Product Description

This volume complements two highly successful previously published volumes of Richard Rorty’s philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. The essays in the volume engage with the work of many of today’s most innovative thinkers including Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Charles Taylor. The collection also touches on problems in contemporary feminism raised by Annette Baier, Marilyn Frye, and Catherine MacKinnon, and considers issues connected with human rights and cultural differences. Anyone with a serious interest in contemporary philosophy and what it can do for us in the modern world will enjoy this invaluable collection.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #487754 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 363 pages

Review
‘This volume is Rorty at his best, again and again making us see things from a new, unexpected angle, strenuously engaging with those of us who resist his startling and unsettling ‘take’ on things. Convinced or not, you come away feeling that this is what philosophy ought to be doing, steadily extending the range of imaginable thoughts.’ Charles Taylor

‘Truth and Progress, the third volume of Richard Rorty’s philosophical papers, can be recommended not only to Rorty’s admirers and to those who regard him as a leading enemy of reason but to anyone who wants to get a sense of a significant intellectual phenomenon.’ Thomas Nagel, Times Literary Supplement

Customer Reviews

1989 And All That
"Truth and Progress" is divided into three sections, the first part a sequence of essays on analytic philosophers, the second two consisting of essays on various topics, often addressed to the academic Left. It isn't too much to say that all of these essays might very well be thought of as scoldings of these two groups. I don't have much familiarity with analytic philosophy, however, so I won't say anything about that section, other than to say that if you ARE an analytic philosopher, you probably aren't going to like what Rorty says, but you probably knew that already. On then to the second two parts. These sections are identical in some respects, for in them Rorty berates academic Leftism. This is not as banal as it might appear, for what is motivating Rorty is this question: "What is behind the regret we [he means intellectuals] feel when we are forced to conclude that bourgeois democratic welfare states are the best we can hope for?" ("The End of Leninism" 231). What he means is, the role of the "intellectual" in the West seems to have come to an end after the events of 1989, because afterwards the idea of Revolution, on Lenin's model, has become laughable. So the intellectual, who has always thought to have done better in that sort of regime than in a democratic one, has lost a cherished fantasy--a fantasy that is not just a leftist one, but one shared, one supposes, by virtually anyone who has ever had a brain, because a great sustaining thought for most of these people is the idea that at some point, history will redeem them. But that fantasy is over, Rorty says, and so what his question means is, "what now?" It is for this reason, more than any other, that I think Rorty's book is worth buying, for what he is trying to think about is the very idea of the worth of "intellectual life" at all. I for one think that this question is extremely serious, and not likely to disappear anytime soon. If you would like to read the opening cannon shots of what might be a long (or possibly, extremely short) debate, read this book.