Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself - all come under her keen scrutiny in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate.

Haack's goal in these essays is to get beyond fads, fashions, obfuscations, and false dichotomies to the central and most essential questions - whether there is such a thing as truth, whether honest inquiry is possible or desirable, whether there is a real difference between knowledge and propaganda. There is, Haack argues; but serious inquiry is difficult and demanding, evidence can be ambiguous or misleading, and what passes for truth is sometimes false.