The Ends of Philosophy

The issue is, "can philosophy attain knowledge at all?" This book seeks a deep and comprehensive confrontation between the foundationalist aims of traditional philosophy, the postmodern critique, and the pragmatic attempt to save a limited form of non-foundational inquiry. Through readings of the work of Peirce, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Buchler, Derrida, Rorty, and others, the possibility of philosophically valid knowledge is probed. The most prominent forms of contemporary anti-realism--relativism, naturalism, and pragmatism--are explored in the analytic, continental, and American traditions.