: Puzzling Out Science
6: Science as Social? - Yes and No
7: Knowledge and Propaganda: Reflections of an Old Feminist
8: Multiculturalism and Objectivity
9: Reflections on Relativism: From Momentous Tautology to Seductive Contradiction
10: The best man for the job may be a woman ... and other alien thoughts on affirmative action in the academy
11: Preposterism and Its Consequences
Acknowledgments
Index

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