Product Description
Without God or His Doubles offers a sympathetic, but criticalinterpretation of the philosophy of Richard Rorty. Rorty is one of the mostwidely discussed of contemporary philosophers, but there exist few attempts todeal with the full scope of Rorty's writings in a systematic fashion. Thisbook shows that the unifying theme that runs through Rorty's writings onepistemology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, thephilosophy of language, and political philosophy is a quasi-religiousconception of human creativity and human freedom. In other words, Rorty'sattempt to avoid both realism and relativism is best understood inrelationship to his claim that traditional philosophy has been god-obsessed.The animating spirit of Rorty's philosophy is to complete the Enlightenmentproject, to completely wean philosophy away from both God and the variousgod-doubles (Reason, Nature, Mind, Man, Science, Art). Rorty believes that aradical secularity will result in a kind of human emancipation and aheightened sense of human freedom. The book concludes with a critique ofRorty's proposal for philosophy and culture after the final departure of allthe gods. ... Read more

Product Description
This distinctive collection by scholars from around the world focuses upon the cultural, educational, and political significance of Richard Rorty's thought. The nine essays which comprise the collection examine a variety of related themes: Rorty's neopragmatism, his view of philosophy, his philosophy of education and culture, Rorty's comparison between Dewey and Foucault, his relation to postmodern theory, and, also his form of political liberalism. ... Read more

Product Description
This book offers a fresh perspective on Richard Rorty by situating his work in the arena of political theory. Reinterpreting Rorty's much-maligned antirepresentationalism as a Romantic affirmation of the power of imaginative writing, Voparil firmly grounds Rorty in an American tradition that includes not only James and Dewey, but Emerson, Whitman, and James Baldwin, and initiates an overdue reassessment of this important thinker's value to the political discourse of the 21st century. ... Read more

Product Description
Historically, leftwing accounts of injustice focussed primarily on economic harms, such as poverty, exploitation, and inequality. Recently, however, with the collapse of Communism and the rise of identity politics, attention has turned toward cultural harms, such as cultural imperialism, 'misrecognition,' and disrespect. New challenges for the left are raised: How to do justice to the legitimate claims of multiculturalism without abandoning the left's historic-and still indispensable-commitment to economic equality? How to broaden the understanding of injustice by adding (cultural) insult to (economic) injury? Adding Insult to Injury traces the debate sparked by Nancy Fraser's controversial effort to combine the social politics of equality and the cultural politics of difference, while probing the tensions between them. Introduced by Richard Rorty, the volume contains Fraser's influential essay 'From Redistribution to Recognition?'; critical responses by Judith Butler, Joseph Heath, Kevin Olson, Anne Phillips, and Iris Marion Young; and Fraser's rejoinders to them. The result is a wide-ranging and at times contentious exploration of alternative approaches to rebuilding the left. ... Read more

Product Description
In The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri argues that Rorty's powerful reading protocol is motivated by the necessity to contain the risks of Derrida's critique of Western philosophy and politics.

Rorty claims that Derrida reduces philosophy to a production of private fantasies that do not have any political or epistemological relevance. Fabbri challenges such an aberrant appropriation by investigating the two key features of Rorty's privatization of deconstruction: the reduction of deconstructive writing to an example of merely autobiographical literature; and the idea that Derrida not only dismisses, but also mocks the desire to engage philosophy with political struggle.

What is ultimately questioned in The Domestication of Derrida is the legitimacy of labeling deconstruction as a post-modern withdrawal from politics and theory. By discussing Derrida's resistance against the very possibility of theoretical and political ascetism, Fabbri shows that there is much more politics and philosophy in deconstruction than Rorty is willing to admit. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Rorty v. Derrida
I found this book to be well written and easily accessible by broad
audiences. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in "deconstruction in America." Since no paperback edition is available
and the hardback costs big bucks - if you're curious in checking it
out - you should ask your local library to purchase it. That's what I
did!!! ... Read more

Product Description
Volume one of a projected four volumes on Rorty, edited by Alan Malachowski. ... Read more

Product Description
In this volume, a host of distinguished scholars examine Richard Rorty's influence on twentieth-century American pragmatism and its commitment to achieving social democracy. Rorty's reclaiming of the pragmatist tradition and his contribution to the discipline of intellectual history are highlighted; at the same time, each essay finds Rorty's pragmatism (most fully enunciated in "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity") lacking in its privatist vision of the good life. This criticism is drawn out through explicit comparisons between Rorty and his grandfather Walter Rauschenbusch, William James, John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, Richard J. Bernstein, and other twentieth century pragmatist thinkers. This volume offers the most complete historical treatment of this controversial intellectual to date. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Søren Kierkegaard, Socrates, Richard Rorty, Paul de Man, Wayne C. Booth, Linda Hutcheon. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 90. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (English pronunciation: or ; Danish: ) (5 May 1813 11 November 1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and psychologist. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Danish National Church. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives, focusing on the priority of concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. His theological work focuses on Christian ethics and the institution of the Church. His psychological works explore the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. As part of his philosophical method, inspired by Socrates and the Socratic dialogues, Kierkegaard's early work was written under various pseudonymous characters who present their own distinctive viewpoints and interact with each other in complex dialogue. He assigns pseudonyms to explore particular viewpoints in-depth, which may take up several books in some instances, and Kierkegaard, or another pseudonym, critiques that position. Thus, the task of discovering the meaning of his works is left to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Subsequently, scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as, among others, an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist. Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought. Søren Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhage...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=27069 ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Achieving Our Country, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Philosophy and Social Hope, Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), is a book by American philosopher Richard Rorty, based on two sets of lectures he gave at University College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In contrast to his earlier work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty mostly abandons attempts to explain his theories in analytic terms and creates an alternate conceptual schema to that of the "Platonists" he rejects, in which "truth" (as it is used conventionally) is considered unintelligible and meaningless. The book is divided into three parts, each consisting of three chapters. 1) The contingency of language Here, Rorty argues that all language is contingent. Because only descriptions of the world can be true or false, and descriptions are made by humans, humans must make truth or falsity, as opposed to truth or falsity being determined by any innate property of the world being described. Green grass is not true or false, but "the grass is green" is. For example, I can say that 'the grass is green' and you could agree with that statement (making it true), but our use of the words to describe grass is independent of the grass itself. Without the human proposition, truth or falsity is simply irrelevant. Rorty consequently argues that all discussion of language in relation to reality should be abandoned, and that one should instead discuss vocabularies in relation to other vocabularies. He states that he will not exactly be making "arguments" in this book, because arguments, as communication mostly within one vocabulary,...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=11391963 ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Humanitas, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2006. The length of the article is 9273 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Richard Rorty's postmodern case for liberal democracy: a critique.
Author: George Bragues
Publication: Humanitas (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 19Issue: 1-2Page: 158(24)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on December 1, 1993. The length of the article is 7252 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Modern philosophy is discontinuous with premodern philosophy and continuous with postmodernism. However, postmodern philosophers such as Derrida generally assert the opposite, that modern and premodern are continuous and that postmodernism represents a radical departure. Rorty's position is ambiguous. Originally he agreed with Derrida, but in a recent work he suggested that all Western philosophy forms a continuous sequence. Postmodernism's nominalism and voluntarism originate in modern thought. The discontinuity between premodern and modern philosophy occurred with the dissolution of the ontotheological synthesis in the 15th century.

Citation Details
Title: Postmodernity or late modernity? Ambiguities in Richard Rorty's thought.
Author: Louis Dupre
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 1993
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: v47Issue: n2Page: p277(19)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Discusses the issues, instability of meanings and problems concerning our practice. This book also brings out the subtleties of their mutual positions and maintains an open ended expectation of understanding each other without committing to fixed protocols of communication. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Policy Review, published by Hoover Institution Press on April 1, 2000. The length of the article is 2720 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Richard Rorty, Liberal Absolutist.(Review) (book review)
Author: Damon Linker
Publication: Policy Review (Refereed)
Date: April 1, 2000
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Page: 81

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 1913. ... Read more