Books by Richard Rorty

Prescient essays about the state of our politics from the philosopher who predicted that a populist demagogue would become president of the United StatesRichard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, warned of the rise of a Trumpian strongman in America. What Can We Hope For? gathers nineteen of Rorty's essays on American and global politics, including four previously unpublished and many lesser-known and hard-to-find pieces.In these provocative and compelling essays, Rorty confronts the critical challenges democracies face at home and abroad, including populism, growing economic inequality, and overpopulation and environmental devastation. In response, he offers optimistic and realistic ideas about how to address these crises. He outlines strategies for fostering social hope and building an inclusive global community of trust, and urges us to put our faith in trade unions, universities, bottom-up social campaigns, and bold political visions that thwart ideological pieties.Driven by Rorty's sense of emergency about our collective future, What Can We Hope For? is filled with striking diagnoses of today's political crises and creative proposals for solving them.

Richard Rorty var blandt de mest fremtrædende og indflydelsesrige amerikanske filosoffer i det 20. århundrede. Han fremstår i dag som den vigtigste repræsentant for den såkaldte neopragmatisme, der fra 1980’erne revitaliserede den traditionelle pragmatisme fra begyndelsen af århundredet ved at kombinere den med indsigter fra blandt andet hermeneutik, postmodernisme og dekonstruktion'Kontingens, ironi og solidaritet' er Rortys hovedværk fra 1989. Heri forlader han – inspireret af bl.a. Heidegger, Wittgenstein og Derrida – endegyldigt forestillingen om sproget som en sand afspejling af verden. Filosofi kan og skal ikke være streng videnskab. Og filosofiske begrundelser og moralteori er ikke vejen til en bedre verden. Hos Rorty placeres håbet snarere i litteraturen, som kan gøre os opmærksomme på lidelse, som vi før var uvidende om. I mødet med de store romaner – fx Orwells og Nabokovs – udvides vores empati, og der skabes sensibilitet over for den lidelse, andre mennesker og vi selv forvolder. Som borgere i de moderne demokratier anbefales vi af Rorty at indse kontingensen som et vilkår og leve vore liv som liberale og solidariske ironikere.Bogen er forsynet med et kyndigt efterskrift ved Hans Henrik Hjermitslev.

In his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.

On Philosophy and Philosophers is a volume of unpublished papers by Richard Rorty, a central figure in late-twentieth century philosophy and a primary force behind the resurgence of American pragmatism. These previously unseen papers advance novel views on metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, philosophical semantics and the social role of philosophy.

Deals with the twentieth-century philosophy. This title includes essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as the essay "The Philosopher as Expert".

This volume presents a selection of the philosophical essays which Richard Rorty wrote during the first decade of his career, and complements four previous volumes of his papers published by Cambridge University Press. In this long neglected body of work, which many leading philosophers still consider to be his best, Rorty develops his views on the nature and scope of philosophy in a manner which supplements and elucidates his definitive statement on these matters in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. He also develops his groundbreaking version of eliminative materialism, a label first coined to describe his position, and sets out original views on various central topics in the philosophy of language, concerning private language, indeterminacy, and verificationalism. A substantial introduction examines Rorty's philosophical development from 1961 to 1972. The volume completes our understanding of Rorty's intellectual trajectory and offers lucid statements of positions which retain their relevance to current debates.

Richard Rorty is one of the most provocative figures in recent philosophical, literary and cultural debate. This collection brings together those of his writings aimed at a wider audience, many published in book form for the first time. In these eloquent essays, articles and lectures, Rorty gives a stimulating summary of his central philosophical beliefs and how they relate to his political hopes; he also offers some challenging insights into contemporary America, justice, education and love.

Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered yes in word and deed. Rorty challenges this lost generation to understand its potential role in the tradition of democratic intellectual labor that began with Whitman and Dewey.

Richard Rorty's collected papers, written during the 1980s and now published in two volumes, take up some of the issues which divide Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers. The second volume pursues the themes of the first volume in the context of discussions of recent European philosophy focusing on the work of Heidegger and Derrida.

Richard Rorty (1930-2007) var en af de mest provokerende skikkelser i nyere tids filosofi. I disse veloplagte essays, artikler og forelæsninger fra 1990’erne præsenteres en bred vifte af hans filosofiske, politiske og kulturelle overbevisninger. Rortys forfatterskab blev til i et opgør dels med den analytiske tradition, han selv kom ud af, og dels med platonisk og kantiansk filosofi. Siden Platon har filosofien grundlæggende forsøgt at nå frem til sand erkendelse ved at trænge bag om tilsynekomsterne til en underliggende virkelighed. Men for Rorty handler det ikke om, hvorvidt vores forestillinger stemmer overens med en fundamental virkelighed, men om hvorvidt de kan bidrage til at udføre praktiske formål og skabe et mere egalitært og demokratisk samfund. I den pragmatiske ånd fra John Dewey forsøges det platoniske mål om at kopiere virkeligheden bedre og bedre erstattet med et socialt håb om at skabe en bedre fremtid bestående af et globalt, kosmopolitisk, demokratisk, egalitært, klasseløst verdenssamfund. Bogen er forsynet med et efterskrift af Michael Vernersen, som også har oversat.

I dag opfatter mange mennesker sig som religiøse, uden at de dermed nødvendigvis tilslutter sig den kristendom, der i Vesten igennem to årtusinder har været den dominerende religion. Bogen rejser ikke mindst spørgsmålet om, hvorvidt oplysningen, sekulariseringen og demokratiseringen, der satte ind for et par århundreder siden, virkelig har distanceret os fra arven fra den kristne religion, eller om sekulariseringen snarere må ses som en konsekvens af kristendommen selv.Hvis man ønsker et indblik i den filosofiske og idehistoriske baggrund for denne diskussion, så er Religionens fremtid og dens dialog mellem to af nutidens største filosoffer et godt sted at starte.