Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom (Philosophy and the Eclipse of Reason) (Volume 1)

Roy Bhaskar

ISBN 10: 0631170820 / ISBN 13: 9780631170822

Published by Blackwell, 1991

About this Item

Volume 1. This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has soft covers. In fair condition, suitable as a study copy. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,450grams, ISBN:9780631170822.

Seller Inventory # 9786766

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom (Philosophy and the Eclipse of Reason) (Volume 1)
• Publisher: Blackwell
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0631170820
• ISBN 13: 9780631170822
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fair
• Weight: 450 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

In the first volume of a three-volume study on the trajectory of the western philosophical tradition and the state of contemporary philosophy, Roy Bhaskar sets out to develop a critique of the work of Richard Rorty, whose "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" and "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity" are regarded as two of the most influential books of recent decades. The author shows how Rorty falls victim to the epistemological problematic he himself describes. Roy Bhaskar argues that Rorty's account of science and knowledge is based on a half-truth. He sees the historicity of knowledge, but cannot sustain its rationality or the reality of the objects it describes. The author further argues that Rorty's problem-field replicates the Kantian resolution of the third antinomy: we are determined as material bodies, but free as discursive (speaking and writing) subjects. Rorty's actualism (like Kant's) makes human agency impossible. Developing his own original transcendental and critical realist philosophy, Roy Bhaskar shows just where Richard Rorty's system comes unstuck, and how the philosophical problems to which it gives rise can be rationally resolved. In this process Roy Bhaskar utilizes his critique of Rorty to begin to elaborate his own alternative interpretation and critique of the philosophical conversation of the west.

About the Author

Roy Bhaskar is the originator of the philosophy of critical realism, and the author of many acclaimed and influential works including A Realist Theory of Science, The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, Plato Etc., From Science to Emancipation, Reflections on meta-Reality and (with Mervyn Hartwig) The Formation of Critical Realism. He is an editor of Critical Realism: Essential Readings and Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change and was the founding chair of the Centre for Critical Realism. He is currently a World Scholar at the University of London Institute of Education.