The book makes a new contribution to the contemporary debates on nihilism and the sacred. Drawing on an original interpretation of Richard Rorty’s writings, it challenges the orthodox treatment of nihilism as a malaise that human beings must overcome. Instead, nihilism should be framed as a problem for human culture to outgrow through pragmatism.

The idea of nihilism continues to figure prominently in philosophical debates about the problems of modernity. The aim of this article is to consider how Richard Rorty’s work might advance these debates. The article begins with a discussion of the problem of nihilism as it appears in the recent exchange between Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly. It then brings Rorty into the conversation by considering his reflections on egotism and his proposed antidote to (...) it: self-enlargement. I propose that self-creation and solidarity, two key ideas of Rorty’s earlier work, should be understood as redemptive paths to self-enlargement. With this interpretation in place, Rorty can be seen as offering an alternative perspective on the problem of nihilism, one that compares favourably with those put forward by Taylor, Dreyfus and Kelly. (shrink)

This paper tries to examine what is at stake in the various projects to ?re-enchant the world?, which have arisen in the face of modernity. It sees the ambition to ?save the sacred? in this context. It poses a number of problems which arise for such projects, and in particular examines the notion of ?polytheism? which is central to the recent book of Sean Kelly and Hubert Dreyfus, All Things Shining.

For more than a quarter of a century, Hubert L. Dreyfus has been the leading voice in American philosophy for the continuing relevance of phenomenology, particularly as developed by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Dreyfus has influenced a generation of students and a wide range of colleagues, and these volumes are an excellent representation of the extent and depth of that influence.In keeping with Dreyfus's openness to others' ideas, many of the essays in this volume take the (...) form of arguments with various of his positions. The essays focus on the dialogue with the continental philosophical tradition, in particular the work of Heidegger, that has played a foundational role in Dreyfus's thinking. The sections are Philosophy and Authenticity; Modernity, Self, and the World; and Heideggerian Encounters. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays.Contributors : William D. Blattner, Taylor Carman, David R. Cerbone, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Charles Guignon, Michel Haar, Beatrice Han, Alastair Hannay, John Haugeland, Randall Havas, Jeff Malpas, Mark Okrent, Richard Rorty, Julian Young, Michael E. Zimmerman. (shrink)

Hubert L. Dreyfus's engagement with other thinkers has always been driven by his desire to understand certain basic questions about ourselves and our world. The philosophers on whom his teaching and research have focused are those whose work seems to him to make a difference to the world. The essays in this volume reflect this desire to "make a difference"—not just in the world of academic philosophy, but in the broader world. Dreyfus has helped to create a culture of (...) reflection—of questioning the deep premises that inform and shape work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He has also been the primary introducer and interpreter of Martin Heidegger's work to the world of information technology. The essays in this volume represent the fruitful application of deep philosophical analysis to the concerns of our modern technological world. The sections are Coping and Intentionality; Computers and Cognitive Science; and "Applied Heidegger." In addition to cognitive science and artificial intelligence, topics include everyday skills, religion, business practices, and medical care. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays. Contributors Daniel Andler, Patricia Benner, Albert Borgmann, Harry Collins, George Downing, Fernando Flores, Sean Kelly, Joseph Rouse, Theodore R. Schatzki, John Searle, Robert C. Solomon, Charles Spinosa, David Stern, Charles Taylor, Terry Winograd, Mark Wrathall. (shrink)

Hubert L. Dreyfus's engagement with other thinkers has always been driven by his desire to understand certain basic questions about ourselves and our world. The philosophers on whom his teaching and research have focused are those whose work seems to him to make a difference to the world. The essays in this volume reflect this desire to "make a difference"--not just in the world of academic philosophy, but in the broader world.Dreyfus has helped to create a culture of reflection--of (...) questioning the deep premises that inform and shape work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He has also been the primary introducer and interpreter of Martin Heidegger's work to the world of information technology. The essays in this volume represent the fruitful application of deep philosophical analysis to the concerns of our modern technological world.The sections are Coping and Intentionality; Computers and Cognitive Science; and "Applied Heidegger." In addition to cognitive science and artificial intelligence, topics include everyday skills, religion, business practices, and medical care. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays.Contributors : Daniel Andler, Patricia Benner, Albert Borgmann, Harry Collins, George Downing, Fernando Flores, Sean Kelly, Joseph Rouse, Theodore R. Schatzki, John Searle, Robert C. Solomon, Charles Spinosa, David Stern, Charles Taylor, Terry Winograd, Mark Wrathall. (shrink)

This commentary critically examines two facets of Tracy Llanera's recent book Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. First, it considers her interpretation of Richard Rorty's redemptive project. It argues that, while Llanera succeeds in resolving tensions in Rorty's public‐private distinction, her account downplays the role of abnormal discourse within projects of self‐creation. Second, it raises several questions about Llanera's strategy for situating this redemptive project within debates concerning existential nihilism. On her view, one ought to follow Rorty in addressing (...) the problem of egotism instead of the problem of nihilism, since the former is prior to the latter. But it is not clear who counts as an egotist, or why egotists are especially prone to becoming nihilists. Moreover, there are reasons to think that egotism and nihilism are fundamentally different kinds of problems. (shrink)

This article uses the interpretive work of Dreyfus, Gadamer, Nussbaum and Taylor to explore the natural environment as a shared ecological and social commonality. I focus on the supposition that the natural world possesses intrinsic value and new political structures are needed. I explore how we might better engage with multiple cultures concerning matters at the heart of ecological politics. Political interpretivists offer processes of equal facilitation and maximization that work to include environmental values in democratic thought. Interpretivists differ from (...) earth-based and neo-conservative environmentalists, who dominate modern debates. The differences involve understanding the role of practical reasoning and how humanity interacts with the natural world. Intriguingly, then, interpretivists concur with Deep Ecologists that nature possesses intrinsic value, but do so guided by an ideal of authenticity. (shrink)

This essay critically engages the concept of transcendence in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. I explore his definition of transcendence, its role in holding a modernity-inspired nihilism at bay, and how it is crucial to the Christian antihumanist argument that he makes. In the process, I show how the critical power of this analysis depends heavily and paradoxically on the Nietzschean antihumanism that he otherwise rejects. Through an account of what I describe as naturalistic Christianity, I argue that transcendence (...) need not be construed as supernatural, that all of the resources necessary for a meaningful life are immanent in the natural process, which includes the semiotic capacities of Homo sapiens. Finally, I triangulate Taylor's supernatural account of transcendence, naturalistic Christianity, and Dreyfus and Kelly's physis-based account of “going beyond” our normal normality in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics for Meaning in a Secular Age. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger was one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly influenced philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Richard Rorty, Hubert Dreyfus, Stanley Cavell, Emmanuel Levinas, Alain Badiou, and Gilles Deleuze. His accounts of human existence and being and his critique of technology have inspired theorists in fields as diverse as theology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, (...) and the humanities. This Lexicon provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to Heidegger's notoriously obscure vocabulary. Each entry clearly and concisely defines a key term and explores in depth the meaning of each concept, explaining how it fits into Heidegger's broader philosophical project. With over 220 entries written by the world's leading Heidegger experts, this landmark volume will be indispensable for any student or scholar of Heidegger's work. (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)

We appreciate the thoughtful responses we have received on ?Disclosing New Worlds?. We will respond to the concerns raised by grouping them under three general themes. First, a number of questions arise from lack of clarity about how the matters we undertook to discuss ? especially solidarity ? appear when one starts by thinking about the primacy of skills and practices. Under this heading we consider (a) whether we need more case studies to make our points, and (b) whether national (...) and other solidarities require willingness to die for the values that produce that solidarity. Second, we take up questions concerning the historical character of the skills of entrepreneurs, virtuous citizens, and culture figures. Here we shall (a) emphasize how we distinguish ourselves from earlier writers on these subjects, (b) consider essentialism, relational identities, and exclusion, (c) answer a number of Habermasian concerns raised by Hoy, (d) speak to Taylor's concern regarding the contingency of solidarity and forgetting, and (e) take up Grant's objection that we are both formalists and relativists. Third, we shall take up the concern, raised mostly by Borgmann, that historical disclosing, that is to say history as the West has known it, is over, and that now all that can be done by those who transform the practices is to make them more and more technological. (shrink)

It is curious why a secular pragmatist like Richard Rorty would capitalize on the religiously-laden concept of redemption in his recent writings. But more than being an intriguing idea in his later work, this essay argues that redemption plays a key role in the historical development of Rorty’s thought. It begins by exploring the paradoxical status of redemption in Rorty’s oeuvre. It then investigates an overlooked debate between Rorty, Dreyfus and Taylor that first endorses the concept. It then contrasts (...) Rorty’s notions of essentialism and edification to link redemption to self-transformation. After providing a historical legitimation to the idea of redemption, the essay reconstructs Rorty’s modern version of the concept. Redemption for Rorty centers on human relationships and not religion or philosophy; it is also pluralist and liberal in character. Finally, it concludes that Rorty uses redemption—a primary component of religious language—to capture the salvific force of religion. This power is redirected toward the protection of secular, democratic hopes, which are demanding and fragile by nature. (shrink)

For Descartes, knowledge exists as ideas in the mind that represent the world. In a radical critique, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that knowledge consists of much more than the representations we formulate in our minds. They affirm our direct contact with reality—both the physical and the social world—and our shared understanding of it.

We argue that heterophenomenology both over- and under-populates the intentional realm. For example, when one is involved in coping, one’s mind does not contain beliefs. Since the heterophenomenologist interprets all intentional commitment as belief, he necessarily overgenerates the belief contents of the mind. Since beliefs cannot capture the normative aspect of coping and perceiving, any method, such as heterophenomenology, that allows for only beliefs is guaranteed not only to overgenerate beliefs but also to undergenerate other kinds of intentional phenomena.

Prominent defenders of the Enlightenment, like Jürgen Habermas, are beginning to recognize that the characterization of human beings in entirely rational and secular terms leaves out something important. Religion, they admit, plays an important role in human existence. But the return to a traditional monotheistic religion seems sociologically difficult after the death of God. We argue that Homeric polytheism retains a phenomenologically rich account of the sacred, and a similarly rich understanding of human existence in its midst. By opening ourselves (...) up to the moods of wonder and gratitude at the root of Homer's sense of the sacred, we can re-appropriate a polytheistic understanding of the sacred that allows us to recover and revive the intensity and meaningfulness that Homer's polytheists enjoyed. (shrink)

Homer has a unique understanding of the body. On his view the body is that by means of which we are subject to moods, and moods are what attune us to our situation. Being attuned to a situation, in turn, opens us to the various ways things and people can be engaging. We agree with Homer that this receptivity is evident throughout our entire existence. It characterizes everything from our basic bodily skills for coping with objects and people to our (...) tendency to be immersed in and guided by moods such as the erotic or the agonistic – whole ways for a situation to matter. (shrink)

How should we understand religion, and what place should it hold, in an age in which metaphysics has come into disrepute? The metaphysical assumptions which supported traditional theologies are no longer widely accepted, but it is not clear how this 'end of metaphysics' should be understood, nor what implications it ought to have for our understanding of religion. At the same time there is renewed interest in the sacred and the divine in disciplines as varied as philosophy, psychology, literature, history, (...) anthropology, and cultural studies. In this volume, leading philosophers in the United States and Europe address the decline of metaphysics and the space which this decline has opened for non-theological understandings of religion. The contributors include Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Jean-Luc Marion, Gianni Vattimo, Hubert Dreyfus, Robert Pippin, John Caputo, Adriaan Peperzak, Leora Batnitzky, and Mark Wrathall. (shrink)

The concept of nihilism plays an interesting role in Richard Rorty's oeuvre. On the one hand, Rorty barely refers to the concept; on the other, Rorty's critics pejoratively characterize his pragmatism as nihilistic. This chapter seeks to clarify Rorty's position. It suggests that Rorty avoids the concept in order to get away from the conceptual baggage that accompanies the existential sense of the term. Rorty neither endorses the idea that human lives are meaningless nor thinks that abandoning the Platonic (...) quest for truth diminishes our capacity to experience meaningful lives. By challenging these assumptions, Rorty can then be seen as a thinker who may have much more to say about the modern challenges to human meaning than meets the eye. In this light, the chapter presents three cases that explore Rorty's contributions to our understanding of existential nihilism. It also suggests contemporary research approaches to Rorty and nihilism. (shrink)

Retrieving Realism, by DreyfusHubert and TaylorCharles. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. 184.

Robust realism is defended by developing further the account in Inquiry 42 (1999), pp. 49-78 of how human beings make things and people intelligible. Incommensurate worlds imply a violation of the principle of noncontradiction, but this violation does not have the consequences normally feared. Given our capacities to make things intelligible, some things, like human action, are most intelligible when they are understood as contradictory (e.g. free and determined). Things-in-themselves need not have contradictory features for multiple orders of nature to (...) make sense. We can coherently suppose that both Western and Chinese science give two incommensurable and complete accounts of the functioning of the human body. Since things do not have contradictory properties, we would then have to suppose that, in the case of bodies, there are two independent functional orders. If this can be true for bodies, it can be true for the orders of nature as a whole. John Haugeland's account of systems and interfaces shows us how to make sense of necessary functional components of the universe. Finally, multiple realism makes more sense than Rorty's deflationary pragmatism because it explains how things can matter. (shrink)

Rarely have I encountered a book like All Things Shining. It bravely engages issues that are truly significant for our time, yet flaws run through it like faults in the California landscape. The book has spawned contentious critique unusual for a work by contemporary philosophers. Before I offer my own critical analysis, it is fitting first to appreciate what Dreyfus and Kelly attempt to achieve.The foremost contemporary problems the authors combat are what they term "the burden of choice" and a (...) pervasive mood of nihilistic confusion. They believe the rationalistic and existential programs that are typically advocated in our secular age fail to offer persons convincing grounds for making sustainable decisions. .. (shrink)

John Milbank's philosophical theology synthesizes the differences between Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor on realism and truth. Rorty thinks that both realism and truth as correspondence are philosophical positions that are still in the modern epistemological tradition. Taylor thinks that escaping that same tradition involves realism and an ontological use of truth as correspondence. Milbank synthesizes these differences by defending both non-realism and truth as correspondence. This synthesis is found in his Christology because truth is made by Christ (...) and truth is Christ so we know the truth by participating in the body of Christ called the church. (shrink)

This essay is a reply to commentaries by Elin Danielsen Huckerby, Yvonne Huetter‐Almerigi, and Paul Showler on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism (2020).

Two rough, sharply contrasting, answers to the question "What Is Hermeneutics?" are that it is a method and that it is an attitude. Dilthey thought of it as "the method of the human sciences." Gadamer thinks of the hermeneutic attitude as the intellectual position one arrives at when one puts aside the idea of "method" and the cluster of other Cartesian and Kantian ideas within which it is embedded. If I understand Gadamer correctly, he is asking us to abandon the (...) notion of discourse proceeding within a pre-existing set of constraints, and instead open ourselves to the course of conversation. This abjuration of the Kantian notion that there is something called "a structure of rationality" which the philosopher discovers and within which we have a moral duty to remain seems to me to characterize the common lesson to be learned from Heidegger, from Wittgenstein, and from Dewey. So I want to use the term "hermeneutics" as the name for this attitude. Rather than developing Gadamer’s point further, however, I shall be arguing for the uselessness of the Diltheyan notion of a "method of the human sciences." More specifically, I shall be arguing against the attempts of Professors Dreyfus and Taylor to preserve the opposition between the natural and the human sciences and thus to give sense to the Diltheyan notion. (shrink)

Arguably the most influential of all contemporary English-speaking philosophers, Richard Rorty has transformed the way many inside and outside philosophy think about the discipline and the traditional ways of practising it. Drawing on a wide range of thinkers from Darwin and James to Quine, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida, Rorty has injected a bold anti-foundationalist vision into philosophical debate, into discussions in literary theory, communication studies, political theory and education, and, as public intellectual, into national debates about the responsibilities of (...) America in the modern world. The essays in this volume offer a balanced exposition and critique of Rorty's views on knowledge, language, truth, science, morality and politics. The editorial introduction presents a valuable overview of Rorty's philosophical vision. Written by a distinguished team of philosophers, this volume will have an unusual appeal outside philosophy to students in the social sciences, literary studies, cultural studies and political theory. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kierkegaard's Religiousness A sphere of existence, presented in his edifying works, and Heidegger's concept of authenticity, proposed in Being and Time, as responses to modern nihilism. While Kierkegaard argues that Religiousness A is an unsuccessful response to modern nihilism, Heidegger claims that authenticity, a secularized version of Religiousness A, is a successful response. We argue that Heidegger's secularization of Religiousness A is incomplete and unsuccessful, that Heidegger's later work offers a reconsideration of the problem of modern nihilism, (...) and that later Heidegger suggests a way out of nihilism which is compatible with Kierkegaard's Religiousness B sphere of existence. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor have produced a thorough, careful, and concise account of cognition and articulation that simultaneously provides ample justification for renewed confidence in our capacity to understand reality, engages many of the central concerns of both analytic and phenomenological philosophy, and helps reconnect the philosophical enterprise to wider social and cultural concerns.The book opens with an exposition of the "mediational" worldview that "influences all our theorizing" about thought and language, a worldview that suggests "we grasp (...) external reality through internal representations". The "four interwoven strands" of this worldview include an account of perception and... (shrink)

This article provides a semantic reading of Tracy Llanera's brilliant book Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. Llanera is reframing the debate of how to react to the malaise of modern nihilism by proposing a change of metaphor: instead of trying to “overcome” nihilism, we should try to “outgrow” nihilism. This article invites Llanera to shed more light on her project with respect to the semantic categories of realism and representationalism, and with respect to the growing field of conceptual engineering. (...) Can Llanera's project be fruitfully understood as engineering the concepts of “transcendence” and “redemption”? How much of the project hangs on the idea that language does not represent but is rather a tool that helps us fulfill our varying needs? How neat is the entanglement of semantic and existential meaning? (shrink)

Este artículo indaga acerca de la noción de “trasfondo” (background) en la filosofía de Charles Taylor y busca complementarla con las reflexiones de Hubert Dreyfus. Esta noción busca contrarrestar el representacionismo cognitivo, que tuvo un tremendo impulso con Descartes y que fue perpetuado por la epistemología moderna. El representacionismo, para Taylor, nos abre a antropologías basadas en ontologías de la desvinculación (dualismo y monismo mecanicista) y esta impronta influye decididamente en la filosofía moderna y contemporánea pese a corrientes (...) filosóficas que afirman superarlo. Para Dreyfus, la noción de “trasfondo” se vincula con nuestras prácticas sociales y el polémico Uno heideggeriano (das Man) es su lugar privilegiado de trasmisión; es también aquello que derrumbaría definitivamente el legado representacionista cartesiano. (shrink)

Liberal democracy needs a clear-eyed, robust defense to deal with the increasingly complex challenges it faces in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately much of contemporary liberal theory has rejected this endeavor for fear of appearing culturally hegemonic. Instead, liberal theorists have sought to gut liberalism of its ethical substance in order to render it more tolerant of non-liberal ways of life. This theoretical effort is misguided, however, because successful liberal democracy is an ethically demanding political regime that requires its citizenry to (...) display certain virtues and habits of mind. Against the grain of contemporary theory, philosopher Richard Rorty blends American pragmatism and romanticism to produce a comprehensive vision of liberal modernity that features a virtue-based conception of liberal democracy. In doing so, Rorty defends his pragmatic liberalism against a host of notable interlocutors, including Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Hilary Putnam, Richard J. Bernstein, and Jean Bethke Elshtain. (shrink)

RORTY: I might explain that the last few sentences of my remarks were written before I knew what Dreyfus would say. Having heard his remarks, I'm not sure that Dreyfus and I differ, for I would like to take what he calls the religious rather than the secular line. I agree that "micropractices" left over from an earlier day help us resist the disciplinary society, and I think it would be advantageous if we could come up with a cultural paradigm (...) which embodied more of them and less of the Cartesian tradition of scientism. (shrink)

[1] In _What Computers Can't Do_ (1972), Hubert Dreyfus identified several basic assumptions about the nature of human knowledge which grounded contemporary research in cognitive science. Contemporary artificial intelligence, he argued, relied on an unjustified belief that the mind functions like a digital computer using symbolic manipulations ("the psychological assumption") (Dreyfus 1992: 163ff), or at least that computer programs could be understood as formalizing human thought ("the epistemological assumption") (Dreyfus 1992: 189). In addition, the project depended upon an assumption (...) about the data about the human world which we employ in thought - namely, that it consists of discrete, determinate, and explicit pieces which can be processed heuristically ("the ontological assumption") (Dreyfus 1992: 206). (shrink)

The title of Andy Clark's book is, among other things, a reference to one of the central terms in Martin Heidegger's early work: "Dasein" (being there) is the word that Heidegger uses to refer to beings like ourselves. Clark is no Heidegger scholar, but the reference is deliberate; among the predecessors to his book he lists not only Heidegger himself, but also the American Heidegger scholar Hubert Dreyfus and the French Heideggerean phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This triumvirate has played an (...) increasingly important role in recent years among the "alternative" cognitive science set, owing largely to the influence of Dreyfus's 1979 book What Computers Can't Do (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979), which enlisted Heideggerian and Merleau-Pontean arguments in the fight against classical symbolic processing approaches to artificial intelligence. Clark's book fits squarely in this "alternative" tradition, and it is an important contribution to the existing literature. It surveys a large array of results in cognitive scientifically oriented fields ranging from robotics to developmental psychology, and it argues convincingly that these results should encourage us to embrace a radical new research paradigm in the cognitive sciences. The central claim is that mainstream cognitive scientists should, like their more revolutionary colleagues, learn to substitute for "the disembodied, atemporal intellectualist vision of mind ... the image of mind as a controller of embodied action" (p. 7). As a clear and brightly written account of this alternative movement in cognitive science, and perhaps even as a kind of mission statement for the new paradigm, Clark's book is one of the finest I have read. It is limited, however, by the fact that the interesting and well-described empirical work that forms the center of his presentation does not always provide sufficient resources for addressing the equally important philosophical problems lurking. (shrink)