Philosophy and Social Hope

Richard Rorty is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of PHILSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE, CONTINGENCY, IRONY AND SOLIDARITY, and ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY.

• Part 1 Autobiographical: Trotsky and the wild orchids. Part 2 Hope in place of knowledge - a version of pragmatism: truth without correspondence to reality; a world without substances or essences; ethics without principles. Part 3 Some applications of pragmatism: the banality of pragmatism and the poetry of justice; pragmatism and law - a response to David Luban; education as socialization and as individualization; the humanistic intellectual - eleven theses; the pragmatist's progress - Umberto Eco on interpretation; religious faith, intellectual responsibility and romance; religion as conversation-stopper; Thomas Kuhn, rocks and the laws of physics; on Hiedegger's Nazism. Part 4 Politics: failed prophecies, glorious hopes; a spectre is haunting the intellectuals - Derrida on Marx; love and money; globalization, the politics and identity and social hope. Part 5 Contemporary America: looking backwards from the year 2096; the unpatriotic academy; back to class politics.