Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631128380
Category : Analysis (Philosophy).
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631128380
Category : Analysis (Philosophy).
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description


The Rorty-Habermas Debate

The Rorty-Habermas Debate PDF Author: Marcin Kilanowski
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438483562
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
The Rorty-Habermas debate has been written on widely, but a full treatment of its importance had to wait until now. We have some historical distance from this exchange, which extended over three decades, and which touches upon the central concerns of numerous fields of study and of social organization. From law, to politics, to philosophy and communication theory, and including the basics of action, these two towering figures compare their forms of pragmatism. Marcin Kilanowski sets the debate in its historical and multilayered context, comparing it with criticism and commentary from his own viewpoint and from that of other important thinkers who observed and participated in the famous exchange. This book not only provides background in the history of philosophy for a general reader but also will be useful to those who need an abbreviated narrative and compendium of relevant sources for their own thinking and research. Kilanowski shows the points of convergence between Rorty and Habermas, and also examines the meaning of the outcome of their long exchange. Does the result get us any closer to a viable idea of freedom? Of responsibility? The book suggests some answers to these and other related questions.

Philosophy and Social Hope

Philosophy and Social Hope PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141946113
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book 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.

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521367813
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In this 1989 book Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable on a private level, although it cannot advance the social or political goals of liberalism. In fact Rorty believes that it is literature not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense of human solidarity. A truly liberal culture, acutely aware of its own historical contingency, would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. The book has a characteristically wide range of reference from philosophy through social theory to literary criticism. It confirms Rorty's status as a uniquely subtle theorist, whose writing will prove absorbing to academic and nonacademic readers alike.

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674248910
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The last book by the eminent American philosopher and public intellectual Richard Rorty, providing the definitive statement of his mature philosophical and political views. Richard RortyÕs Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism is a last statement by one of AmericaÕs foremost philosophers. Here Rorty offers his culminating thoughts on the influential version of pragmatism he began to articulate decades ago in his groundbreaking Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Marking a new stage in the evolution of his thought, RortyÕs final masterwork identifies anti-authoritarianism as the principal impulse and virtue of pragmatism. Anti-authoritarianism, on this view, means acknowledging that our cultural inheritance is always open to revision because no authority exists to ascertain the truth, once and for all. If we cannot rely on the unshakable certainties of God or nature, then all we have left to go onÑand argue withÑare the opinions and ideas of our fellow humans. The test of these ideas, Rorty suggests, is relatively simple: Do they work? Do they produce the peace, freedom, and happiness we desire? To achieve this enlightened pragmatism is not easy, though. Pragmatism demands trust. Pragmatism demands that we think and care about what others think and care about, which further requires that we account for othersÕ doubts of and objections to our own beliefs. After all, our own beliefs are as contestable as anyone elseÕs. A supple mind who draws on theorists from John Stuart Mill to Annette Baier, Rorty nonetheless is always an apostle of the concrete. No book offers a more accessible account of RortyÕs utopia of pragmatism, just as no philosopher has more eloquently challenged the hidebound traditions arrayed against the goals of social justice.

Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty PDF Author: Neil Gross
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 145960623X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 742

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Book Description
On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as one of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers. Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil...

Philosophy as Poetry

Philosophy as Poetry PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813939348
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
Undeniably iconoclastic, and doggedly practical where others were abstract, the late Richard Rorty was described by some as a philosopher with no philosophy. Rorty was skeptical of systems claiming to have answers, seeing scientific and aesthetic schools as vocabularies rather than as indispensable paths to truth. But his work displays a profound awareness of philosophical tradition and an urgent concern for how we create a society. As Michael Bérubé writes in his introduction to this new volume, Rorty looked upon philosophy as "a creative enterprise of dreaming up new and more humane ways to live." Drawn from Rorty’s acclaimed 2004 Page-Barbour lectures, Philosophy as Poetry distills many of the central ideas in his work. Rorty begins by addressing poetry and philosophy, which are often seen as contradictory pursuits. He offers a view of philosophy as a poem, beginning with the ancient Greeks and rewritten by succeeding generations of philosophers seeking to improve it. He goes on to examine analytic philosophy and the rejection by some philosophers, notably Wittgenstein, of the notion of philosophical problems that have solutions. The book concludes with an invigorating suspension of intellectual borders as Rorty focuses on the romantic tradition and relates it to philosophic thought. This book makes an ideal starting place for anyone looking for an introduction to Rorty’s thought and his contribution to our sense of an American pragmatism, as well as an understanding of his influence and the controversy that attended his work. Page-Barbour Lectures

Achieving Our Country

Achieving Our Country PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674003125
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
One of America's foremost philosophers challenges the lost generation of the American Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers such as Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself

Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself PDF Author: Richard Rorty
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804746182
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This volume collects a number of important and revealing interviews with Richard Rorty, spanning more than two decades of his public intellectual commentary, engagement, and criticism. In colloquial language, Rorty discusses the relevance and nonrelevance of philosophy to American political and public life. The collection also provides a candid set of insights into Rorty's political beliefs and his commitment to the labor and union traditions in this country. Finally, the interviews reveal Rorty to be a deeply engaged social thinker and observer.

Revisiting Richard Rorty

Revisiting Richard Rorty PDF Author: Pedro Góis Moreira
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1622739205
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Richard Rorty is considered one of the most original philosophers of the last decades, and he has generated warm enthusiasm on the part of many intellectuals and students, within and outside the field of philosophy. The collection opens with an essay by Robert Brandom, in which he continues the discussion of Rorty’s “vocabulary vocabulary” that he began in Rorty and his Critics, and ends with an interview in which Brandom talks about Rorty himself as a teacher and friend. The collection is then divided into three further sections, each addressing an aspect of Rorty’s thought. First, a political section contains several essays discussing Rorty’s notorious “prophecy” in Achieving our Country and the idea that he would have foreseen the rise of a political “strongman.” Also discussed are Rorty's view of the cultural left, his view of the relation between truth and democracy, and Rorty on the concept of fraternity. In a second, epistemological section, several essays address Rorty’s historicism, anti-representationalism, and his views on truth and on religion, often through the lenses of his critics (Putnam, Habermas, Dews). A final section addresses the relations between Rorty and other philosophers such as Hume, Heidegger, and Ortega y Gasset. This works contains valuable essays in three languages — English, Portuguese, and Spanish — and is a small example of the reach of Rorty’s thought and its expansion beyond the Anglo-Saxon world in only ten years after his death. It will appeal to Rorty’s scholars and researchers as well as any student of pragmatism and anti-foundationalist thought.