Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

Truthfulness under oath is, by now, a matter of our civic religion, our relation to our fellow citizens rather than our relation to a nonhuman power.

What counts as rational argumentation is as historically determined and as context-dependent, as what counts as good French.

Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.