Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism
Richard Rorty
Harvard University Press
Review
“Today, there are few philosophers left whose thoughts are inspired by a unifying vision; there are even fewer who can articulate such a view in terms of a ravishing flow of provocative, but sharp and differentiated, arguments. But rarely anyone can compete with Richard Rorty in summarizing the whole of it in a series of brilliant literary lectures like these.”―Jürgen Habermas

“Richard Rorty was the most iconoclastic and dramatic philosopher of the last half-century. In this final book, his unique literary style, singular intellectual zest, and demythologizing defiance of official philosophy are on full display.”―Cornel West

“A sharp and comprehensive statement of Richard Rorty’s distinctive version of pragmatism, presented with all the wit and vitality typical of his writings. Carefully edited by Eduardo Mendieta, with an illuminating foreword by Robert B. Brandom, this book is invaluable reading for anyone interested in Rorty’s philosophical vision.”―Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research

“We have perhaps the clearest account of how he understood pragmatist thinking as a political undertaking…Provocative and engaging…The array of urgent questions and crises facing our democracy makes one miss Richard Rorty’s voice: insistent, relentlessly questioning, and dedicated to the proposition that we can’t afford to let our democracy fail.”―Chris Lehmann, New Republic
About the Author
Richard Rorty (1931–2007) authored several landmark books and essay collections, including Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; Consequences of Pragmatism; Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity; and Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. He taught at Wellesley College, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and Stanford University.

Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University and editor of Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself, a collection of interviews with Richard Rorty.

Robert B. Brandom is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. He delivered the John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford and the Woodbridge Lectures at Columbia University. Brandom is the author of many books, including Making It Explicit, Reason in Philosophy, and From Empiricism to Expressivism (all from Harvard).