Richard Rorty (PDF)

Neil Gascoigne provides the first comprehensive introduction
Richard Rorty's work. He demonstrates to the general reader
and to the student of philosophy alike how the radical views on
truth, objectivity and rationality expressed in Rorty's
widely-read essays on contemporary culture and politics derive from
his earliest work in the philosophy of mind and language. He avoids
the partisanship that characterizes much discussion of
Rorty's work whilst providing a critical account of some of
the dominant concerns of contemporary thought.

Beginning with Rorty's early work on concept-change in the
philosophy of mind, the book traces his increasing hostility to the
idea that philosophy is cognitively privileged with respect to
other disciplines. After the publication of Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature, this led to a new emphasis on preserving the
moral and political inheritance of the enlightenment by detaching
it from the traditional search for rational foundations. This
emerging project led Rorty to champion 'ironic'
thinkers like Foucault and Derrida, and to his attempt to update
the liberalism of J. S. Mill by offering a non-universalistic
account of the individual's need to balance their own private
interests against their commitments to others.

By returning him to his philosophical roots, Gascoigne shows why
Rorty's pragmatism is of continuing relevance to anyone
interested in ongoing debates about the nature and limits of
philosophy, and the implications these debates have for our
understanding of what role the intellectual might play in
contemporary life. This book serves as both an excellent
introduction to Rorty's work and an innovative critique which
contributes to ongoing debates in the field.