Truth or consequences.

The great age of American philosophy, dominated by the figures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, and John Dewey, consistently draws the attention of scholars from a variety of disciplines. These philosophers serve as a source of inspiration, a tradition to be appropriated, and a subject for sustained analysis. As debate about the nature of truth, the role of language, and the relationship between theory and practice rages in the humanities -occasionally drawing even historians into this thicket of controversy the responses of an earlier generation of philosophers to these problems are increasingly interesting and important. Indeed, for those working in a postmodernist vein, American pragmatists immediately present themselves as formidable precursors. Those more comfortable with a traditionalist approach to meaning are drawn to the via media, or sweet reasonableness, in the formulations of American pragmatists, especially in contrast to the rough waves that break from the sea of recent French theory. Nevertheless, viewed from any vantage point, the golden age of American philosophy, from Emerson through Dewey, stands as the foundation upon which much of our present-day intellectual assumptions rest, sometimes comfortably, sometimes precariously. The rich soil of thought in this period of American philosophy has been well tilled, but Cornel West and Daniel J. Wilson, each in his own fashion, seeks to coax yet another crop from it. Wilson's is the more traditional work, building upon and invariably seconding the analyses of Bruce Kuklick and James T. Kloppenberg. I Wilson focuses on the engagement of American philosophy with the power of science and the desire for a community of inter-