Heiden (philosophy, Radboud U. Nijmegen, the Netherlands) discusses how three 20th-century philosophers engaged with a venerable philosophical tradition by worrying that language may disguise the original meaning of an expression because of the inherent ambiguity of words. Such ambiguity is the dimension of language where rhetoricians, sophists, and poets are most at home, he says, but it threatens the philosophical inquiry into the essence of things, corrupting the ancient distinction between truth and fiction. Among his topics are twofold concealment, Ricoeur on text and distanciation, Heidegger's critique of metaphor, heterogeneity in mimesis, and Derrida on disclosure and displacement. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)