The object of this book, which contains nine dialogues with some
of the most emblematic protagonists of contemporary American
philosophy, is to move through a wall that, unlike many others of
past and present Europe, is made of water. To transcend the "wall
of the Atlantic" does not mean to knock it down with a pickax, but
to chart its currents, to navigate it, and to inhabit it.

For this purpose I have gathered here contributions from diverse
places, with the hope of setting in motion a conversation among
disciplinary areas that often do not communicate well with one
another. The distinct logico-linguistic orientations of Willard Van
Orman Quine and Donald Davidson are confronted with more dis-
cursive and interdisciplinary trends of thought, such as Richard
Rorty's and Hilary Putnam's versions of neo-pragmatism, and Stan-
ley Cavell's neo-skepticism. The theory of pluralist anarchism for-
mulated by Robert Nozick, in both the political and theoretical
fields, is brought face to face with the neo-foundationalism of
Arthur C. Danto, who is suspended in a disenchanted equilibrium
between philosophical discourse and artistic experimentation.
Thomas Kuhn's hypothesis on the alternating paradigms of scientific
eras is measured against one of the most significant versions of
the now widespread neo-historicist sensibility: Alasdair MacIntyre's
ethics of "virtues."

The invitation to complete the "crossing" comes from these same
protagonists on the American scene, and from the originality of
their message, democratizing thought, exploring the subtle confines
that separate the possibility of theory from the spector of totaliza-
tion. In this philosophy there is no system, only an openness
to new possibilities and the challenge of their integration. Like
Tocqueville's journey, this one interrogates the boundaries of the
known: the ever-mobile frontier becomes a theoretical category in
itself, a new center, and is no longer the periphery of Western
culture.

In the course of this itinerary, I attempted a new cartography of
American philosophical culture. On the one hand, I have redesigned
a more organic outline of the history of American philosophy after
the Second World War. On the other hand, I have tried to include
a still greatly misunderstood philosophical trend of thought that a
segment of the American scene shares with European debates: this

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