Richard Rorty's Politics: Liberalism at the End of the American Century - Hardcover

Melkonian, Markar

9781573927246: Richard Rorty's Politics: Liberalism at the End of the American Century

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573927244 ISBN 13: 9781573927246

Publisher: Humanity Books, 1999

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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 defense 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 Enlighenment 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 harmonize 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.\

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About the Author

Markar Melkonian, Ph.D., is a writer, teacher, veteran solidarity worker, and the author of Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer.

Review

"No discussion of 'liberalism' and its future will be complete without a serious study of Melkonian's book." -- Thomas Riggins, New York University, New School for Social Research

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