 Nevertheless, within the philosophical community at large, Rorty’s standing was such that he was elected President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association for the academic year 1979–1980. Just weeks before he gave the Presidential Address (“Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism,” see RR), however, PMN was published by Princeton University Press. To Rorty’s surprise (Rorty in Lewis-Kraus, 2003), this monograph was read as an attack on the basic creed of analytic philosophy as such, rather than as an attempt at benevolent reform. Most reviews were hostile to what was regarded as Rorty’s end-of-philosophy message, and in the years that followed, Rorty’s challenge to representationalist epistemology was in many influential quarters studiously ignored.