Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers

This volume presents a selection of the philosophical papers which Richard Rorty has written over the past decade, and complements three previous volumes of his papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Essays on Heidegger and Others, and Truth and Progress. Topics discussed include the changing role of philosophy in Western culture over the course of recent centuries, the role of the imagination in intellectual and moral progress, the notion of ‘moral identity’, the Wittgensteinian claim that the problems of philosophy are linguistic in nature, the irrelevance of cognitive science to philosophy, and the mistaken idea that philosophers should find the ‘place’ of such things as consciousness and moral value in a world of physical particles. The papers form a rich and distinctive collection which will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in philosophy and its relation to culture.

• Rorty is one of the most prominent and most discussed Anglo-American philosophers • This is to be his last volume of papers • Will interest a broad audience including philosophers, political theorists, theologians, students of cultural theory

Part I. Religion and Morality from a Pragmatist Point of View: 1. Cultural politics and the question of the existence of God; 2. Pragmatism as romantic polytheism; 3. Justice as a larger loyalty; 4. Honest mistakes; Part II. Philosophy’s Place in Culture: 5. Grandeur, profundity and finitude; 6. Philosophy as a transitional genre; 7. Pragmatism and romanticism; 8. Analytic and conversational philosophy; Part III. Current Issues within Analytic Philosophy: 9. A pragmatist view of contemporary analytic philosophy; 10. Naturalism and quietism; 11. Wittgenstein and the linguistic turn; 12. Holism and historicism; 13. Kant vs. Dewey: the current situation of moral philosophy.