Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, 1991 - History - 364 pages
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
 

Selected pages

Contents

IS TRUTH A GOAL OF INQUIRY? DONALD DAVIDSON VERSUS CRISPIN WRIGHT
19
HILARY PUTNAM AND THE RELATIVIST MENACE
43
JOHN SEARLE ON REALISM AND RELATIVISM
63
CHARLES TAYLOR ON TRUTH
84
DANIEL DENNETT ON INTRINSICALITY
98
ROBERT BRANDOM ON SOCIAL PRACTICES AND REPRESENTATIONS
122
THE VERY IDEA OF HUMAN ANSWERABILITY TO THE WORLD JOHN McDOWELLS VERSION OF EMPIRICISM
138
ANTISKEPTICAL WEAPONS MICHAEL WILLIAMS VERSUS DONALD DAVIDSON
153
FEMINISM AND PRAGMATISM
202
THE END OF LENINISM HAVEL AND SOCIAL HOPE
228
THE ROLE OF PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN PROGRESS
245
THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF PHILOSOPHY FOUR GENRES
247
THE CONTINGENCY OF PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS MICHAEL AYERS ON LOCKE
274
DEWEY BETWEEN HEGEL AND DARWIN
290
HABERMAS DERRIDA AND THE FUNCTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY
307
DERRIDA AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION
327

MORAL PROGRESS TOWARD MORE INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES
165
HUMAN RIGHTS RATIONALITY AND SENTIMENTALITY
167
RATIONALITY AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCE
186

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About the author (1991)

Richard McKay Rorty is the principal American voice of postmodern philosophy. He was born in New York City and educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University. After having taught philosophy at Princeton University for more than 20 years, Rorty became a university professor in humanities at the University of Virginia in 1982. He has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. In 1967 Rorty published The Linguistic Turn, an anthology of twentieth-century philosophy that opens with his 40-page introduction. This work has become a standard introduction to analytic philosophy, and its title names an era. Despite his early hope for the future of analytic philosophy, Rorty came to doubt its foundations. This doubt prodded him to master American pragmatism as well as continental European work in hermeneutics and deconstruction. This work, in turn, led Rorty to question the entire tradition of Western philosophy. These doubts are expressed in his second book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), which is one of the most widely discussed of all recent American works in philosophy. It announces the death of philosophy as a kind of higher knowledge but recommends its continuance as edification and as a branch of literature. Choice proved prophetic in stating that "this bold and provocative book is bound to rank among the most important of the decade."