Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University.

• Preface The Unquiet Judge: Activism without Objectivism in Law and Politics Making (Up) the Truth: Constructivist Contributions Belief and Resistance: A Symmetrical Account Doing without Meaning Unloading the Self-Refutation Charge The Skeptic's Turn: A Performance of Contradiction Arguing with Reason Appendix: Webs of Reason Microdynamics of Incommensurability: Philosophy of Science Meets Science Studies Notes Index

It is typical of Smith that she can accommodate such questions of reality and truth, without self-contradiction, in the course of a defence and explication of what is variously called scepticism, perspectivism, constructivism or postmodernism, but for which relativism seems a perfectly good term. Belief and Resistance is not only a substantively powerful book; its conscientious approach and restrained style are equally welcome. Indeed, its only possible rivals are the work of Joseph Margolis…and the late, unjustly neglected Paul Feyerabend… Smith’s point is not that there is anything wrong about objectivity in the classic sense of ‘justifiable in a context-transcendent and subject-independent way’. It is, rather, that whether legal, scientific, or political, such evaluation—‘as distinct from judgments that are good under certain (perhaps quite broad) conditions and from the perspectives of certain (perhaps especially relevant) people’—never occurs. In epistemology and axiology, there are ‘no touchstones of truth, no automatic refutations of error, no ready-made exposures of deception’. In rich and subtle detail, Smith explores the implications of this view in relation to (among other things) Holocaust denial and the ‘Science Wars’. Proceeding from the view that what we variously call nature, reality, or truth is the result of ongoing material, cognitive, conceptual and social interactions (but not social or linguistic alone), she offers some fascinating speculations on the general dynamics of belief and resistance. Their overall context is the project of a naturalized but non-reductive evolutionary epistemology, very much in the spirit of Gregory Bateson. Barbara Hernnstein Smith’s book, however, sets a new standard.