Synopsis
This eagerly awaited book complements two highly successful previously published volumes of Richard Rorty's philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. In this new, provocative collection, Rorty continues to defend a pragmatist view of truth and deny that truth is a goal of inquiry. In these dynamic essays, Rorty also engages with the work of many of today's most innovative thinkers including Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida, JÜrgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Charles Taylor. The collection also touches on problems in contemporary feminism raised by Annette Baier, Marilyn Frye, and Catherine MacKinnon, and considers issues connected with human rights and cultural differences. Challenging, stimulating and controversial, this book will appeal to thoughtful readers around the world. Richard Rorty was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, completed his graduate work at Yale, and taught at Princeton from 1961 until 1982. His first ground-breaking book, an attack on traditional epistemology, was Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). His previous books with Cambridge have been Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), a book that sold over 46,000 copies since publication and has been translated into seventeen different languages, and two volumes of philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant, Rorty has lectured throughout the world. Also available Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers: Volume 1 0-521-35877-9 Paperback Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers: Volume 2 0-521-35878-7 Paperback
Reviews
Rorty contends that the ideas that reality has an intrinsic nature and that truth is a correspondence with reality are inherently flawed and therefore hinder inquiry, the former allegedly because "reality" is a matter of how we conceptualize things and the latter allegedly because there cannot be a theory of the nature of truth. Rejecting those ideas, he believes we should not aim at truth but at solving problems, the solutions to which raise yet other problems, and that philosophy advances by increasing its imaginativeness rather than its rigor. He defends this conception of inquiry in carefully argued essays about the issues as they have been discussed by such philosophers as Davidson, Wright, Putnam, Searle, and Taylor, among others. There are also essays on such topics as cultural differences, democracy, and feminism. Of the 17 essays, four are new. Recommended for academic libraries.ARobert Hoffman, York Coll., CUNY
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