This book gives a broad and accessible account of some difficult work in recent Anglo-American philosophy on new and important ways of thinking about mind, language, subjectivity, and the relationship of thinkers to the world. Few books match its combination of detailed argument analysis with a global look at how diverse projects in analytic philosophy fit together. The approach is unique in that it sets that material in a broad historical context, including works in medieval philosophy and German idealism. The book shows why Rorty's recommendations for philosophy are wrong, and why we ought to be encouraged toward more realist conceptions instead of toward relativist or postmodern ones.