A renewal of philosophy is precisely the point of this book, in which one of America's most distinguished philosophers, surveying an astonishingly wide range of major issues, proposes a new, clear-cut approach - an "attitude" - to philosophical questions. Hilary Putnam contests the view that only science offers an appropriate model for philosophical inquiry, that only a metaphysics congruent with physics suffices, while questions of art and ethics, love, death and religion must be set aside due to the lack of an adequate language or perspective. His discussion of topics from artificial intelligence to natural selection, and of reductive philosophical views derived from these models, identifies the insuperable problems encountered by philosophy when it ignores the normative or attempts to reduce it to something else. Looking for a better way of doing philosophy, Putnam takes up the problems posed by religious discourse, often viewed by philosophers as prescientific and primitive, an unlikely survivor from the age of superstition. In pages on Wittgenstein, he refutes this view and shows how the philosopher's frequently misunderstood forays into religious discourse actually open up philosophy to a broad range of practical, moral, and political issues. In closing, Putnam considers Dewey, who occupies a middle ground between metaphysics and skepticism, and whose broadly epistemiological arguments in favour of democracy this book advances.

希拉里·普特南（Hilary Putuam，1926- ），当代美国著名哲学家、逻辑学家，新实用主义的主要代表人物，近30年来英美哲学界最具影响力的哲学家之一，在哲学界享有极高声誉。其研究兴趣广泛，在心灵哲学、语言哲学、科学哲学、逻辑学等诸多领域均有重大影响，被誉为“当代惟一具有'综观全局'能力的哲学家”。普特南曾任教于普林斯顿大学、麻省理工学院及哈佛大学，为哈佛大学荣誉科根学院教授。其代表作有《理性、真理与历史》、《词与生活》、《重建哲学》等。