Product Description

Richard Rorty is one of the most provocative figures in recent philosophical, literary and cultural debate. This collection brings together those of his writings aimed at a wider audience, many published in book form for the first time. In these eloquent essays, articles and lectures, Rorty gives a stimulating summary of his central philosophical beliefs and how they relate to his political hopes; he also offers some challenging insights into contemporary America, justice, education and love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124631 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Richard Rorty is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of PHILSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE, CONTINGENCY, IRONY AND SOLIDARITY, and ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY.

Customer Reviews

Rorty as we know him
This is yet another book by this most prolific writer that is Richard Rorty. It is a good book for those who like Rorty - it is full of clever remarks about other people's thoughts, and full of names that show a broad intellectural background. It is also a story well-told - the same story (more or less) that he told before in different context, a sophisticated combination of pragmatism, philosophy of language, and liberalism of some form or another. For those who do not like Rorty - and there are many of them out there, as Bernstein noted when he said that 'Rorty-bashing' is a bit of a philosophers' hobby at the moment - this is another piece of ... well, it depends, those who dislike him dislike him for different, and very different, reasons. There are those who dislike him because they think he is superficial - but he is not, as a careful reading and thinking shows. And there are those who think that he is too thorough - a name dropper and mentioner, who assumes knowledge of every single major writer that the Western world has ever seen. This may be more true, but is part of his philosophical programme, so you can hardly blame him for it. In some respect, this book is different though - it is more political than many of Rorty's other books, and more straightforwardly liberal in this sense. It is a further step towards a good story to ground our liberal convictions in - if you likey good stories, you may want to read it.

Michael Moore as philosopher?
I have long been a fan of Rorty and enjoyed reading his papers on Derrida and Heidegger in the past. Since then, Rorty has helped me explore the work of those he refers to as neo-pragmatists - Quine, Davidson, and Putnam, in addition to his major influence, Dewey. This book is an anthology of less academic papers and serves as a brilliant introduction to Rorty's crticisms of the Western philosophy (which he views, along with Heidegger, as being contaminated by platonic metaphysical dualisms), but is broader than that as Rorty explores the achievements as well as the failures of modern american scoiety. I read this book in parallel with Moore's 'stupid white men' and there are striking echos between them.