Description
Book SynopsisA groundbreaking reference work on the revolutionary philosophy and intellectual legacy of Richard Rorty A provocative and often controversial thinker, Richard Rorty and his ideas have been the subject of renewed interest to philosophers working in epistemology, metaphysics, analytic philosophy, and the history of philosophy. Having called for philosophers to abandonrepresentationalist accounts of knowledge and language, Rorty introduced radical and challenging concepts to modern philosophy, generating divisive debate through the new form of American pragmatism which he advocated and the renunciation of traditional epistemology which he espoused. However, while Rorty has been one of the most widely-discussed figures in modern philosophy, few volumes have dealt directly with the expansive reach of his thought or its implications for the fields of philosophy in which he worked. The Blackwell Companion to Rorty is a collection of essays by prominent scholars which provide close, and lo
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments viii
Contributors ix
Introduction: Rorty’s Approach to Philosophy: Time for Reassessment 1
Alan Malachowski
Prologue 9
1 Reading Rorty: A Sketch of a Plan 11
Danielle Macbeth
Part I Early Developments 25
2 Was Rorty an Eliminative Materialist? 27
William Ramsey
3 Rorty’s Philosophy of Consciousness 43
James Tartaglia
4 Rorty and Transcendental Arguments 59
Neil Gascoigne
Part II Texts 79
5 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 81
James Tartaglia
6 The Uses of Philosophy after the Collapse of Metaphysics: Ironism and Liberalism in Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity 100
Colin Koopman
7 Rhetoric Between Philosophy and Poetry: Rorty as Essayist 119
William M. Curtis
8 Rorty’s Inspirational Liberalism 135
Richard J. Bernstein
Part III Themes 147
9 Are Pragmatists About Truth True Democrats? 149
Pascal Engel
10 Richard Rorty and (the End of) Metaphysics (?) 163
David Macarthur
11 Rorty, Pragmatism, and Ethics: The Value of Hope 178
Marjorie C. Miller
12 The Center and Circumference of Knowledge: Rorty on Pragmatism and Romanticism 194
Isaac Nevo
13 Rorty and Analytic Philosophy 211
Gary Gutting
14 Speculative Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Hyperboles of Philosophy 229
Paul Trembath
Part IV Appropriations 251
15 Rorty on Hegel on the Mind in History 253
Paul Redding
16 Rorty and the Mirror of Nietzsche 268
Steven Michels
17 The Truth of Being and the History of Philosophy 281
Mark Okrent
18 Rorty’s Romantic Polytheism: The Influence of William James 297
Carol Nicholson
19 Inconvenient Conversational Partners: Rorty and Freud 312
Alan Malachowski
20 Rorty and Dewey 335
David L. Hildebrand
21 Common Understanding Without Uncommon Certainty: Rorty’s Wittgenstein Revisited 357
Alan Malachowski
22 Rorty, Davidson, and Representation 370
Steven Levine
23 The Rorty–Habermas Debate: A Critical Appraisal 395
Anton A. van Niekerk
Part V Culture, Politics, and Religion 411
24 Rorty and Literature 413
Serge Grigoriev
25 The Contested Marriage of Rorty and Feminism 427
Elizabeth Sperry
26 Rorty and Religion: Beyond the Culture Wars? 444
Molly B. Farneth
27 Rorty’s Philosophy of Religion 456
Emil Višňovský
28 Rorty and the Intellectual Culture of Central Europe 467
Emil Višňovský, Alexander Krémer, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński
29 Rorty and Nihilism 482
Tracy Llanera
30 Rorty’s Ethics of Responsibility 490
Christopher J. Voparil
Part VI Coda 505
31 Poetry as (a Kind of) Philosophy: For Richard Rorty 507
Christopher Norris
Internet Resources 528
Index 529
