 Rorty’s use of Quine and Sellars to make his fundamental points against the idea of philosophy as a knowledge legitimation project, as well as his articulation of his critique in terms of typically “analytical” philosophical problems, has contributed to an impression of PMN as an internal indictment of analytic philosophy as such. Many – some gleeful, some chagrined – have read PMN as a purported demonstration of the bankruptcy of one of the two contemporary main streams of Western philosophy. Such readers draw support for this view also from the fact that much of Rorty’s writings since PMN have been concerned to show the virtues in thinkers like Heidegger and Derrida (EHO). Forty years later, however, it seems unwise to superimpose the analytic-continental divide onto the message of PMN, or onto Rorty. In PMN, his central point is that philosophy needs to break free from the metaphor of mind as a medium of appearances, appearances that philosophy must help us sort into the mere and the reality-corresponding ones. Rorty made this point in a vocabulary that was developed by Anglo-American (whether by birth, naturalization, or late adoption) philosophers in the course of the preceding half-century. It is not necessary, and probably misleading, to see Rorty’s criticism of epistemology and the assumptions that make it appear worthwhile as a criticism of a particular philosophical style of philosophy or set of methodological habits. Reading PMN in conjunction with the essays in CP (see particularly essay 4, “Professionalized Philosophy and Transcendentalist Culture”, essay 12, “Philosophy in America Today”, and also “Introduction”), one quickly sees that the target of PMN cannot be a putative school or branch of the subject called “Analytic Philosophy.” Because Rorty thinks philosophy has no essence, has no defining historical task, fails to mark out a special domain of knowledge, and is not, in short, a natural kind (CP, 226), he leaves no ground from which to level that sort of critique. Nor is it his intention to do so. Around the time of the publication of PMN, Rorty’s view of the matter was “that ‘analytic philosophy’ now has only a stylistic and sociological unity” (CP, 217). He then qualifies this point as follows: “In saying [this], I am not suggesting that analytic philosophy is a bad thing, or is in bad shape. The analytic style is, I think, a good style. The esprit de corps among analytic philosophers is healthy and useful” (CP, 217). However, while Rorty apparently bears no prejudice against analytic philosophy in particular, the very reason for his tolerance – his antiessentialist, historicist view of philosophy and its problems – has for many critics been a point of objection. After his faint praise, Rorty goes on: