Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Rorty
- Cambridge Companions to Philosophy
- The Cambridge Companion to Rorty
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations of Works by Rorty
- Introduction: The Unity of Richard Rorty’s Philosophy
- 1 Rorty’s Metaphilosophy: A Pluralistic Corridor
- 2 After Metaphysics: Eliminativism and the Protreptic Dilemma
- 3 Rorty and Classical Pragmatism
- 4 A Pragmatism More Ironic Than Pragmatic
- 5 Rorty and Semantic Minimalism
- 6 Returning to the Particular: Morality and the Self after Rorty
- 7 Rorty’s Political Philosophy
- 8 Tinkering with Truth, Tinkering with Difference: Rorty and (Liberal) Feminism
- 9 Rorty’s Insouciant Social Thought
- 10 Rorty and National Pride
- 11 Rorty on Religion
- 12 Rorty: Reading Continental Philosophy
- 13 Rorty’s Literary Culture: Reading, Redemption, and The Heart’s Invisible Furies
- 14 Wild Orchids
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Philosophy
7 - Rorty’s Political Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2021
- The Cambridge Companion to Rorty
- Cambridge Companions to Philosophy
- The Cambridge Companion to Rorty
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations of Works by Rorty
- Introduction: The Unity of Richard Rorty’s Philosophy
- 1 Rorty’s Metaphilosophy: A Pluralistic Corridor
- 2 After Metaphysics: Eliminativism and the Protreptic Dilemma
- 3 Rorty and Classical Pragmatism
- 4 A Pragmatism More Ironic Than Pragmatic
- 5 Rorty and Semantic Minimalism
- 6 Returning to the Particular: Morality and the Self after Rorty
- 7 Rorty’s Political Philosophy
- 8 Tinkering with Truth, Tinkering with Difference: Rorty and (Liberal) Feminism
- 9 Rorty’s Insouciant Social Thought
- 10 Rorty and National Pride
- 11 Rorty on Religion
- 12 Rorty: Reading Continental Philosophy
- 13 Rorty’s Literary Culture: Reading, Redemption, and The Heart’s Invisible Furies
- 14 Wild Orchids
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Philosophy
Summary
Rorty’s liberalism strays so far from its classical form that one might wonder why we cluster him together with thinkers such as Locke, Kant, or even more recent writers such as Rawls. Clarifying the particulars of Rorty’s political philosophy – his particular liberalism – requires one to enter into a set debates about metaphysics, epistemology, and social thought that go beyond liberalism, veering into literary criticism, critical theory, and Marxism. This chapter begins by laying out the contours of Rorty’s political commitments, beginning with how they first came together in what he calls his “postmodernist bourgeois liberalism.” It then shows how his liberalism finds its fullest expression in the “ideally liberal society” set out in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It goes on to examine how, in subsequent work, Rorty revised his description of that society in response to criticisms from feminist theorists. It concludes that his later writings indicate that Rorty’s position is potentially more radical than he, or his readers, recognize.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Rorty , pp. 155 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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