These essays build a valuable, if virtual, bridge between the thought of John Dewey and that of a host of modern European philosophers. They invite us to entertain a set of imagined conversations among the mighty dead that no doubt would have intrigued Dewey and each of the interlocutors gathered here. Robert Westbrook, author of John Dewey and American Democracy and/or Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth.

John Dewey and Continental Philosophy provides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American...

Despite its foundational role in the history of philosophy, Plato s famous argument that art does not have access to truth or knowledge is now rarely examined, in part because recent philosophers have assumed that Plato s challenge was resolved long ago. In "Art and Truth after Plato," Tom Rockmore argues that Plato has in fact never been satisfactorily answered and to demonstrate that, he offers a comprehensive account of Plato s influence through nearly the whole history of Western aesthetics.Rockmore offers a cogent reading of the post-Platonic aesthetic tradition as a series of responses...

German Idealism as Constructivism is the culmination of many years of research by distinguished philosopher Tom Rockmore--it is his definitive statement on the debate about German idealism between proponents of representationalism and those of constructivism that still plagues our grasp of the history of German idealism and the whole epistemological project today. Rockmore argues that German idealism--which includes iconic thinkers such as Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel--can best be understood as a constructivist project, one that asserts that we cannot know the mind-independent...