Realism with a Human Face

Hilary Putnam

Edited and Introduced by James Conant

    There are many strengths in these essays. Like all his work, they are highly readable; they are on deep and general issues; they contain forceful critiques, particularly of such diverse figures as Ayer and Rorty; and Putnam's first-order views in ethics are compassionate and imaginative...Any reader of these vivid and provocative essays will be forced to rethink his views somewhere.
       --Christopher Peacocke, Times Literary Supplement

    In this excellent collection of thematically linked essays, Harvard philosopher Putnam argues that it is time for philosophy to leave its world of system-building and to return to its true place as a form of thought intimately connected with real life...Highly recommended as an antidote to much 20th-century analytic philosophy and the claimed 'death' of metaphysics.
       --Terry Skeats, Library Journal

    My current favorite living philosopher is Hilary Putnam, as embodied in his book Realism with a Human Face...In a tone that is simultaneously witty and generous, skeptical and self-revealing, and in sentences that are often a pleasure to read...Putnam's philosophy is a philosophy for our world, a vehicle in which you can comfortably travel right now.
       --Wendy Lesser, Threepenny Review

  • Cover: Realism with a Human Face
  • A photo of the author

Hilary Putnam is Cogan University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University.

James Conant is Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities University of Chicago.