Richard Rorty: From Pragmatist Philosophy to Cultural Politics

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Richard Rorty was one of the most important philosophers of the last half of the twentieth century. His work helped effect global transformations in the way philosophy thinks about its work and role midst contemporary culture. He was influential across a diversity of disciplines in perturbing our inherited self-understandings of the place of intellectuals in culture and the roles of art, literature, science, and religion in contemporary liberal democratic society. This collection of essays, by an international and interdisciplinary group of eminent scholars and thinkers in their own right, including Jrgen Habermas, Saskia Sassen, Robert Brandom, and Richard Shusterman, presents the first complete posthumous study of Rortys work as a whole. The collection reflects on Rortys myriad accomplishments, with particular attention on the role of pragmatist philosophy in Rortys increasing identification of his thinking with the work of cultural politics. The book covers the full range of Rortyan themes, including the practice of philosophy and metaphilosophy, the politics of culture, and Rortys place in the contemporary philosophical and critical-cultural landscapes. These reflections serve to both introduce the arc of Rortys thinking and advance the critical reception of his work.

Reviews

This remains an essential volume for engaging with Rortys work; whether as an initial enquiry or a continuing conversation, it has much to offer on both Rortys project and his relevance to social and political life. -- Clayton Chin, Queen Mary University of London * Political Studies Review Volume 13, Issue 1 *
Richard Rorty associated the meliorism of old American pragmatism to a vocabulary or narrativistic philosophical social activism. He also gathered pragmatism meliorism with Nietzschean anti-authoritarianism. This mix of linguistic social activism and anti-authoritarianism is unique. He left us with useful vocabulary tools to deal with the challenges of democracy and humanism. Through essays from well-known scholars this book shows the reader why Rortys writings, his personal way of telling the history of philosophy, his frank dialogues with a wide spectrum of contemporary philosophers, constitute a pathfinder. His writings represents an effort of showing us how philosophy can affect our private and public spheres in a positive way. -- Susana de Castro, Professor of Philosophy, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
This collection is engaging and timely. It is symptomatic of a new wave in the encroaching seas of Rorty commentary. The authors approach Rorty's ideas in an admirably bold, but not uncritical spirit. Moreover, they concentrate on exploring his most challenging insights before developing them in ways that shed welcome light on the wider cultural significance of his unique conception of pragmatist philosophy. -- Alan Malachowski, Fellow at the Centre for Applied Ethics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
This collection provides an insightful analysis Richard Rortys widely-discussed but often-misunderstood oeuvre, and succeeds, moreover, in showing its continuing relevance. Written by an excellent cast of authors, with such towering figures as Jrgen Habermas among them, the essays are fresh, powerful, and inspiring. By discussing Rortys pragmatism in the context of topics as diverse as epistemic normativity, bodily awareness, the mother-infant dyad, cosmopolitan patriotism, cultural politics, and the like, they do justice to the breadth and interdisciplinarity of Rortys pragmatism and should be of interest not only to philosophers, but also to social scientists, political theorists, and specialists in feminist, literary, and cultural studies. Highly recommended. /* Style Definitions */ -- Wojciech Malecki, Assistant Professor of Literary Theory, University of Wroclaw, Poland and the author of Embodying Pragmatism
This excellent collection of essays, by young and world renowned thinkers, from across many disciplines, foregrounds Rortys irreverence against any form of dogmatism, while celebrating the generosity of his thinking. What this collection demonstrates amply and eloquently is that Rortys entire oeuvre had at its core a profound ethical and political sensibility that made him a philosophical sibling of figures like Socrates, Montaigne, Voltaire, Russell, Sartre, Derrida, de Beauvoir, Chomsky, and Nussbaum. Like them, Rorty exhibited why we are the poetic species. -- Eduardo Mendieta, Professor of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, USA
Richard Rorty has done more than any other contemporary philosopher to stimulate interest in pragmatism and to connect it to social and political questions. The essays in this excellent collection are a fitting tribute to pragmatisms most controversial figure, providing insight into his contribution to that tradition as well as suggestions about how that contribution might be taken forward. -- Michael Bacon, Senior Lecturer, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
A rich and affectionate tribute to a great pragmatist -- highly recommended. -- Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, UK

Author Bio

Alexander Grschner is Senior Research in the School of Education at the Technische Universitt Mnchen, Germany. Colin Koopman is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, USA.