Hooray! You have added the first book to your bookshelf. Check it out now!
[−]
  • Search Digit-count Valid ISBN Invalid ISBN Valid Barcode Invalid Barcode
Blog this item

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

By Richard Rorty

(3)

| Paperback | 9780521367813

Like Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Sign up for free

Book Description

In this book, major American philosopher Richard Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature, or as realizations of suprahistorical goalsContinue

In this book, major American philosopher Richard Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature, or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable but it cannot advance Liberalism's social and political goals. In fact, Rorty believes that it is literature and not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense of human solidarity. Specifically, it is novelists such as Orwell and Nabokov who succeed in awakening us to the cruelty of particular social practices and individual attitudes. Thus, a truly liberal culture would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. Rorty uses a wide range of references--from philosophy to social theory to literary criticism--to elucidate his beliefs.

Critics

  • Getting it right

    An energetic thinker with some original ideas may understandably rebel against the oppressive demand to get it right, especially when the demand comes, as it often does, from cautious and conventional colleagues. In responsible subjects such as the n ... (read full critics)

    lrb published on Fri, 3 Sep 2010

1 Review

Login or Sign Up to write a review

  • At times exactly right, at others just plain silly. What to make of pragmatism? He does know how to turn a phrase though. I wrote while reading it that he "is trying to secularize Truth, declare it dead, washed ashore in a second wave of Darwinism."

    Is this helpful?

    Leebeck said on Feb 29, 2008 | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (3)
    • 5 stars
    • 4 stars
    • 3 stars
    • 2 stars
    • 1 star
  • English Books
  • Paperback 224 Pages
  • Edition: 1989
  • ISBN-10: 0521367816
  • ISBN-13: 9780521367813
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • Pub date: Feb 24, 1989
  • Dimensions: 1484 mm x 968 mm x 65 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Hardcover
Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780521367813 Paperback $29.99 $25.64 bn.com
$29.99 $18.99 The Book Depository
Other editions →
Added to Shelf Added to Wish List

Inline Translation Mode

Left click to navigate, right click to translate.

inline translation guide

or close

Inline translation is not ready for this page yet.

Inline translation mode.

Share this page with your friends.

The viewport has not loaded.