Nicholas Rescher (born July 15, 1928) is an American philosopher and professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
He was born in Hagen, Westphalia, in Germany. One of the most prolific authors in modern philosophy, he has published some eighty-odd books and numerous papers. Most of his work has centered on the development of a system of pragmatic idealism, in which the activity of the human mind makes a positive and constitutive contribution to knowledge and "valid" knowledge contributes to practical success. Rescher also defends a coherence theory of truth but his defense thereof differs somewhat from that of classical idealism; see e.g. his exchange with philosopher Brand Blanshard in The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (in the Library of Living Philosophers series).
