Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- 174 Race
- 175 Rational choice theory
- 176 Rational intuitionism
- 177 Realistic utopia
- 178 The reasonable and the rational
- 179 Reasonable hope
- 180 Reasonable pluralism
- 181 Reciprocity
- 182 Reconciliation
- 183 Redress, principle of
- 184 Relective equilibrium
- 185 Religion
- 186 Respect for persons
- 187 Right: concept of, and formal constraints of
- 188 Rights, constitutional
- 189 Rights, moral and legal
- 190 Rorty, Richard
- 191 Ross, W. D.
- 192 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- 193 Rule of law
- 194 Rules (two concepts of)
- S
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
190 - Rorty, Richard
from R
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- 174 Race
- 175 Rational choice theory
- 176 Rational intuitionism
- 177 Realistic utopia
- 178 The reasonable and the rational
- 179 Reasonable hope
- 180 Reasonable pluralism
- 181 Reciprocity
- 182 Reconciliation
- 183 Redress, principle of
- 184 Relective equilibrium
- 185 Religion
- 186 Respect for persons
- 187 Right: concept of, and formal constraints of
- 188 Rights, constitutional
- 189 Rights, moral and legal
- 190 Rorty, Richard
- 191 Ross, W. D.
- 192 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- 193 Rule of law
- 194 Rules (two concepts of)
- S
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Richard Rorty (1931–2007) was an American philosopher and public intellectual. After earning a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University in 1956, Rorty secured professorships at Wellesley College and Princeton University. He spent twenty years in Princeton’s Philosophy Department, and then took up the Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia in 1982. In 1997, he moved to Stanford University’s Comparative Literature department.
Rorty’s earliest work is focused on standard topics in analytic philosophy, including meaning, reference, intentionality, and materialism. He was an early defender of a broadly Quinean naturalism and a Sellarsian eliminativism in the philosophy of mind. By the 1970s, however, Rorty’s interests began to expand and he drew inspiration from Martin Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, and especially John Dewey. These shifts resulted in Rorty’s highly influential 1979 book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Calling his view pragmatism, Rorty argues for a radical version of anti-foundationalism according to which all of the traditional aims of philosophy – including truth, rationality, knowledge, objectivity, and the accurate representation of reality – are rendered disposable. In place of these philosophical objectives, Rorty offers the pragmatized ideals of solidarity, empathy, shared hopes, unforced agreement, and social progress along social democratic lines. Rejecting the very idea of a philosophical foundation for these aims, Rorty unabashedly embraces “ethnocentrism.” In fact, he endorses what he calls “ironism,” claiming that it is the mark of a civilized person to be willing to stand unflinchingly for these ideals even after he or she realizes that they lack any philosophical grounding whatsoever.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon , pp. 737 - 738Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014