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Sniggering into a raised fist
I am neither a humanities professor nor a cultural leftist per se, but I thoroughly enjoyed this pamphlet and feel slightly smarter having read it. The overall feeling is similar to having a few glasses of wine with an aged professor who indulges in a little cattiness and sectarian in jokes. Made me feel a little guilty about being an adjunct -- and inspired me to rent the documentary "Arguing the World." One to ponder.

Tough Guy Liberalism
This book is valuable if you are a Rorty fan and have followed his career. It is the best insight into his personality.Namely, his peeves and dislikes. For example although he is a staunch liberal, he strongly dislikes hand wringing extremists and nihilists.He really is a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps pragmatist. And if you push him too hard he pulls the gloves off. He is also a realist in the Aristotilean sense of he knows he is a well paid humanities professor living in an ivory tower (brownstone actually - Stanford) and that most of many of his (analytic) peers don't care for him.What I really like about Rorty, and this comes out clearly in this little book, is his attitude that the playing field has been leveled since Wittgenstein, Derrida, et.al. 'So hey, why not make the world a little better place than you found it?' (Kind of like what your Mom used to tell you.) What I don't like is his "blind eye" towards religion (as a friend who got his Ph.D. from him at Princeton once described him). But that's just the way it goes sometimes for some people.If you have read a lot of Rorty, get this book. If you haven't, then start where you are supposed to: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Big ideas in a little book!
Two earnest grad students take on a cantankerous professor during a 4-hour interview! The results are explosive!

One of the finest interviews on paperback
If you don't know who Richard Rorty is or what "Oligarchies" means, you will after reading this. "Six bucks". How can you go wrong? ... Read more

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Very prcatical volume
this is an excellent volume for Rorty researchers; I usually do not have a lot of consideration for interview volumes, when we are talking about huge thinkers, such as Rorty, but this one would clear your views on one of the paradigmatic philosophers.
What you get in this volume are almost axiomatic statements about Rortianism - it will deffinitely be a great instrument should you want to read more complicated works of Rorty's.

A Thought-Provoking Read
It's easy to find paradoxes in Richard Rorty's thinking. He's an academic philosopher who has no faith in philosophical systems, a thinker who rejects the label "relativist" but disbelieves in the idea of absolute Truth, a liberal social observer who has Utopian hopes for humanity but rejects radical social change, a moralist who believes we can discover more about ethics and the vagaries of human conduct in a Henry James novel than in a Sunday church sermon or a philosophical treatise on ethics, and an ironist who claims that we must put irony aside when confronting social issues.

With admirable cogency, this book takes on most of these paradoxes and transforms them into highly readable food for thought. Most passages, as is true of several other recent Rorty works, are accessible to an educated layman who reads little or no academic philosophy. Those who are either mystified or irritated by the arcane jargon that dominates much academic philosophy will be enlightened by Rorty's take on the subject, and by his distinction between what he calls narrative and analytic philosophy. Though analytically trained, he favors the narrative thinkers, his major influences being the American pragmatists, William James and John Dewey. He is also clearly inspired by two Continental European thinkers, Nietzsche and Heidegger, but displays mixed feelings about both of them. He claims in this book-and I think justifiably-to distill solid and inspired pragmatist thinking from the work of both men, while discarding the chaff of Nietzsche's pro-aristocratic, anti-democratic perspective and Heidegger's fascist inclinations and pronouncements. Meanwhile, readers of this book who also happen to be admirers of Jurgen Habermas will find that he and Rorty have many points in common.

This book takes form as a series of interviews conducted by various interlocutors, and headed with a helpful overview of Rorty's thinking by editor Eduardo Mendieta. Occasionally, one or another of the interviewers asks a show-off question with inflated rhetoric, but Rorty has a good-natured way of deflating the jargon andbringing both question and questioner gently down to earth. Where passages occasionally lapse into predictability, the fault lies not with Rorty, but with unimaginative or clich? questions posed by an interviewer. For instance, when asked the old chestnut about whether or not the U.S. thrust into Afghanistan was an appropriate response to 9/11, his reply is no different from the opinions of the rest of us who consider ourselves reasonably informed onlookers. He remarks that even allowing for Washington's habit of lying to the American people, it simply made good sense to go to Afghanistan and root out the terrorist bases and training camps. But more often than not, the book's questions are more provocative, and Rorty is more than equal to the task of answering them.

A witty romp, well worth a read
Rorty has become a cultural phenomenon unto himself, standing (with Chomsky and a few others) as one of America's most famous intellectuals (so it's more than a bit distressing to discover here that he's convinced we're headed for nuclear annihilation!Why must major American intellectuals be Cassandra figures?)The Introduction by Mendieta is nicely written and illuminating, if a bit hagiographic (and the picture on the cover is priceless!).Whatever you think of Rorty's philosophical views (I find myself agreeing at most half the time -- and what fun is it to read someone you completely agree with?), he is incredibly clever.He's got the wit of a 18th century French moralist, reincarnated for the 20th century.This collection of selected interviews showcases his great talent for the moody one-liner, the quick rejoinder, the ever-clever repartee; one almost feels sorry for the interviewers on whom he frequently sharpens his tools.Rorty is a masterful stylist, and, while I think his most highly developed medium remains the essay, for those of us who have read so many of his essays that they start to seem formulaic, the interview makes for an interesting change of pace.This book helps give one a sense of Rorty's full philosophical voice, his thoughts about his own remarkable intellectual trajectory, and, in the end, his rather depressing vision of our future. ... Read more

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Comprehensive, yet complex overview
The revival of pragmatism, which can largely be traced to Richard Rorty's work provides an important framework for a variety of problems ranging from philosophical, through legal, cultural and literary.For someone who wants a good overview of the debates around pragmatism, this volume provides a good introduction.

The variety of essays provides a good selection of the span of modern pragmatist thought.It includes excellent articles by both Rorty and Putnam, who have very different philosophical takes on pragmatism.A few excellent survey articles on the history of pragmatism and articles that engage specific applications of pragmatist thought.As might be expected, the summary article by Stanley Fish is sure to infuriate some readers.

This is a book for someone who has a background understanding of pragmatism, but wants to learn more the uses to which it is being put.

important
This is an excellent and important book of well-written positions from a variety of perspectives.A fan of pragmatism may be turned off by the 2nd through the 6th essays, but of the following 25 at least 23 or 24 are wellworth reading.The section on law debates the question of whetherphilosophy influences or "supports" law.I came away, as I'dbeen before, convinced that moving to pragmatism in philosophy is likely tohave a good effect on legal opinions and that Rorty is absurdly unfair tothe value of his own work by stressing that law can get on withouttraditional philosophy.Of course it can, but what needs to be said isthat we would be better off if it did.The concluding essay by StanleyFish is wonderful and makes a point I've been trying to find someone toagree with for years, namely that religious tolerance is a contradiction interms; tolerance is a restriction on religion. ... Read more

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Good Read for Students of Analytic Philosophy
Published in 1981 Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (PMN) has become something of a classic in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy.As someone who had, until that point, largely worked within the analytic tradition Rorty's criticism of many of the tenants of Anglo-American philosophy was seen by some commentators as near heretical.

PMN is a wide-ranging and meticulously referenced commentary on mid-twentieth century analytic philosophy.Though Rorty discusses a range of inter-related issues with great alacrity, his criticism is primarily focused on epistemology.In particular, Rorty is critical of what is often referred to as representational - the contentionthat we do not have direct access to reality, but, only to indirect representations of that reality in our minds.According to Rorty this view has been detrimental by causing philosophers to seek out criteria for assessing and improving these representations.He contends that this search for transcendental objective knowledge is misguided.Instead Rorty argues for a deflationary, or what he calls an edifying or conversational approach wherein truth/knowledge is limited to specific social groups or language games - as he pithily remarks truth is what your friends will let you get away with.As a result of PMN, Rorty has been criticized by many within the Anglo-American tradition as a relativist.While it is clear that, at least in a broad ontologicalsense, he is a relativist much of this criticism seems overstated.While I disagree with some of his key presuppositions (e.g. physicalism), his position given this worldview seems quite consistent.Indeed, theisticcommentators have often remarked that in a physicalist/atheistic worldview notions of objective truth or knowledge areillusory.

Although PMN is a worthwhile read, potential readers are advised that it is nuanced and sophisticated discussion - part of an internecine debate amongst academic philosophers.If one is not well versed in the Modern Western tradition (Descartes, Locke,Kant, ETC.), let alone more recent commentators such as Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellers, Putnam, the discussion will likely be incomprehensible.Overall,a good book by a broad and interesting thinker. Recommended for students of modern analytic philosophy

Can't anyone think anymore?
Rorty writes well and if you met him, you know he was a clever guy and a nice guy. But as a philosopher he is a good gardener. If you go through this book slowly and take the time to deconstruct what he is saying, you will find very little there that is new, interesting or correct. This is what philosophy has come to in today's world: people who have nothing to say, and nothing to offer, yet lack the honesty to admit it, engaging in intellectual games in an attempt to gain acclaim. Rorty gained that acclaim, within a small circle, but it is all grounded in illusion.

Smashing the Mirror of Nature
"Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" is Richard Rorty's magnum opus, his manifesto for a new philosophy and a new philosophical language. Taking aim at some thousands of years of philosophical tradition, Rorty argues that the concept of representation ought to be given up entirely, and with it all epistemology and all metaphysics.

A big part of the book consists of a very in-depth discussion of the traditions in epistemology and metaphysics (including ontology), and where the idea of the point of epistemology comes from in the first place. Our intuitions of our minds as "Mirrors of Nature", reflecting the Real out there in whatever imperfect way it impresses itself upon us, are traced by Rorty to the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. The whole ensemble of philosophical thought from Descartes (but inspired already by Plato), via Locke, Spinoza, Kant all the way to Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein and modern "analytical philosophy" is to blame for this popular view, but Rorty launches a convincing and masterfully written attack on precisely this view. Epistemology, the 'linguistic turn', ontology, and so on, Rorty argues, have never given an adequate answer to what it means exactly to say that an idea or meaning "represents" reality, nor how we would know this; and, what's worse, the problem itself is really a non-problem, since we can simply do entirely without talk in terms of truth and representation, and we will be just as able to solve the problems confronting us in daily life.

Much of the book is particularly focused on attacking the concept that the linguistic turn in philosophy has provided or can provide us with a better 'foundation for truth' than earlier attempts (Kant, Hegel, etc.). This is a highly abstract and technical discussion, where Rorty relies strongly on the counter-tradition of Quine, Sellars, and the late Wittgenstein. Thorough knowledge of all these writers and the issues in philosophy of language are required to understand this, though if you do, it is very rewarding.

Rorty subsequently goes on from his conclusions on the redundancy of the linguistic turn to found on this a general "pragmatist" approach to philosophy. Working with Davidson's concept that a majority of things we know cannot be false (since our concepts of true and false rely on context), as well as Dewey's dictum that whatever is not a problem in reality cannot be a problem in philosophy, he passionately and intelligently shows that we can do without ANY foundation for truth at all. Moreover, this also entails that the special position of philosophy as guardian of 'truth' or 'rationality' or the 'a priori synthetic' or other ways to formulate the "permitted ways of talking" disappears entirely, hopefully ending these philosophers' self-delusions so carefully constructed since Kant. Instead, Rorty proposes that we see philosophy as just another way of talking about problems we face in life, similar to and equal with poetry, literature, but also the social and physical sciences.

Indeed, one of the criticisms often made of Rorty is that he ignores the way in which the natural sciences 'work', and that this proves that it must in some way be 'in contact with reality'. Similarly, many people have felt threatened that if we do away with truth 'out there' and representation entirely, there will be no basis on which to decide what is true and what is not, and how we will separate the scientific from the every-day. Rorty is fortunately aware of these issues and counters them, stating that there is in fact no practical difference between saying that "science works because it's true" and "science is true because it works". The latter is just a more practical way of saying it, since truth is whatever we feel is warrantedly assertible at any time, given what we think works. Rorty therefore wants to do away with the special status of science as such as well, seeing no reason to see physical sciences as more "real" than social ones, nor sciences altogether as an a priori more "real" description of the world than any other (though it may of course well be a more practical way to talk about things for all sorts of purposes). This is especially interesting since a lot of people who feel called upon to defend the importance of Truth tend to view the physical sciences as paradigmatic, and this is also the case with the tradition of analytical philosophy, which tries to model philosophy after those sciences. Rorty himself started off as one of those, but halfway an already succesful academic career, he changed his mind entirely.

Overall, Rorty's attack on 'realism' of various kinds in philosophy of science as well as epistemology, metaphysics, and all a priori talk in general is as powerful as it is intelligent, and fans of the late Wittgenstein (like me) will feel that peculiar sensation of a suffocating cloud of ancient philosophical problems and dualisms being finally lifted, letting fresh air and sunlight in. Dissolving problems rather than solving them is Rorty's purpose, and he succeeds admirably.

The book is at a high level of abstraction, assumes thorough knowledge with at least 20th century philosophical writing as well as a reasonably strong knowledge of the history of philosophy, and is certainly not easy reading. Nevertheless, Rorty is in my view one of the most revolutionary philosophers of the 20th Century, together with Wittgenstein, and since this book is his primary formulation of his views, it is a must read.

Focus on the Family Resemblance
Richard Rorty is not exactly an obscure figure; and although his time of maximum exposure is probably a decade past, "Rortian" ideas still inform much of the educated world's understanding of philosophy and its relation to other fields of inquiry and culture. *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* is interesting today, perhaps *in spite* of the Rorty fad, because it contains much which will surprise the person with a casual acquaintance with such tropes. This is not the work of a social-democratic Nowhere Man attempting to resurrect dead cultural and political standpoints, but someone with a lively understanding of *la conjoncture* in analytic philosophy: the book successfully and elegantly engages with analytic programs that were most contemporary at the time of its writing, and remain influential even today.

In this it notably builds on Rorty's period of "normal science", the essays in philosophy of mind he wrote during the '60s (which helped establish the position of "eliminative materialism"). Here Rorty reassesses this work in light of what has since come to seem like an inescapable revolution in analytic philosophy, the metaphysical conclusions derived from modal logic by Kripke and others. Rorty's treatment of Kripkeanism is one of the most exciting parts of the book, but there is some competition from his charitable and capable assessment of Fodor's philosophy of psychology and its consequences for our philosophical practice generally. Rorty is also a talented expositor of Donald Davidson, who figures as an ally in this book for pursuing a "pure" research program with fewer "metaphysical" consequences than the work of Putnam: Davidsonianism, like much else, receives a relatively effortless yet suitably careful treatment, making this a suitable work for someone who wants to learn more about the general layout of analytic philosophy.

Someone familiar with the book, or with thumbnail sketches of Rorty, might object to this assessment: surely the point of the book is its sweeping pragmatist metaphilosophy, vindicating "antifoundationalist" positions on everything from phenomenal consciousness to human rights. Well, as mentioned in the book much of this ground was already covered by others (Dewey's *The Quest For Certainty* is an especially notable precursor), and in my opinion the concluding argument that philosophy ought to move from technical work to an Oakeshottean "conversation" about what is important to us as a culture is somewhat of a comedown after the able and exciting argumentation of the rest of the book. This section presages much of the way Rorty would continue on, but there is really no reason at all to throw bad money after good; a suitable understanding of this fine book should relieve you of the need to "advance" to Rorty's tiresome cultural politics.

Interesting, challenging and should be required reading...
...for any philosophy student or grad student. I say this not because I think the book is the final word or the solution to every philosophical problem, but because it is a classic of philosophical writing. Rorty writes well, and what he writes is interesting. The writing is precise when it deals with technical or thorny issues and masterfully clear when expositing over large swathes of our philosophical history. Every philosophy student should be asked to read Rorty and Bertrand Russell to see that prose stylists can write technical philosophy.

The range of the book is sweeping, bringing in so many of the heroes of analytic philosophy, but placing them in a synthetic account that gives a real thrust and continuity to their work. Whether that story is correct or not is open to quibbling (see the other reviews for many of those quibbles) but it is nice to read an actual work of philosophy that sketches out the broad concerns and overall landscape, and shows us our path through that landscape, rather than just the technical tidbits.

That said, you should already know much of what is in this book. You need to have a familiarity with Quine and Wittgenstein, as well as Kuhn and Feyerabend, and Locke, and... If you have never encountered the philosophy of language or philosophy of mind before, then this book is going to be confusing and meaningless--it is an actual philosophy book, and aimed at philosophers. Don't read it expecting an introduction to the people discussed; read it if you want to see what kind of work can be done with the tools of our analytic tradition. But it shows that the analytic tradition doesn't just have to dissolve long-standing errors and misconceptions, like Wittgenstein thought--but technical, cold, dry and humorless analytic philosophy can be used to discuss our condition as Human Beings that know, think and care as well, and much less confusedly and obtusely, as can the continental philosophy tradition.
... Read more

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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. ... Read more

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The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method
Muito eficiente a forma de adquirir o livro, que chegou em condições muito boas e com rapidez. Recomendo a todos a utilização desse meio.

The best anthology on the linguistic turn
For much of the 20th century, it was quite fashionable to believe that philosophical problems were all problems of language, and that if philosophers paid close enough attention to ordinary usage (or, alternately, devised an ideal language free of the muddles and inconsistencies of ordinary language), then philosophical problems would simply disappear.This was the linguistic turn.I have a number of anthologies on this movement, and Rorty's is far and away the best.Rorty has assembled some of the finest examples of ordinary language philosophy (such as Malcolm's "Moore and Ordinary Language") and ideal language philosophy (like Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology").But most of the volume is taken up with critical evaluations and appraisals of these movements in philosophy.Rorty's selections are extremely judicious and show a real mastery of the field.

Speaking of mastery, one of the most valuable essays in the volume is Rorty's own lengthy introductory essay.In this essay, Rorty brilliantly lays out the philosophical foundations of ordinary language philosophy and ideal language philosophy and the philosophical problems they encounter.It is difficult to convey what a phenomenal work this essay is.It displays the ability to master, synthesize, and distill literally decades of philosophy into a narrative essay which is itself a masterpiece of critical philosophy.This is Rorty at his finest.

Very good!
This book is a vrey valuable book. Can you tell me Mr.RacardRorty'adressof E-mail? ... Read more

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The sixteen essays in this volume confront the current debate about the relationship between philosophy and its history. On the one hand intellectual historians commonly accuse philosophers of writing bad - anachronistic - history of philosophy, and on the other, philosophers have accused intellectual historians of writing bad - antiquarian - history of philosophy. The essays here address this controversy and ask what purpose the history of philosophy should serve. Part I contains more purely theoretical and methodological discussion, of such questions as whether there are 'timeless' philosophical problems, whether the issues of one epoch are commensurable with those of another, and what style is appropriate to the historiography of the subject. The essays in Part II consider a number of case-histories. They present important revisionist scholarship and original contributions on topics drawn from ancient, early modern and more recent philosophy. All the essays have been specially commissioned, and the contributors include many of the leading figures in the field. The volume as a whole will be of vital interest to everyone concerned with the study of philosophy and of its history. ... Read more

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Worth Owning
The ideal audience for this book is any reader in any discipline who cares about the past and wonders how it relates to philosophy or contemporary concerns in general. Although primarily directed towards philosophers, historians of all stripes should find at least some of the articles useful and illuminating.

Two of the articles, however, make the book worth owning: those by Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. MacIntyre's article, in my view, literally solves the problem posed my acutely in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Assuming one grants the reality of incommensurability (as Kuhn and MacIntyre do, but people like Donald Davidson do not), how can one argue accross incommensurable paradigms or suggest rational progress in moving from one to another? MacIntyre answers this question, and it is difficult to see how anyone could outdo his answer. Taylor's article provides a concise statement of his view of the nature of philosophy and why it is necessarily historical (in large part because of the relationship between practices and ideas), which will be of interest to anyone keen on Taylor or who wants a concise statement of the Hegelian view of philosophy as inseparable from its history.

4 stars because the book is expensive and not all the articles are of even quality; nevertheless, most of them are of a very high quality and the book is worth having on hand if you are a historian or philosopher. ... Read more

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An engagement between Confucianism and the philosophy of Richard Rorty. ... Read more

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Explores the cross-cultural endeavors of Rorty and Heidegger, particularly how this work addresses the possibilities of comparative philosophy itself. ... Read more

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Heidegger, Rorty, and the Eastern Thinkers
Though this is far from light reading, it is well written and reveals an understanding of the importance of noting details and linguistic clues in advancing cross cultural awareness. Anyone interested in hermeneutics and cross cultural insights between East and West will learn a lot from this slim volume. ... Read more

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Richard Rorty is one of the most influential, controversial and widely-read philosophers of the twentieth century. In this GuideBook to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Tartaglia analyzes this challenging text and introduces and assesses:

• Rorty's life and the background to his philosophy
• the key themes and arguments of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
• the continuing importance of Rorty's work to philosophy.

Rorty and the Mirror of Nature is an ideal starting-point for anyone new to Rorty, and essential reading for students in philosophy, cultural studies, literary theory and social science.

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A great contribution to understanding Richard Rorty
Tartaglia's book is especially impressive for one reason; it is one of the first obviously non-partisan discussions on Rorty to appear. Rorty was such an iconoclast in the last years of his life and in the few years following his death, that nearly all discussion of him was highly partisan. All of it took him seriously of course, crude dismissials of Rorty don't need the length and sophistication that print allows. But still, you had to be either for him or against him, and that was a stark difference. Tartaglia's project is different, it is to simply understand him, and it deftly puts off the task of taking sides. Reading this book, it becomes clear just how hard it can be to understand everything Rorty is saying, including the great breadth of his knowledge and the diversity of his influences and references. Only when one has really mastered all these angles can one finally take a side, and that is something Tartaglia seems to leave to the reader.

A Good Guide
This overview of Rorty gives useful background information. It is a must for a student in any Rorty class such as myself. ... Read more

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Richard Rorty (1931–2007) remains one of the contemporary world’s most influential thinkers. He has been a major figure in philosophy ever since the publication of his first important paper, ‘Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories’ in 1965, but it was the release of his seminal Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) that caused the literature on his work to expand exponentially, a process which has accelerated since his death in 2007; scores of new articles and books about Rorty appear every year, and even his biography has proved to be an academic bestseller. Rorty’s enduring appeal has a number of sources. One is the scope and urgency of his views, for he was never shy about presenting his call for the abandonment of objective truth against the grand backdrop of the cultural progress of the West. Another is that his views were highly controversial, and yet could not be easily dismissed, since Rorty was able to claim with some plausibility that he was simply drawing out the consequences of positions developed by his more conventionally respectable peers. And another is that Rorty applied his views to a wide range of topical concerns outside of academic philosophy. For these and many other reasons, philosophers to this day line up to refute him, students read Rorty before the philosophers he discusses, and non-philosophy academics produce a continuous stream of articles applying his views to their own interests.

The daunting quantity (and variable quality) of literature available on Rorty makes it difficult to discriminate the useful from the tendentious, superficial, and otiose. That is why this new title in the highly regarded Routledge series, Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, is so urgently needed. Edited by James Tartaglia, the author of Rorty and the Mirror of Nature (Routledge, 2007), one of the most popular and straightforward books available on Rorty, this new Routledge Major Work is a four-volume collection of the best scholarship from the 1960s to the present day; the collected materials have been carefully selected from a wide range of academic journals, edited collections, and research monographs, many of which are hard to obtain in their original source.

The first of the four volumes (‘Mind, Language, and Truth’) covers Rorty’s eliminative materialism in the philosophy of mind, his Davidsonian rejection of conceptual schemes in the philosophy of language, and his rejection of objective truth. Volume II (‘Metaphilosophy and Pragmatism’), meanwhile, assembles the best assessments of his pessimistic metaphilosophy, and his distinctive conception of pragmatism. The third volume (‘Philosophers’) brings together the key scholarly work on Rorty’s highly original—but endlessly disputed—interpretations of other philosophers, while the final volume in the collection (Volume IV: ‘Themes’) explores Rorty’s views as applied to a diverse range of topics, from feminism to environmentalism and bioethics.

The tightly focused organization of this collection will allow scholars quickly and easily to access both established and up-to-date assessments of Rorty’s central positions, and will also make for irresistible browsing. With comprehensive introductions to each volume, providing essential background information and relating the various articles to each other, Richard Rorty is destined to be an indispensable resource for research and study.

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Michael Bacon gives a critical presentation of Rorty's writings on pragmatism and political theory, comparing and contrasting him with pragmatists such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack and liberals such as John Rawls and Brian Barry. The result is an imaginative presentation of one of contemporary philosophy's most innovative and important thinkers. ... Read more

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Finally, Someone Who Gets Rorty Right
There are few philosophers who get what Richard Rorty was trying to do, and Michael Bacon (University of London) is one of them. This book is short, but does such a good job at taking the reader through the nuances of Rorty's thought that it stands head and shoulders above larger tomes that make the same attempt.

At a celebration of Rorty's life at the New School earlier this year (Rorty died in 2007), I offered the observation that Rorty was, first and foremost, a "moral philosopher." This claim is held, by many, to be dubious. But Bacon shows in this book that he understands just what I meant by it, and his book is both an apologia and an explication of that interpretation of Rorty's work, taken as a whole.

In the Conclusion, Bacon quotes Rorty: "I am a hedgehog who, despite showering my reader with allusions and dropping lots of names, has really only one idea: the need to get beyond representationalism, and thus into an intellectual world in which human beings are responsible only to each other." This "one idea," teased-out in his antifoundationalism and liberal ironism, links with a vision of cosmopolitan hope - of a world in which we are ever mindful of the various ways that we are or may be engaged in cruelty toward one another, and in which a desire to avoid such cruelty is a critical virtue.

Rorty, so often pilloried and misunderstood, deserves the defense that Bacon is giving him here. In the years to come, Rorty will most certainly emerge as one of the great thought-leaders, as we explore the meaning of globalization, cosmopolitan morality and identity, religion, communitarianism, poverty, liberalism, capitalism, terrorism and a host of other matters. If that prediction turns out to be true, Bacon will have been among the first to understand the thought-leadership that Rorty provides.

A Quick Introduction to American Pragmatism
A slight and easy-to-read introduction to Rorty's work. It is organized around his main themes of: anti-representationalsim and American pragmatism. It also focuses on Rorty's critics.

Rorty, like the majority of modern philsophers, tangle with the consequences of David Hume's belief that we don't know causes, only correlations. This leaves us with the question, "Well, if we don't have absolute truth, which would come with direct contact with reality, what do we have?"

The American answer to this, coming from pragmatists Peirce, William James, and Dewey, is, "Truth is what works." The goal of liberalism, accordingly, is the elimination of suffering.

Along with the romantics and today's psycho-neurologists, Rorty holds that emotion and imagination have as much to do with right choices as rationality. He puts literature and literary criticism at the forefront of social progress.

Following John Stuart Mill, Rorty states that the liberal society should permit any behavior that does not harm others. This is a quick introduction to the pragmatic insights that grounded and shaped American education and politics for over a century. ... Read more

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For the Love of Perfection examines Richard Rorty's pragmatist philosophy for thinking about the aims and processes of liberal education. Offering a radical re-interpretation of the philosopher's arguments against metaphysics, Rene V. Arcilla demonstrates how Rorty's thinking may be re-envisioned to take greater account of today's multicultural society. ... Read more

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A NEW DIRECTION IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
EDUCATION AS TRANSFORMATION OF THE WHOLE SELF. A REMARKABLE NEW DIRECTIONIN AMERICAN EDUCATION ... Read more

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This book is a study of Richard Rorty's "New Pragmatism" on its own terms, and a critical analysis of its implications for contemporary thought. As an anti-foundationalist and a liberal, Rorty's version of pragmatism is designed to promote personal freedom and democratic solidarity. Having as his target the stultifying effects of Western philo-scientific tradition, encrusted with the barnacles of metaphysical essentialism and epistemic foundationalism, Rorty writes to liberate the contemporary mind and to promote the growth of individual creativity and social tolerance. Admirable as the goals of greater personal creativity and tolerant solidarity are, it is Edward J. Grippe's contention that Rorty fails to achieve either of them. Liberated from the notion of essentialism, Rorty develops a vision of self that is radically unfettered in its originality. So, to forestall the misanthropy that would inevitably emerge, a "solidarity of forbearance" is to be inculcated. But given his anti-foundationalist stance, Rorty cannot appeal to a rational consensus to ground tolerance.With only a Darwinian struggle between competing constructs, sophistic persuasion must be the deciding factor as to which narrative "works." And since there can be no ultimate or "final" vocabulary as arbiter, those that control the meaning of words control the basis for pragmatic conversation, i.e., what counts as "a working solidarity." Thus, the book concludes that Rorty's pragmatism is self-defeating, suppressing genuine conversation and ultimately constricting creativity. ... Read more

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Much of what Richard Rorty has to say about the triumph of American liberalism is largely accepted and unquestioned by a wide variety of scholars. Yet, there are inconsistencies in Rorty's work, and his defence of liberalism does not depend on familiar Enlightenment assumptions about reason, human nature, historical progress, and the like. So argues Markar Melkonian, who critically examines Rorty's brand of liberalism stripped of its Enlightenment rationales. Melkonian initially compares Rorty's social and political views with his alleged progenitor, John Dewey, showing that there are significant differences between the two, notably their respective conceptions of freedom and democracy and their accounts of how to harmonise personal freedom with public responsibility. Then, Melkonian makes the case that the existing liberal democracies Rorty wants to defend bear little resemblance to Rorty's own liberal utopia, in which 'the quest for autonomy is impeded as little as possible by social institutions'.Melkonian asserts that at the end of the American century, Rorty's private role as ironist and his public role as apologist for existing liberal democracies are not so much incommensurable in principle as they are incompatible in fact. ... Read more

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In 1989, with the publication of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, and in articles throughout the 1990s, Richard Rorty developed a detailed social and political philosophy that brings together core elements in liberalism, pragmatism, and postmodern, anti-foundationalist, philosophy. The Last Conceptual Revolution provides a critique both of Rorty's own provocative political philosophy, as well as an in-depth look at the issues concerning the relationship between the public and the private; between persuasion and force; and arguments about the role of reason in liberal political discourse generally. ... Read more