Philosophy and Social Hope Book

I did not expect to be bowled over by this late essay collection any more than I expected it to be the best possible introduction to Rorty; so much is clear from the mustard yellow of the second hand paperback I left baking on a windowsill for months. But here I can confirm you do not need to have read The Big One, and this is probably better for an accessible and broader overview of everything Rorty cares about.

I like that the first thing this collection gives you is Rorty's personal intellectual etiology narrative, which in philosophy is often a gem relegated to a surprise paragraph or two. I like how he appeals to my newfound coherentist prejudices. I like how syncretic Rorty is in engaging between the so termed analytic and continental traditions, including a surprise paper involving lit crit. He seems irrevocably touched by the analytic tradition however, which I also like. Part of that is evidenced in the startling clarity of his writing, which here translates into greater readability rather than doing so only as a way of showing your work. I like Rorty's milquetoast liberalism which spins great yarns about hope and inclusion, while still for example coming down strongly about civil disobedience being far more emancipatory than the ballot, or of inequality being the issue of our time. I like how Rorty talks of Dewey, Kuhn, Davidson, Goodman, Habermas, and even Derrida among others in a way that makes me excited to read them rather than let them languish on my shelf.

Ultimately, though, what enthused me so much was seeing him working at the kind of project I like to see: that of using an epistemology as a base for an educational or personal growth ethic from which to launch a collaborative social philosophy. And the appealing thing about his pragmatism is it is built to come to terms with the kind of essentialism and abstraction a project like that is typically pockmarked by. I am not a convert, Rorty might be further up the garden path than I might be willing to follow, and there are likely better defenses of his stronger claims elsewhere. The thing that surprised me was just how much did work on me.