My Account
Log in Registration
All
Cart
Highlights
Fiction Books
Non-Fiction Books
Children's Books
Rare Books
Music
DVD & Blu-Ray
Video Games
Category
Wishlists
Cart
All
Free US shipping over $10
Trustpilot
Proud to be B-Corp

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism Richard Rorty

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism By Richard Rorty

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by Richard Rorty

Reviews:
$22.69
Condition - New
<20 in stock
New

Summary

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.

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism Summary

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by Richard Rorty

Provocative and engagingThe array of urgent questions and crises facing our democracy makes one miss Richard Rortys voice: insistent, relentlessly questioning, and dedicated to the proposition that we cant afford to let our democracy fail.
Chris Lehmann, New Republic

Richard Rorty was the most iconoclastic and dramatic philosopher of the last half-century. In this final book, his unique literary style, singular intellectual zest, and demythologizing defiance of official philosophy are on full display.
Cornel West

Coherent, often brilliant, and it presents a clear and timely case for political pragmatism.
Jonathan Ree, Prospect

Today, there are few philosophers left whose thoughts are inspired by a unifying vision; there are even fewer who can articulate such a view in terms of such a ravishing flow of provocative, but sharp and differentiated, arguments.
Jurgen Habermas

Richard Rortys final masterwork offers his culminating thoughts on the influential version of pragmatism he began to articulate decades ago in his groundbreaking Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. He identifies anti-authoritarianism as the principal impulse and virtue of pragmatism. Anti-authoritarianism, in this view, means acknowledging that our cultural inheritance is always open to revision because no authority exists to ascertain the truth, once and for all. If we cannot rely on the unshakable certainties of God or nature, then all we have left to go onand argue withare the opinions and ideas of our fellow humans. The test of these ideas, Rorty suggests, is relatively simple: Do they work? Do they produce the peace, freedom, and happiness we desire? To achieve this enlightened pragmatism is not easy, though. Pragmatism demands trust. It demands that we think and care about what others think and care about, and that we account for their doubts of and objections to our own beliefs.

No book offers a more accessible account of pragmatism, just as no philosopher has more eloquently challenged the hidebound traditions arrayed against the goals of social justice.

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism Reviews

Today, there are few philosophers left whose thoughts are inspired by a unifying vision; there are even fewer who can articulate such a view in terms of a ravishing flow of provocative, but sharp and differentiated, arguments. But rarely anyone can compete with Richard Rorty in summarizing the whole of it in a series of brilliant literary lectures like these. -- Jurgen Habermas
Richard Rorty was the most iconoclastic and dramatic philosopher of the last half-century. In this final book, his unique literary style, singular intellectual zest, and demythologizing defiance of official philosophy are on full display. -- Cornel West
A sharp and comprehensive statement of Richard Rortys distinctive version of pragmatism, presented with all the wit and vitality typical of his writings. Carefully edited by Eduardo Mendieta, with an illuminating foreword by Robert B. Brandom, this book is invaluable reading for anyone interested in Rortys philosophical vision. -- Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
We have perhaps the clearest account of how he understood pragmatist thinking as a political undertakingProvocative and engagingThe array of urgent questions and crises facing our democracy makes one miss Richard Rortys voice: insistent, relentlessly questioning, and dedicated to the proposition that we cant afford to let our democracy fail. -- Chris Lehmann * New Republic *
The verve with which [the arguments] are made and their relevance to our current context make for a bracing readThe message of Rortys body of work, so well summarized in these newly published lectures, is that aiming at increased responsiveness to the needs of a larger and larger variety of people and things will reduce the sources of suffering, and by so doing multiply our opportunities to thrive. -- Michael S. Roth * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Show[s] an impressive command of both analytic and continental philosophy. -- George Scialabba * Commonweal *
It is coherent, often brilliant, and it presents a clear and timely case for political pragmatism. -- Jonathan Ree * Prospect *
A useful compendium of the philosophers mature views. -- Robert Chodat * American Literary History *
A very finely edited collection of essays in which Rortys undeniable polemical brilliance and philosophical knowledge are in full display. -- Richard Shusterman * Society *

About Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty (19312007) authored several landmark books and essay collections, including Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; Consequences of Pragmatism; Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity; and Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. He taught at Wellesley College, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and Stanford University. Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University and editor of Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself, a collection of interviews with Richard Rorty. Robert B. Brandom is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. He delivered the John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford and the Woodbridge Lectures at Columbia University. Brandom is the author of many books, including Making It Explicit, Reason in Philosophy, and From Empiricism to Expressivism (all from Harvard).

Additional information

NGR9780674295476
9780674295476
0674295471
Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
New
Paperback
Harvard University Press
2024-06-11
272
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a new book - be the first to read this copy. With untouched pages and a perfect binding, your brand new copy is ready to be opened for the first time

Customer Reviews - Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism