Richard Sennett
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198294962
- eISBN:
- 9780191598708
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198294964.003.0010
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Sandel earns his theory by history: the last two-thirds of Democracy’s Discontent, called “The Political Economy of Citizenship,” explores with great historical acumen just how liberalism and ...
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Sandel earns his theory by history: the last two-thirds of Democracy’s Discontent, called “The Political Economy of Citizenship,” explores with great historical acumen just how liberalism and republicanism have become manifest in the real world of labor, class, and capitalist development. At each stage of capitalism’s development, the concepts of the liberal, “procedural” republic proved better at rationalizing economic growth. The modern economy is, we know, uprooting large numbers of people who now labor at short-term tasks rather than pursue long-term careers; it’s hard to be loyal to corporations which do not practice loyalty in return, harder to take seriously the current hand-wringing about corporate responsibility on the part of institutions compulsively oriented to their quarterly earnings reports. Words like “duty” and “loyalty” do contain in themselves a coercive undertow, and it is that current in Sandel’s thinking which his most serious critics, such as Richard Rorty, have contested. Sandel sees civil society culminating in political action–or thinks it should move in that direction if we are to do battle with an ever more corrosive capitalism; for Rorty, civil society, whether strong or weak, ironic or blind, stands beyond the reach of politics, and the “network of beliefs and desires” that he calls the self is too complicated a map to have a single destination.Less
Sandel earns his theory by history: the last two-thirds of Democracy’s Discontent, called “The Political Economy of Citizenship,” explores with great historical acumen just how liberalism and republicanism have become manifest in the real world of labor, class, and capitalist development. At each stage of capitalism’s development, the concepts of the liberal, “procedural” republic proved better at rationalizing economic growth. The modern economy is, we know, uprooting large numbers of people who now labor at short-term tasks rather than pursue long-term careers; it’s hard to be loyal to corporations which do not practice loyalty in return, harder to take seriously the current hand-wringing about corporate responsibility on the part of institutions compulsively oriented to their quarterly earnings reports. Words like “duty” and “loyalty” do contain in themselves a coercive undertow, and it is that current in Sandel’s thinking which his most serious critics, such as Richard Rorty, have contested. Sandel sees civil society culminating in political action–or thinks it should move in that direction if we are to do battle with an ever more corrosive capitalism; for Rorty, civil society, whether strong or weak, ironic or blind, stands beyond the reach of politics, and the “network of beliefs and desires” that he calls the self is too complicated a map to have a single destination.
Nader Hashemi
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195321241
- eISBN:
- 9780199869831
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195321241.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter explores the relationship between political secularism and liberal democracy. The historical roots of secularism as a political concept are investigated. The various political models of ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between political secularism and liberal democracy. The historical roots of secularism as a political concept are investigated. The various political models of secularism and types of liberal democracy, primarily the Anglo‐American and French traditions are discussed. In seeking out a detailed grasp of the precise relationship between secularism and liberal democracy the writings of two famous political philosophers are explored: Alexis de Tocqueville and Richard Rorty. Seeking a deeper grasp of the relationship between religion, secularism and democracy, the recent theoretical contributions by Alfred Stepan on the “Twin Tolerations” and the world's religious traditions are examined and then related to the debate on Islam and democracy.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between political secularism and liberal democracy. The historical roots of secularism as a political concept are investigated. The various political models of secularism and types of liberal democracy, primarily the Anglo‐American and French traditions are discussed. In seeking out a detailed grasp of the precise relationship between secularism and liberal democracy the writings of two famous political philosophers are explored: Alexis de Tocqueville and Richard Rorty. Seeking a deeper grasp of the relationship between religion, secularism and democracy, the recent theoretical contributions by Alfred Stepan on the “Twin Tolerations” and the world's religious traditions are examined and then related to the debate on Islam and democracy.
David Schlosberg
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199256419
- eISBN:
- 9780191600203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199256411.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
The acceptance of multiplicity as the precondition of political action is central to the new generation of theorists and activists that the author designates as ‘critical pluralists’. In political ...
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The acceptance of multiplicity as the precondition of political action is central to the new generation of theorists and activists that the author designates as ‘critical pluralists’. In political and social theory, a range of authors has finally begun to respond to a lament broached by Mary Parker Follett in 1918: pluralists early in the century had acknowledged difference, she noted, but they had not arrived at the heart of the question – what is to be done with this diversity? This chapter examines some of the contemporary responses to Follett’s question and constructs a list of practices necessary to build political relations across difference. These get at issues of justice beyond the material, concerning both recognition and participatory process, and it is argued that agonistic respect (William Connolly 1991), attempts at intersubjective understanding (Seyla Benhabib 1992; Jurgen Habermas 1970; Axel Honneth 1992), inclusive, open discourse free from domination and the possibility of reprisals (John Dryzek 1990; John Forester 1989; Habermas 1984, 1987), and the development of a particular form of solidarity are all crucial to the practices suggested by a new generation of pluralist theory. Solidarity (unity without uniformity) is complex in that it centres on the process of reconciling difference with the need for concerted political action. The author focuses on how the notion of unity suggested by Follett was discarded by the second generation of pluralism, but is now mirrored by numerous contemporary theorists, including Richard Rorty (1989), Donna Haraway (1991), and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987).Less
The acceptance of multiplicity as the precondition of political action is central to the new generation of theorists and activists that the author designates as ‘critical pluralists’. In political and social theory, a range of authors has finally begun to respond to a lament broached by Mary Parker Follett in 1918: pluralists early in the century had acknowledged difference, she noted, but they had not arrived at the heart of the question – what is to be done with this diversity? This chapter examines some of the contemporary responses to Follett’s question and constructs a list of practices necessary to build political relations across difference. These get at issues of justice beyond the material, concerning both recognition and participatory process, and it is argued that agonistic respect (William Connolly 1991), attempts at intersubjective understanding (Seyla Benhabib 1992; Jurgen Habermas 1970; Axel Honneth 1992), inclusive, open discourse free from domination and the possibility of reprisals (John Dryzek 1990; John Forester 1989; Habermas 1984, 1987), and the development of a particular form of solidarity are all crucial to the practices suggested by a new generation of pluralist theory. Solidarity (unity without uniformity) is complex in that it centres on the process of reconciling difference with the need for concerted political action. The author focuses on how the notion of unity suggested by Follett was discarded by the second generation of pluralism, but is now mirrored by numerous contemporary theorists, including Richard Rorty (1989), Donna Haraway (1991), and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987).
Seyla Benhabib
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198289647
- eISBN:
- 9780191596698
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198289642.003.0010
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
Benhabib reconsiders aspects of the cultural relativism–universalism debate via sociological hypotheses regarding the reproduction and interdependence of cultures. After taking issue with relativist ...
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Benhabib reconsiders aspects of the cultural relativism–universalism debate via sociological hypotheses regarding the reproduction and interdependence of cultures. After taking issue with relativist views that have neglected the existence of debate and opposition within traditional cultures, Benhabib builds on Richard Rorty's ethnocentric liberalism to argue that cultural views are not radically incommensurable with one another and that there is sufficient common ground among cultures to create a global dialogical community that transcends ethnocentric particularism.Less
Benhabib reconsiders aspects of the cultural relativism–universalism debate via sociological hypotheses regarding the reproduction and interdependence of cultures. After taking issue with relativist views that have neglected the existence of debate and opposition within traditional cultures, Benhabib builds on Richard Rorty's ethnocentric liberalism to argue that cultural views are not radically incommensurable with one another and that there is sufficient common ground among cultures to create a global dialogical community that transcends ethnocentric particularism.
Neil Gross
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309903
- eISBN:
- 9780226309910
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309910.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of ...
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On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. This biography explores the path of his thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that prominence. The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn't rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty's own thought. Doctoral work at Yale University led to Rorty's landing a job at Princeton University, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, he quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but, by the late 1970s, had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, Rorty argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time.Less
On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. This biography explores the path of his thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that prominence. The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn't rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty's own thought. Doctoral work at Yale University led to Rorty's landing a job at Princeton University, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, he quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but, by the late 1970s, had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, Rorty argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time.
Terence Ball
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198279952
- eISBN:
- 9780191598753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198279957.003.0012
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This concluding chapter looks at a pervasive American myth—that of the American Adam—which holds that America was originally an Eden, and Americans like Adam before the Fall: fresh, innocent, and ...
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This concluding chapter looks at a pervasive American myth—that of the American Adam—which holds that America was originally an Eden, and Americans like Adam before the Fall: fresh, innocent, and full of hope. As R.W.B. Lewis argues in The American Adam, this myth pervades American literature. I attempt to show that it pops up in other unsuspected genres as well. I illustrate this claim by looking afresh at three thinkers—John Rawls, Gerard O’Neill, and Richard Rorty—whose work, doubtless unbeknownst to them, embodies `Adamic’ themes and imagery.Less
This concluding chapter looks at a pervasive American myth—that of the American Adam—which holds that America was originally an Eden, and Americans like Adam before the Fall: fresh, innocent, and full of hope. As R.W.B. Lewis argues in The American Adam, this myth pervades American literature. I attempt to show that it pops up in other unsuspected genres as well. I illustrate this claim by looking afresh at three thinkers—John Rawls, Gerard O’Neill, and Richard Rorty—whose work, doubtless unbeknownst to them, embodies `Adamic’ themes and imagery.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309903
- eISBN:
- 9780226309910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309910.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
The first few years after Richard Rorty received tenure at Princeton University in 1965 were relatively productive ones. He published little in 1966—only a two-page encyclopedia entry on Aristotle ...
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The first few years after Richard Rorty received tenure at Princeton University in 1965 were relatively productive ones. He published little in 1966—only a two-page encyclopedia entry on Aristotle and a review of John Boler's book Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism—but the following year saw the publication of The Linguistic Turn, along with Rorty's entries in Paul Edwards's The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. By 1970, when he was promoted to full professor, several more important articles of his had appeared in print, each analytic in style and choice of subject matter. “Strawson's Objectivity Argument,” for example, published in the Review of Metaphysics in 1970, examined critically the analytic philosopher P. F. Strawson's attempt, in his 1966 book The Bounds of Sense, to improve upon Immanuel Kant's effort to show that “the possibility of experience somehow involves the possibility of experience of objects.”Less
The first few years after Richard Rorty received tenure at Princeton University in 1965 were relatively productive ones. He published little in 1966—only a two-page encyclopedia entry on Aristotle and a review of John Boler's book Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism—but the following year saw the publication of The Linguistic Turn, along with Rorty's entries in Paul Edwards's The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. By 1970, when he was promoted to full professor, several more important articles of his had appeared in print, each analytic in style and choice of subject matter. “Strawson's Objectivity Argument,” for example, published in the Review of Metaphysics in 1970, examined critically the analytic philosopher P. F. Strawson's attempt, in his 1966 book The Bounds of Sense, to improve upon Immanuel Kant's effort to show that “the possibility of experience somehow involves the possibility of experience of objects.”
Anthony Brueckner
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199585861
- eISBN:
- 9780191595332
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585861.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter begins by considering the aforementioned Stroudian critique of transcendental arguments. Some doubts are raised about whether Stroud has succeeded in giving a fully general argument ...
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This chapter begins by considering the aforementioned Stroudian critique of transcendental arguments. Some doubts are raised about whether Stroud has succeeded in giving a fully general argument against the possibility of transcendental arguments. Then Peter Strawson's reconstruction of what he takes to be Kant's anti-sceptical reasoning in the Transcendental Deduction is considered, via the lense of Richard Rorty's reconstruction of Strawson's reconstruction of Kant. What emerges is a ‘conceptual presupposition’ strategy for addressing the sceptic. It is argued that this strategy falls prey to the Stroudian critique.Less
This chapter begins by considering the aforementioned Stroudian critique of transcendental arguments. Some doubts are raised about whether Stroud has succeeded in giving a fully general argument against the possibility of transcendental arguments. Then Peter Strawson's reconstruction of what he takes to be Kant's anti-sceptical reasoning in the Transcendental Deduction is considered, via the lense of Richard Rorty's reconstruction of Strawson's reconstruction of Kant. What emerges is a ‘conceptual presupposition’ strategy for addressing the sceptic. It is argued that this strategy falls prey to the Stroudian critique.
Brian Duff
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816672721
- eISBN:
- 9781452947280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816672721.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter explores the role that ideas about parenthood play in Rorty’s negotiation of the competing pull of the stability of virtue and the unpredictability of contest. Rorty responded to this ...
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This chapter explores the role that ideas about parenthood play in Rorty’s negotiation of the competing pull of the stability of virtue and the unpredictability of contest. Rorty responded to this tension in his thinking about citizenship by positing a strong dichotomy between the two. He developed a vision of modern citizens who are uniformly virtuous for public purposes and embrace contest and contingency in private. Rorty, perhaps counterintuitively, made the experience of parenthood central to the public (and virtuous) side of this dichotomy. Parenthood is the source of the sentiments that provide roots for Rorty’s public virtue. In the privacy of their own lives, Rorty believed, citizens should cultivate a sense of a contingency of their most cherished beliefs about the right way to live. But for the purposes of politics, Rorty believed that a shared hope for a better future for our children is the single disposition necessary for citizens to think about what is best for the nation.Less
This chapter explores the role that ideas about parenthood play in Rorty’s negotiation of the competing pull of the stability of virtue and the unpredictability of contest. Rorty responded to this tension in his thinking about citizenship by positing a strong dichotomy between the two. He developed a vision of modern citizens who are uniformly virtuous for public purposes and embrace contest and contingency in private. Rorty, perhaps counterintuitively, made the experience of parenthood central to the public (and virtuous) side of this dichotomy. Parenthood is the source of the sentiments that provide roots for Rorty’s public virtue. In the privacy of their own lives, Rorty believed, citizens should cultivate a sense of a contingency of their most cherished beliefs about the right way to live. But for the purposes of politics, Rorty believed that a shared hope for a better future for our children is the single disposition necessary for citizens to think about what is best for the nation.
Gary Hatfield
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195139167
- eISBN:
- 9780199833214
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019513916X.003.0020
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty locates the perceived ills of modern philosophy in the “epistemological turn” of Descartes and Locke. Hatfield argues that Rorty’s accounts of ...
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In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty locates the perceived ills of modern philosophy in the “epistemological turn” of Descartes and Locke. Hatfield argues that Rorty’s accounts of Descartes’s and Locke’s philosophical work are seriously flawed. Rorty misunderstood the participation of early modern philosophers in the rise of modern science, and he misdescribed their examination of cognition as psychological rather than epistemological. His diagnostic efforts were thereby undermined, and he missed Descartes’s original conception of a general physics and Locke’s probabilist analysis of the grounds for rational belief.Less
In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty locates the perceived ills of modern philosophy in the “epistemological turn” of Descartes and Locke. Hatfield argues that Rorty’s accounts of Descartes’s and Locke’s philosophical work are seriously flawed. Rorty misunderstood the participation of early modern philosophers in the rise of modern science, and he misdescribed their examination of cognition as psychological rather than epistemological. His diagnostic efforts were thereby undermined, and he missed Descartes’s original conception of a general physics and Locke’s probabilist analysis of the grounds for rational belief.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309903
- eISBN:
- 9780226309910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309910.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
This chapter reexamines key junctures in Richard Rorty's intellectual career, this time through the lens of the sociology of ideas. It considers Rorty's choice of masters thesis topic, his movement ...
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This chapter reexamines key junctures in Richard Rorty's intellectual career, this time through the lens of the sociology of ideas. It considers Rorty's choice of masters thesis topic, his movement into analytic philosophy in the 1960s, and his break with the analytic paradigm and his embracing of a pragmatist identity in the 1970s. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Randall Collins shed light on the decisions Rorty made at several of these junctures. For example, Bourdieu's focus on the reproduction of social and cultural capital helps explain Rorty's early educational trajectory, while the emphasis of both theorists on the strategic dimensions of intellectual life helps make sense of Rorty's turn toward analytic philosophy after graduate school. In other instances, however, the theories are underdeterminative with respect to explaining Rorty's actions. Only if non-strategic processes relating to the quest for intellectual self-concept coherence are also considered can Rorty's intellectual choices be more fully explained.Less
This chapter reexamines key junctures in Richard Rorty's intellectual career, this time through the lens of the sociology of ideas. It considers Rorty's choice of masters thesis topic, his movement into analytic philosophy in the 1960s, and his break with the analytic paradigm and his embracing of a pragmatist identity in the 1970s. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Randall Collins shed light on the decisions Rorty made at several of these junctures. For example, Bourdieu's focus on the reproduction of social and cultural capital helps explain Rorty's early educational trajectory, while the emphasis of both theorists on the strategic dimensions of intellectual life helps make sense of Rorty's turn toward analytic philosophy after graduate school. In other instances, however, the theories are underdeterminative with respect to explaining Rorty's actions. Only if non-strategic processes relating to the quest for intellectual self-concept coherence are also considered can Rorty's intellectual choices be more fully explained.
Steven Mailloux
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520224384
- eISBN:
- 9780520925267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520224384.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter discusses the theoretical problem of comparison, which will be a central aspect of future American Studies. The discussion starts with Richard Rorty's problematic neopragmatism and his ...
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This chapter discusses the theoretical problem of comparison, which will be a central aspect of future American Studies. The discussion starts with Richard Rorty's problematic neopragmatism and his theoretical talk of how to evaluate and interpret alien practices. It then studies the issue of making comparisons between cultures, before considering the question of the hermeneutic status of such comparisons and the political position of any future comparativist.Less
This chapter discusses the theoretical problem of comparison, which will be a central aspect of future American Studies. The discussion starts with Richard Rorty's problematic neopragmatism and his theoretical talk of how to evaluate and interpret alien practices. It then studies the issue of making comparisons between cultures, before considering the question of the hermeneutic status of such comparisons and the political position of any future comparativist.
Bruce Kuklick
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199260164
- eISBN:
- 9780191597893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199260168.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
At the end of the twentieth century, professional philosophy fragmented and lost its hold on the educated public in the US. Analytic philosophy split into many competing groups, while a group of ...
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At the end of the twentieth century, professional philosophy fragmented and lost its hold on the educated public in the US. Analytic philosophy split into many competing groups, while a group of ‘pluralists’ denounced analytic philosophy itself, and many thinkers outside the discipline of philosophy proclaimed themselves as philosophical theorists. In this climate, two thinkers were universally regarded as important, Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty.Less
At the end of the twentieth century, professional philosophy fragmented and lost its hold on the educated public in the US. Analytic philosophy split into many competing groups, while a group of ‘pluralists’ denounced analytic philosophy itself, and many thinkers outside the discipline of philosophy proclaimed themselves as philosophical theorists. In this climate, two thinkers were universally regarded as important, Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty.
Richard Messer
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198269717
- eISBN:
- 9780191683763
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269717.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter evaluates the relevance of the fact of relativity and the authority of criteria to the issue of proving God's existence. It considers the merits and demerits of philosophers Richard ...
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This chapter evaluates the relevance of the fact of relativity and the authority of criteria to the issue of proving God's existence. It considers the merits and demerits of philosophers Richard Rorty and Joseph Runzo in responding to relativity by bringing out their useful distinctions between normal and abnormal discourse, and universal and personal absolutes. It discusses the concept of fundamental trust and suggests that Ludwig Wittgenstein's arguments have revealed his fundamental trust in the limiting power of man's ways of acting by trapping God within human conceptions of God.Less
This chapter evaluates the relevance of the fact of relativity and the authority of criteria to the issue of proving God's existence. It considers the merits and demerits of philosophers Richard Rorty and Joseph Runzo in responding to relativity by bringing out their useful distinctions between normal and abnormal discourse, and universal and personal absolutes. It discusses the concept of fundamental trust and suggests that Ludwig Wittgenstein's arguments have revealed his fundamental trust in the limiting power of man's ways of acting by trapping God within human conceptions of God.
Roger A. Ward and Roger A. Ward
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823223138
- eISBN:
- 9780823284740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823223138.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
This chapter focuses on three contemporary philosophers who have contributed significantly to the development of pragmatism and American philosophy: Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Robert Corrington. ...
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This chapter focuses on three contemporary philosophers who have contributed significantly to the development of pragmatism and American philosophy: Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Robert Corrington. It argues that Rorty avoids the fundamental issue of personal transformation, which his own argument demands. West has attained the public notoriety of an intellectual with a program for transformation, drawing on Christian and philosophical resources for his sermonic challenge to culture. Conversion is central to West’s self-understanding, but it falls out of his programmatic speech. Corrington approaches philosophy from within the American perspective, but draws its thought up into the ongoing challenge of consciousness with itself. Transformation of human consciousness is the reality Corrington approaches from a platform of ecstatic naturalism.Less
This chapter focuses on three contemporary philosophers who have contributed significantly to the development of pragmatism and American philosophy: Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Robert Corrington. It argues that Rorty avoids the fundamental issue of personal transformation, which his own argument demands. West has attained the public notoriety of an intellectual with a program for transformation, drawing on Christian and philosophical resources for his sermonic challenge to culture. Conversion is central to West’s self-understanding, but it falls out of his programmatic speech. Corrington approaches philosophy from within the American perspective, but draws its thought up into the ongoing challenge of consciousness with itself. Transformation of human consciousness is the reality Corrington approaches from a platform of ecstatic naturalism.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309903
- eISBN:
- 9780226309910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309910.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
This book aims to document Richard Rorty's journey from being an intellectually precocious adolescent on the school yards of rural New Jersey to becoming the one of the most influential contemporary ...
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This book aims to document Richard Rorty's journey from being an intellectually precocious adolescent on the school yards of rural New Jersey to becoming the one of the most influential contemporary American philosophers. The book reconstructs the facts of Rorty's early biography from his childhood until the publication of Consequences of Pragmatism in 1982, which followed closely on the heels of his 1979 book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, published when he was forty-eight. It identifies patterns of growth, change, and stability in his thought over the first quarter century of his intellectual career and relates these to his life experience. The book also explores some of the social processes that intellectuals encounter and navigate as they develop their ideas. In both its agenda and theoretical orientation, the book breaks with the three most prominent intellectual-historical approaches of the day: humanism, contextualism, and post-structuralism.Less
This book aims to document Richard Rorty's journey from being an intellectually precocious adolescent on the school yards of rural New Jersey to becoming the one of the most influential contemporary American philosophers. The book reconstructs the facts of Rorty's early biography from his childhood until the publication of Consequences of Pragmatism in 1982, which followed closely on the heels of his 1979 book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, published when he was forty-eight. It identifies patterns of growth, change, and stability in his thought over the first quarter century of his intellectual career and relates these to his life experience. The book also explores some of the social processes that intellectuals encounter and navigate as they develop their ideas. In both its agenda and theoretical orientation, the book breaks with the three most prominent intellectual-historical approaches of the day: humanism, contextualism, and post-structuralism.
Kevin Korsyn
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195104547
- eISBN:
- 9780199868988
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195104547.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This book examines the struggle for the authority to speak about music at a time when the humanities are in crisis. By linking the institutions that support musical research, including professional ...
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This book examines the struggle for the authority to speak about music at a time when the humanities are in crisis. By linking the institutions that support musical research, including professional associations and universities, to complex historical changes such as globalization and the commodification of knowledge, this book undertakes a critique of musical scholarship as an institutional discourse, while contributing to a general theory of disciplinary structures that goes beyond the limits of any single field. In asking a number of fundamental questions about the models through which disciplinary objects in music are constructed, the book suggests unexpected relationships between works of musical scholarship and the cultural networks in which they participate. Thus, David Lewin's theory of musical perceptions is compared to Richard Rorty's concept of the “liberal ironist”, Susan McClary's feminist narrative of music history is juxtaposed with T.S. Eliot's “dissociation of sensibility”, and Steven Feld's work in recording the music of the Kaluli people is compared to the treatment of ambient sound in contemporary cinema. Developing a framework for interpretation in dialogue with a number of poststructuralist writers, the book goes far beyond applying their thought to the analysis of music; by showing the cultural dilemmas to which their work responds, it suggests how musical research already participates in these ideas.Less
This book examines the struggle for the authority to speak about music at a time when the humanities are in crisis. By linking the institutions that support musical research, including professional associations and universities, to complex historical changes such as globalization and the commodification of knowledge, this book undertakes a critique of musical scholarship as an institutional discourse, while contributing to a general theory of disciplinary structures that goes beyond the limits of any single field. In asking a number of fundamental questions about the models through which disciplinary objects in music are constructed, the book suggests unexpected relationships between works of musical scholarship and the cultural networks in which they participate. Thus, David Lewin's theory of musical perceptions is compared to Richard Rorty's concept of the “liberal ironist”, Susan McClary's feminist narrative of music history is juxtaposed with T.S. Eliot's “dissociation of sensibility”, and Steven Feld's work in recording the music of the Kaluli people is compared to the treatment of ambient sound in contemporary cinema. Developing a framework for interpretation in dialogue with a number of poststructuralist writers, the book goes far beyond applying their thought to the analysis of music; by showing the cultural dilemmas to which their work responds, it suggests how musical research already participates in these ideas.
Paul Bowman
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748617623
- eISBN:
- 9780748652785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748617623.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter examines some key ways in which post-Marxist and related intellectual work (such as that of Judith Butler and Richard Rorty) conceives of itself as intervention, pursuing the matter of ...
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This chapter examines some key ways in which post-Marxist and related intellectual work (such as that of Judith Butler and Richard Rorty) conceives of itself as intervention, pursuing the matter of how institutional intellectual work construes itself whenever it seeks to be or affect an intervention. It explores this by considering some exemplary encounters at the borders of post-Marxism that look at the heart of the problem. These encounters and accounts, the chapter argues, reveal the form, orientation, hopes, and often less-than-explicitly declared or avowed metaphysical rationales, fantasies and presuppositions of much theory about political practice. The chapter explores the way theory and practice are thought, examining the way that certain of Laclau’s key engagements with other approaches have been orientated, organised and executed.Less
This chapter examines some key ways in which post-Marxist and related intellectual work (such as that of Judith Butler and Richard Rorty) conceives of itself as intervention, pursuing the matter of how institutional intellectual work construes itself whenever it seeks to be or affect an intervention. It explores this by considering some exemplary encounters at the borders of post-Marxism that look at the heart of the problem. These encounters and accounts, the chapter argues, reveal the form, orientation, hopes, and often less-than-explicitly declared or avowed metaphysical rationales, fantasies and presuppositions of much theory about political practice. The chapter explores the way theory and practice are thought, examining the way that certain of Laclau’s key engagements with other approaches have been orientated, organised and executed.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309903
- eISBN:
- 9780226309910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309910.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
Paralleling his father's experiences, Richard Rorty found his two years of military service to be emotionally trying. After being discharged, he tried to make up for lost time professionally. His ...
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Paralleling his father's experiences, Richard Rorty found his two years of military service to be emotionally trying. After being discharged, he tried to make up for lost time professionally. His first job offer—an instructorship at Wellesley College beginning in 1958 that would roll over into an assistant professorship in 1960—must have seemed a solid but not stellar achievement. However, while not as highly valued as a post in a top graduate program, the Wellesley job would still have been regarded as one worth taking, particularly by graduates of Yale University, because of the college's general reputation, the high quality of the students, the insistence of student constituencies at top liberal arts schools like Wellesley that philosophy remain historically grounded and broad in reach, the college's proximity to Boston, and—perhaps—the fact that the department's chair at the time, Virginia Onderdonk, who had done her graduate work at the University of Chicago, had been a student of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein while studying abroad at Cambridge.Less
Paralleling his father's experiences, Richard Rorty found his two years of military service to be emotionally trying. After being discharged, he tried to make up for lost time professionally. His first job offer—an instructorship at Wellesley College beginning in 1958 that would roll over into an assistant professorship in 1960—must have seemed a solid but not stellar achievement. However, while not as highly valued as a post in a top graduate program, the Wellesley job would still have been regarded as one worth taking, particularly by graduates of Yale University, because of the college's general reputation, the high quality of the students, the insistence of student constituencies at top liberal arts schools like Wellesley that philosophy remain historically grounded and broad in reach, the college's proximity to Boston, and—perhaps—the fact that the department's chair at the time, Virginia Onderdonk, who had done her graduate work at the University of Chicago, had been a student of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein while studying abroad at Cambridge.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226309903
- eISBN:
- 9780226309910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309910.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
In light of the fact that the value of his Yale education had effectively diminished in an increasingly analytic disciplinary marketplace, Richard Rorty—though attracted to Yale University's ...
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In light of the fact that the value of his Yale education had effectively diminished in an increasingly analytic disciplinary marketplace, Richard Rorty—though attracted to Yale University's pluralism—may have been of the opinion that the job was a step down from his current one, that the prospects for tenure at Yale were even slimmer than they were at Princeton University, and that John Smith, with his dismissive reference to au courant movements in philosophy, was betraying his own incapacities. These points could not be expressed to Smith, who would have reacted badly to the charge that Yale was no longer at the philosophical forefront, so Rorty, a few days later, politely glossed his decision as being “either as the result of a cowardly search for security or as a result of the exercise of phronesis.”Less
In light of the fact that the value of his Yale education had effectively diminished in an increasingly analytic disciplinary marketplace, Richard Rorty—though attracted to Yale University's pluralism—may have been of the opinion that the job was a step down from his current one, that the prospects for tenure at Yale were even slimmer than they were at Princeton University, and that John Smith, with his dismissive reference to au courant movements in philosophy, was betraying his own incapacities. These points could not be expressed to Smith, who would have reacted badly to the charge that Yale was no longer at the philosophical forefront, so Rorty, a few days later, politely glossed his decision as being “either as the result of a cowardly search for security or as a result of the exercise of phronesis.”
