Descripción del sentido y alcance cognitivo del libro recensionado.

This article deals with Donald Davidson�s concept of metaphor and Richard Rorty�s use of it for his version of political liberalism. Rorty assumes that metaphor is a linguistic element that is impossible to understand. Metaphor is an unintelligible �call� that, from within the private sphere, provokes in individuals the desire to create alternative forms of life. Once metaphor has become literal, it �and the new form of life that it entails� can form part of public life. Metaphor (...) is the guarantee of the constant renewal of political liberalism. As against Rorty, yet also relying on Davidson, I argue that both metaphor and literal meaning are comprehensible,... (Leer más) and must therefore be said to exist in a relationship of mutuality. This allows me to subject to a thorough re-elaboration Rorty�s strict internal division of the political along the lines of the public and the private. (shrink)

O artigo objetiva uma linguistificação pós-metafísica da subjetividade mística a partir do pensamento de Richard Rorty e de Michel de Certeau. Para tanto, aborda-se inicialmente o processo de enunciação mística, notadamente na doutrina de João da Cruz, para num segundo momento questionar a impostação metafísica da ontologia fenomenológica sartriana. Como superação dessa perspectiva, a abordagem político-cultural da psicanálise de Richard Rorty propõe uma linguistificação do _self_ em _Freud e a reflexão moral_, redescrevendo o mundo psíquico com (...) a presença de “quase-pessoas”, o consciente e o inconsciente. Nesse ambiente conversacional entre conjuntos de crenças e desejos; sendo um predominante, o consciente, e outro alternativo, o inconsciente, há uma hospitalidade entre essas “quase-pessoas” como experiência de oração, em que um Outro divino e “sem modo” no _self_, como “quase-pessoa” estranha e parceira dessa conversação. Nesse sentido, na obra _A Fábula Mística_ (2015), Michel de Certeau analisa as implicações linguísticas e ético-políticas dessa hospitalidade apaixonada no _self_ nos reformadores do século XVI e XVII. O artigo finaliza apontando um viés complementar à abordagem dialógica da subjetividade mística a partir de Deus como ausência. (shrink)

Este artigo se destina a investigar a concepção do termo solidariedade em Richard Rorty e Axel Honneth, buscando apresentar as possíveis semelhanças e divergências de perspectivas tendo como parâmetro o progresso social. Richard Rorty aponta a solidariedade como uma troca de relações práticas intersubjetivas, sem apegos a tradição metafísica e a epistemologia. O autor nos propõe fugir de qualquer tentativa de fundamentalismos e buscas por verdades absolutas que venham guiar a noção de mundo dos indivíduos e (...) fundamentar suas ações. Tal comportamento limitaria as relações práticas que ocorrem dentro de uma comunidade, atrapalhando o processo de resoluções dos problemas que estão nas práticas sociais, mas que são solapados por buscas de justificativas universalistas. Por outro lado, Axel Honneth defende a solidariedade como uma terceira esfera de reconhecimento, seria a esfera destinada a estima social, comportamento que cada sujeito deveria manifestar a outro indivíduo para haja relações intersubjetivas entre eles. Esta estima é construída levando em consideração a história e as lutas por mudanças sociais, ela é dada como uma esfera de reconhecimento recorrendo a princípios naturalmente humanos, tomando a racionalidade e valores intrinsecamente humanos. O objetivo desse artigo é verificar como cada autor articula suas reflexões sobre o tema. (shrink)

Este artigo se destina a investigar a concepção do termo solidariedade em Richard Rorty e Axel Honneth, buscando apresentar as possíveis semelhanças e divergências de perspectivas tendo como parâmetro o progresso social. Richard Rorty aponta a solidariedade como uma troca de relações práticas intersubjetivas, sem apegos a tradição metafísica e a epistemologia. O autor nos propõe fugir de qualquer tentativa de fundamentalismos e buscas por verdades absolutas que venham guiar a noção de mundo dos indivíduos e (...) fundamentar suas ações. Tal comportamento limitaria as relações práticas que ocorrem dentro de uma comunidade, atrapalhando o processo de resoluções dos problemas que estão nas práticas sociais, mas que são solapados por buscas de justificativas universalistas. Por outro lado, Axel Honneth defende a solidariedade como uma terceira esfera de reconhecimento, seria a esfera destinada a estima social, comportamento que cada sujeito deveria manifestar a outro indivíduo para haja relações intersubjetivas entre eles. Esta estima é construída levando em consideração a história e as lutas por mudanças sociais, ela é dada como uma esfera de reconhecimento recorrendo a princípios naturalmente humanos, tomando a racionalidade e valores intrinsecamente humanos. O objetivo desse artigo é verificar como cada autor articula suas reflexões sobre o tema. (shrink)

Se sostiene, con Rorty, que la verdad no es ninguna propiedad y, contra Rorty, que esta posición no implica eliminar el concepto de verdad del discurso teórico. Con una estrategia pragmatista, se analizan las prácticas de los hablantes, para mostrar que no se adquieren los mismos compromisos cuando se atribuye verdad y cuando se atribuye justificación. Se evidencia el sentido en que es socialmente útil la distinción filosófica entre verdad y justificación, para finalizar mostrando cómo esa distinción no (...) entraña ninguna metafísica misteriosa. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the relationship between the Truth and Justification in the philosophies of Jürgen Habermas and Richard Rorty from their discussions. The thesis that I advocate is that the relationship between Truth and Justification depends on the Ontological and Epistemological assumptions that each maintains and is not a matter of conditions of speech as stated by Habermas.

O pragmatismo de Richard Rorty possui como uma das suas peculiaridades o fato de atribuir plena relevância moral à literatura em detrimento da pretensiosa prescrição filosófica que põe a moral na linha reta da ética. Uma vez que as descrições filosóficas, de caráter universal, não são capazes de impelir indivíduos à progressão moral sem sugerir uma dada concepção política indesejável, Rorty compreende que a literatura, cujo vocabulário pretende esboçar as faces do particular, atende, melhor do que a (...) própria filosofia, às nossas demandas éticas. Isso é possível porque as descrições literárias ambientam os indivíduos sob sua própria condição finita e contingente, o que desdobra a ampliação da lealdade e a progressão moral, através da menção à dor alheia. Nesse sentido, uma cultura que herde seu vocabulário moral da literatura pode realizar-se mais plenamente de modo a promover um maior grau de felicidade e erradicação dos sofrimentos de seus componentes do que uma cultura cuja orientação moral é fruto daespeculação metafísica. Nesse artigo, abordo esse anverso moral da literatura como elemento afim aos ideais éticos projetados na configuração democrática liberal. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This essay introduces a running symposium on the work of Richard Rorty and its legacy fifteen years after his passing. The arc of Rorty's thought defines a trajectory through American pragmatism, tracing a variation unimagined until he expressed it. His work raised Anglophone philosophers’ interest in American pragmatism as never before and also focused the interest of the whole world on American pragmatism as never before, even though the result was to define a pragmatism saturated with nominalism (...) and suppressing the most original qualities of the sources that he celebrated. (shrink)

Este artigo consiste em um diálogo com textos de Jürgen Habermas e Richard Rorty referentes ao tema da religião e seu lugar na sociedade contemporânea. Em vista do tom dialogal, as citações desses autores são relativamente numerosas, a fim de que as suas vozes sobressaiam no texto. O objetivo do diálogo é extrair pistas para a construção de uma filosofia da religião em tom pós-metafísico, ou não fundacional. Não é um texto exaustivo, mas sugestivo. Não se propõe a (...) tecer críticas ao sistema de ideias dos autores com quem dialoga, mas aproveitar criticamente algumas de suas ideias para a definição de possíveis rumos para uma filosofia da religião pós-metafísica. Os termos pós-metafísico e não fundacional são usados aqui de modo intercambiável e não se referem a um tipo de filosofia antimetafísica, mas sim, a uma filosofia para a qual os temas da metafísica não assumem papel de explicação fundacional da realidade como um todo. Palavras-chave : Filosofia pós-metafísica; Habermas; Rorty; Religião.This essay is a dialogue with Jürgen Habermas’s and Richard Rorty’s texts on the theme of religion and its place in contemporary society. Given the conversational tone, the number of quotations from those authors is relatively large, so that their voices can speak up in the text. The goal of that dialogue is the formulation of clues to the elaboration of a post-metaphysical or non-foundational philosophy of religion. The essay is not exhaustive, but suggestive. It does not mean to criticize Habermas’s and Rorty’s systems of thought, but to appropriate critically some of their ideas as guidelines to a post-metaphysical philosophy of religion. The terms ‘post-metaphysical’ and ‘non-foundational’ are interchangeable here and do not refer to an anti-metaphysical philosophy. They try to express a kind of philosophy in which metaphysical themes do not play a role of foundational explanation of reality as a whole. Key words : Post-metaphysical philosophy; Habermas; Rorty; Religion. (shrink)

This set of four volumes brings together seminal essays spanning the career of Richard Rorty, one of the most creative and influential anglophone philosophers of recent decades. The essays range widely over the concerns of philosophy, politics, science, religion, and culture, engaging with thinkers from Hilary Putnam to Catherine McKinnon and challenging readers to re-examine many traditional tenets in philosophy and elsewhere. They will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in contemporary philosophy and what it (...) can do for us in the modern world. (shrink)

Nystrom and Puckett's pamphlet gives us the most comprehensive picture available of Richard Rorty's political views. This is Rorty being avuncular, cranky, and straightforward: his arguments on patriotism, the political left, and philosophy—as usual, unusual—are worth pondering. This pamphlet will appeal to all those interested in Rorty's distinct brand of pragmatism and leftist politics in the United States.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 369-396 [Access article in PDF] Worlds or Words Apart?The Consequences of Pragmatism for Literary Studies:An Interview with Richard Rorty Richard Rorty, with E. P. Ragg ER: I WANTED TO ASK YOU first about holism. Clearly holism doesn't just mean being interdisciplinary. Nor, as you argue in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is it merely a question of antifoundationalist polemic. (...) Rather, you say it marks "a distrust of the whole epistemological enterprise." 1 Could you explain what you mean by that?RR: If you weren't some kind of foundationalist you wouldn't bother to get into epistemology. Epistemology only looks attractive if you think that there is a topic called knowledge whose nature can be studied. The idea is that once you have learned its nature, you might get more of it than you had before. Only someone who thinks that knowledge has foundations located in sense perception, or pure reason, or divine revelation, or something, would take the idea of studying knowledge, its nature and limits, seriously. I think of holism as just the view that people change their beliefs in such a way as to achieve coherence with their other beliefs, to bring their beliefs and desires into some sort of equilibrium—and that that is about all there is to be said about the quest for knowledge. There are no rules for which beliefs you sacrifice in order to accommodate other beliefs, or which desires you change to accommodate changed beliefs. Because there aren't any rules, there aren't any methods you can study in order to improve the way you achieve equilibrium. The whole idea of studying how belief is changed is pretty hopeless. It's just too holistic a process to be an appropriate topic of study. [End Page 369]ER: Holism is obviously a natural corollary of pragmatism because pragmatists urge bringing as many different useful vocabularies to discussion as we can. This reminds me of your definition of "literariness." In Contingency, irony, and solidarity you describe literary skill as the ability to effect "surprising gestalt switches by making smooth rapid transitions from one terminology to another." 2 Would it be fair to say, then, that thinking holistically is, to some degree, literary?RR: No, I don't think so. It would be more appropriate to say thinking holistically, in the sense of not being limited to a given context or disciplinary framework, is a matter of thinking imaginatively. Politicians and theologians and engineers think imaginatively just as much as literary people do. To call it literary would be unduly to privilege literature.ER: Would you say that, as a writer, your own work has been treated holistically: first in the sense that your texts are seen as a growing body of thought—that is, that there is a difference between the writer of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and the author of Contingency, irony, and solidarity—and, second, in the sense that people have thought holistically about your ideas, have brought them to bear on literature, philosophy, social science, the very demarcations you want to transcend?RR: I think that the stuff I do is more interesting to people outside of philosophy than those inside it. This is an example of the same phenomenon that led Kuhn to be much more read by people outside the hard sciences than by people within them. My stuff, like Kuhn's, debunks certain views that various earlier philosophers, especially the positivists, had tried to impose on the culture. My readers are people who are looking for a way out from the view they absorbed, without much liking it, when they were young. People inside of philosophy, however, often regard all this debunking as endangering the problems to the solution of which they have devoted their lives. They do not want the problems dissolved, because that would dissolve their solutions as well. So they welcome it less than do outsiders.ER: One of the markers of your... (shrink)

When it first appeared in 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature hit the philosophical world like a bombshell. In it, Richard Rorty argued that, beginning in the seventeenth century, philosophers developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation: comparing the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. Rorty's book is a powerful critique of this imagery and the tradition of thought that it spawned. Thirty years later, the book remains a must-read and stands as a (...) classic of twentieth-century philosophy. Its influence on the academy, both within philosophy and across a wide array of disciplines, continues unabated. This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The Philosopher as Expert.". (shrink)

In his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.

Richard Rorty's collected papers, written during the 1980s and now published in two volumes, take up some of the issues which divide Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers and offer something of a compromise - agreeing with the latter in their criticisms of traditional notions of truth and objectivity, but disagreeing with them over the political implications they draw from dropping traditional philosophical doctrines. The second volume pursues the themes of the first volume in the (...) context of discussions of recent European philosophy focusing on the work of Heidegger and Derrida. (shrink)

This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The ...

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. (shrink)

Let me begin by asking you to consider some thought experiments. Suppose that you are being pursued by the police and you go to your family home and ask them to hide you. You would expect that they would do so. It would be abnormal if they did not. Consider again the reverse situation. You know that one of your parents or one of your children is guilty of a sordid crime and nonetheless he or she asks for your protection, (...) asks to be hidden from police inquiries. Many of us would be willing to perjure ourselves in order to supply such a child or parent with a false alibi. But if an innocent person would then be wrongly convicted as a result of our perjury, most of us would be torn by a conflict between loyalty and justice.Such a conflict will be felt, however, only to the extent that we can identify with the innocent person whom we have harmed. If the person is a neighbour the conflict will probably be intense. If a stranger, especially of a different race or class or nation, it may be considerably weaker. There has to be some sense that the victim is one of us before we start being tormented by the questionof whether we did the right thing when we committed perjury. So it might be equally appropriate to describe us as torn between conflicting loyalties — loyalty to our family and loyalty to some group large enough to include the victim of our perjury, rather than torn between loyalty andjustice.Our loyalty to such larger groups will however weaken or perhaps vanish when things get really tough. Then people whom we once thought of as like ourselves will be excluded. Sharing food with impoverished people down the street is natural and right in normal times but perhaps not in a famine when doing so would amount to disloyalty to one’s own family. The tougher things get, the more ties of loyalty to those near at hand tighten and those to everyone else slacken. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that Richard Rorty’s claim that pragmatism is opposed to all varieties of metaphysics is fundamentally mistaken. After detailing pragmatist reasons for thinking Rorty’s proposal is justified, I argue that there are more compelling pragmatist reasons to think Rorty’s metaphilosophical interpretation of pragmatism is rather problematic: firstly, Rorty has a narrow understanding of ‘metaphysics’ and he does not take into account Peirce’s argument that it is impossible to eliminate (...) metaphysical concepts from ordinary language and our scientific practices; secondly, Rorty’s Sellarsian philosophical anthropology and his proto-Brandomian theory of the constitution of norms are in fact instances of metaphysical positions. I conclude the paper by claiming that given that pragmatism is in fact supportive of a specific variety of metaphysics, the relationship between idealism and pragmatism ought to be seen as involving more convergence rather than great contestation. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of the philosophical papers which Richard Rorty has written over the past decade, and complements three previous volumes of his papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Essays on Heidegger and Others, and Truth and Progress. Topics discussed include the changing role of philosophy in Western culture over the course of recent centuries, the role of the imagination in intellectual and moral progress, the notion of ‘moral identity’, the Wittgensteinian claim that the problems of philosophy (...) are linguistic in nature, the irrelevance of cognitive science to philosophy, and the mistaken idea that philosophers should find the ‘place’ of such things as consciousness and moral value in a world of physical particles. The papers form a rich and distinctive collection which will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in philosophy and its relation to culture. (shrink)

In these eloquent essays, articles and lectures, Rorty gives a stimulating summary of his central philosophical beliefs and how they relate to his political ...

Prescient essays about the state of our politics from the philosopher who predicted that a populist demagogue would become president of the United States Richard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, warned of the rise of a Trumpian strongman in America. What Can We Hope For? gathers nineteen of Rorty’s essays on American and global politics, (...) including four previously unpublished and many lesser-known and hard-to-find pieces. In these provocative and compelling essays, Rorty confronts the critical challenges democracies face at home and abroad, including populism, growing economic inequality, and overpopulation and environmental devastation. In response, he offers optimistic and realistic ideas about how to address these crises. He outlines strategies for fostering social hope and building an inclusive global community of trust, and urges us to put our faith in trade unions, universities, bottom-up social campaigns, and bold political visions that thwart ideological pieties. Driven by Rorty’s sense of emergency about our collective future, What Can We Hope For? is filled with striking diagnoses of today’s political crises and creative proposals for solving them. (shrink)

The Linguistic Turn provides a rich and representative introduction to the entire historical and doctrinal range of the linguistic philosophy movement. In two retrospective essays titled "Ten Years After" and "Twenty-Five Years After," Rorty shows how his book was shaped by the time in which it was written and traces the directions philosophical study has taken since. "All too rarely an anthology is put together that reflects imagination, command, and comprehensiveness. Rorty's collection is just such a book."-- Review (...) of Metaphysics Richard Rorty is University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's collected papers, written during the 1980s and now published in two volumes, take up some of the issues which divide Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers and offer something of a compromise - agreeing with the latter in their criticisms of traditional notions of truth and objectivity, but disagreeing with them over the political implications they draw from dropping traditional philosophical doctrines. In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as (...) intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy. (shrink)

In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.

A revised and expanded version of a talk given by Richard Rorty on the occasion of the award of the Meister-Eckhart Sachbuch preis in December 2001, the article provides for its author an occasion for highlighting the latest developments regarding the condition of reli- gion, religiosity, belief, faith, and atheism. Starting from the common sense and rather numerous instances of those who are „religiously unmusical,“ Richard Rorty looks briefly at the meandering course of secularization, endors- ing (...) the idea that the conflict between science and religion is a struggle for supremacy between two institutions. Dealing mostly with Gianni Vattimo’s book Credere di credere, the American philosopher builds, in his unmistak- able style, rich in highlights and shades, a case for the question of the (post)modernist believer, but also an occasion to notice the entrenching line separating the religious from the non-religious person, as two opposing ways of interpreting transcendence: as dependence, for the religious person; as hope, for the non-religious one. (shrink)