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54 results

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  • 6 - Returning to the Particular: Morality and the Self after Rorty

  • Edited by David Rondel, University of Nevada, Reno
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Rorty
    Published online:
    13 April 2021
    Print publication:
    01 April 2021, pp 129-154

  • Summary

    This chapter begins by arguing that the common tendency to write off Rorty’s views on morality on the grounds that they are vulnerable to straightforward charges of relativism is mistaken if only because it ignores the fact that those views are conceived independently of his epistemological behaviorism. It then moves on to examine the relationship between Rorty’s notion of selfhood and his distinction between public and private morality. In exploring that relationship, a number of problematic issues are identified concerning: Rorty’s dependence on a Freudian multi-personality account of the self, his excessive optimism regarding the demands of self-creation in modern societies, and whether the very idea of morality as a private concern can carry the weight he places upon it. Some of the literary critic Lionel Trilling’s views on the burdens of self-making are introduced to temper Rorty’s utopian expectations.

The Cambridge Companion to Pragmatism
  • Edited by Alan Malachowski
  • Published online:
    05 October 2013
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013
  • Pragmatism established a philosophical presence over a century ago through the work of Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey, and has enjoyed an unprecedented revival in recent years owing to the pioneering efforts of Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. The essays in this volume explore the history and themes of classic pragmatism, discuss the revival of pragmatism and show how it engages with a range of areas of inquiry including politics, law, education, aesthetics, religion and feminism. Together they provide readers with an overview of the richness and vitality of pragmatist thinking and the influence that it continues to exert both in philosophy and other disciplines. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of pragmatism, American philosophy and political theory.

The New Pragmatism
  • Alan Malachowski
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    31 December 2009
  • Some hundred years after its inception, pragmatism has reclaimed centre stage, not just within philosophy, but also within intellectual culture as a whole. This book sets out to explain what it is about pragmatism that makes it such a distinctively attractive prospect to so many thinkers, even in previously hostile traditions. Alan Malachowski sets out in a clear and accessible manner the original guiding thoughts behind the pragmatist approach to philosophy and examines how these thoughts have fared in the hands of those largely responsible for the present revival (Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty). The pragmatism that emerges from this exploration of its “classic” and “new wave” forms is then assessed in terms of both its philosophical potential and its wider cultural contribution. Readers will emerge from the book with a more secure grip on what pragmatism involves and a correspondingly clearer grasp of what it has to offer and what its current resurgence is all about.

Richard Rorty
  • Alan Malachowski
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    30 June 2001
  • Richard Rorty is notorious for contending that the traditional, foundation-building and truth-seeking ambitions of systematic philosophy should be set aside in favour of a more pragmatic, conversational, hermeneutically guided project. This challenge has not only struck at the heart of philosophy but has ricocheted across other disciplines, both contesting their received self-images and opening up new avenues of inquiry in the process. Alan Malachowski provides an authoritative overview of Rorty's considerable body of work and a general assessment of his impact both within philosophy and in the humanities more broadly. He begins by explaining the genesis of Rorty's central ideas, tracking their development from suggestions in his early papers through their crystallization in his groundbreaking book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Malachowski evaluates some of the common criticisms of Rorty's position and his ensuing pragmatism. The book examines the subsequent evolution of his ideas, focusing particularly on the main themes of his second major work, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. The political and cultural impact of Rorty's writings on such diverse fields as feminism, cultural and literary theory, and international relations are also considered, and the author explores why Rorty's work has generally found its warmest reception in these areas rather than among mainstream philosophers.

  • 4 - Putnam's contributions

  • Alan Malachowski, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
  • Book:
    The New Pragmatism
    Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    31 December 2009, pp 61-82

  • Summary

    I hope to convince you that pragmatism offers something far better than the unpalatable alternatives which seem to be the only possibilities today, both philosophically and politically.

    (Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question)

    Hilary Putnam is a prolific and influential philosopher who has had a long and distinguished academic career. In his case, we do not need to fill in as much background detail as we did with Rorty. For, although Putnam has never been afraid of courting controversy, his philosophical career has been much more conventional that Rorty's. As a result, his views have not been inordinately clouded or distorted by the fog of public notoriety.

    Putnam's contributions to the growth of the New Pragmatism have spanned some thirty years or so. During this lengthy period, Putnam's overall position has been revised a number of times, and to the extent that more recently, as James Conant has pointed out, he has “become increasingly disenchanted with putting forward new philosophical ‘positions’ of his own” (in Putnam 1995b: xii). Given Putnam's deep dissatisfaction with the reductive aspects of overly abstract or narrowly technical approaches to philosophical issues, his eventual adoption of what we might call a ‘positionless position’ might, with hindsight, look inevitable. And no doubt this has some bearing on how we should view his relationship to the New Pragmatism. However, there is another sense in which his philosophical direction has never wavered.

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