"This book will be useful to specialists working at the intersection of epistemology and metaphysics. Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty."

Choice

“With characteristic clarity and breadth, Rockmore traces the history of the great struggle between idealism and realism from its origins in Parmenides onwards and his fateful claim that thought and being are the same. The reader cannot fail to be gripped by the debates laid out for us here and impressed by the erudition on display.”

Robert A. Stern, University of Sheffield

“Rockmore offers a thought-provoking thesis based on the Parmenidean roots of the philosophical enterprise. The ‘Dream of Philosophy’ boils down to two options: the Sisyphean pursuit of the real per se and a more promising alternative of constructivism and idealism. Constructivism no longer serves as the bogeyman of epistemology. Rockmore presents a convincing vindication, moving it from the philosophical fringe to the center. Elegantly and lucidly written, After Parmenides is highly recommended for philosophers and scholars across the humanities and the social sciences.”

Josef Mitterer, University of Klagenfurt, Austria

"The overall aim of Rockmore’s book, announced on the first page, is to defend 'epistemic constructivism.' . . . as alternative to what Rockmore calls the 'standard approach,' [that] . . . remains “dominant” in Western philosophy since Parmenides, in whose claims he suggests it originates. If Parmenides’ original claims . . . could be vindicated, 'this would at long last demonstrate the approach to cognition as knowing the real.' But, Rockmore argues, they cannot, leaving us with the only alternatives that he sees as remaining: either an overarching skepticism, to be rejected, or the constructivist alternative he favors."

Review of Metaphysics