Suchergebnisse
"Gregory Jones-Katz"
Titel: Kicking the Philosophy Habit: Richard Rorty’s Clarion Call and the Cultural Politics of the Academic Left
Autor: Gregory Jones-Katz
Seite: 71-95
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Richard Rorty advocated that his confréres kick the ‘philosophy habit’—that is, adopt a post-positivist, post-metaphysical style of interpretation. Philosophers largely ignored Rorty’s clarion call. Unburdened by the kind of Selbstverständnis of scholarly mission held by most analytics, members of departments of literature instead became the most important advocates for reading literature philosophically during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Though the academic Left, especially practitioners of ‘theory’, largely celebrated and encouraged this development, Rorty, in the late 1990s, came to view it as harmfully elevating ‘cultural politics’ above ‘real politics’, which would ultimately lead to the abandonment of civic responsibilities. While heavy-handed and partial, Rorty’s critique of the uses of philosophy by literary critics was not only perceptive, but can be helpful for understanding how the contemporary academic Left might move forward as well.
Rorty and Paradigm Change in Philosophy
2019 (41) Heft 1
Editorial
Three years after its foundation, in 1981, this journal presented a contribution by Richard Rorty in German translation, which was republished as ‘Philosophy in America Today’ in another journal the same year and included in Rorty’s first article selection Consequences of Pragmatism (1982). A lively debate on the article and Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) ensued and drew a lengthy ‘Reply to six critics’ from Rorty. These diversified and historically symptomatic re...