Richard Rorty Politics and Vision

by Voparil, Christopher J.

• ISBN13: 9780742551664
• ISBN10: 0742551660
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-07-10
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

This book offers a fresh perspective on Richard Rorty by situating his work in the arena of political theory. Reinterpreting Rorty's much-maligned antirepresentationalism as a Romantic affirmation of the power of imaginative writing, Voparil firmly grounds Rorty in an American tradition that includes not only James and Dewey, but Emerson, Whitman, and James Baldwin, and initiates an overdue reassessment of this important thinker's value to the political discourse of the 21st century.

Author Biography

Christopher J. Voparil is the Chair of the Department of Humanities at Lynn University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
List of Abbreviations of Rorty Texts	xiii
Introduction: Reading Rorty	1	(8)
1 Pragmatism and Personal Vision	9	(26)
2 The Mirror and the Lever	35	(26)
3 The Politics of the Novel	61	(28)
4 The Limits of Sympathy	89	(24)
5 Public Pragmatism and Private Narcissism	113	(42)
6 America as the Greatest Poem	155	(28)
Conclusion: Rorty and Thesis Eleven	183	(12)
Index	195	(6)
About the Author	201