FEW BOOKS HAVE SHAKEN UP CONTEMPORARY INTELLECTUAL LIFE AS much as Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), and nothing was more astonishing about that book than its assertion that John Dewey ranked with Wittgenstein and Heidegger as the "three most important philosophers of our century." Over the last decade, Rorty has repeated-and on occasion even argued for-this estimate of Dewey's significance while developing a "pragmatism" of his own devising. These efforts have awakened new interest not only in Dewey but also in the entire American philosophical tradition. Furthermore, they have stimulated other philosophers, literary critics, legal scholars, and political theorists to develop "new pragmatisms" of their own.1 Paleo-pragmatists (among whom I would include myself), who did not need Rorty to remind them of the virtues of home cooking, have greeted these neo-pragmatists with a wary handshake-grateful for the company but concerned that what is best about the new pragmatism is not new and what is new is not very attractive. They remain unsure about these judg
