The world well lost -- Keeping philosophy pure -- Overcoming the tradition -- Professionalized philosophy and transcendentalist culture -- Dewey's metaphysics -- Philosophy as a kind of writing -- Is there a problem about fictional discourse? -- Nineteenth-century idealism and twentieth-century textualism -- Pragmatism, relativism, and irrationalism -- Cavell on skepticism -- Method, social science, and social hope -- Philosophy in America today.