Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers

by Richard Rorty

• ISBN13: 9780521556866
• ISBN10: 0521556864
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-03-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This volume complements two highly successful previously published volumes of Richard Rorty's philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. The essays in the volume engage with the work of many of today's most innovative thinkers including Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Charles Taylor. The collection also touches on problems in contemporary feminism raised by Annette Baier, Marilyn Frye, and Catherine MacKinnon, and considers issues connected with human rights and cultural differences. Anyone with a serious interest in contemporary philosophy and what it can do for us in the modern world will enjoy this invaluable collection.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. Truth and Some Philosophers: 1. Is truth a goal of inquiry?: Donald Davidson vs. Crispin Wright

2. Hilary Putnam and the relativist menace

3. John Searle on realism and relativism

4. Charles Taylor on truth

5. Daniel Dennett on intrinsicality

6. Robert Brandom on social practices and representations

7. The very idea of human answerability to the world: John McDowell's Version of Empiricism

8. Anti-sceptical weapons: Michael Williams vs. Donald Davidson

Part II. Moral Progress: Towards more Inclusive Communities: 9. Human rights, rationality, and sentimentality

10. Rationality and cultural difference

11. Feminism and pragmatism

12. The end of Leninism, Havel and social hope

Part III. The Role of Philosophy in Human Progress: 13. The historiography of philosophy: four genres

14. The contingency of philosophical problems: Michael Ayers on Locke

15. Dewey between Hegel and Darwin

16. Habermas, Derrida and the functions of philosophy

17. Derrida and the philosophical tradition.