Trotsky and the wild orchids -- Truth without correspondence to reality -- A world without substances or essences -- Ethics without principles -- The banality of pragmatism and the poetry of justice -- Pragmatism and law: a response to David Luban -- Education as socialization and as individualization -- The humanistic intellectual: eleven theses -- The pragmatist's progress: Umberto Eco on interpretation -- Religious faith, intellectual responsibility and romance -- Religion as conversation-stopper -- Thomas Kuhn, rocks and the laws of physics -- On Heidegger's Nazism -- Failed prophecies, glorious hopes -- A spectre is haunting the intellectuals: Derrida on Marx -- Love and money -- Globalization, the politics of identity and social hope -- Looking backwards from the year 2096 -- The unpatriotic academy -- Back to class politics.