Philosophy and Social Hope

by Rorty, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780140262889
• ISBN10: 0140262881
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Penguin Books

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Richard Rorty is a professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and the author of many books of philosophy, including Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; Contingency, Irony & Solidarity; and Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th-Century America.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Preface	xii
Introduction: Relativism: Finding and Making	xvi
I Autobiographical
Trotsky and the Wild Orchids	3	(20)
II Hope in Place of Knowledge: A Version of Pragmatism
Truth without Correspondence to Reality	23	(24)
A World without Substances or Essences	47	(25)
Ethics Without Principles	72	(21)
III Some Applications of Pragmatism
The Banality of Pragmatism and the Poetry of Justice	93	(11)
Pragmatism and Law: A Response to David Luban	104	(10)
Education as Socialization and as Individualization	114	(13)
The Humanistic Intellectual: Eleven Theses	127	(4)
The Pragmatist's Progress: Umberto Eco on Interpretation	131	(17)
Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibility and Romance	148	(20)
Religion As Conversation-stopper	168	(7)
Thomas Kuhn, Rocks and the Laws of Physics	175	(26)
On Heidegger's Nazism
IV Politics
Failed Prophecies, Glorious Hopes	201	(9)
A Spectre is Haunting the Intellectuals: Derrida on Marx	210	(13)
Love and Money	223	(6)
Globalization, the Politics of Identity and Social Hope	229	(14)
V Contemporary America
Looking Backwards from the Year 2096	243	(9)
The Unpatriotic Academy	252	(3)
Back to Class Politics	255	(7)
Afterword: Pragmatism, Pluralism and Postmodernism	262	(16)
Index	278