Richard Rorty’s Political Pragmatism between Liberal Utopias and Ironism

This article demonstrates aspects of the consolidation of neo–pragmatism's relationship with contemporary political thought, through an examination of Philosopher Richard Rorty's work. Rorty's philosophical approaches are governed by their symbiosis with democratic liberalism, by prioritizing democracy over philosophy; hope over knowledge; and solidarity over objectivity. This is based on a view of US political practice as an experience in time and history, without an attempt to ground it theoretically. The article attempts to answer two questions: Did Rorty's critical views affect other political theories? Does the intellect in Rorty's works have any pragmatic impact on reality, as his mentor, John Dewey, had? The article highlights the difficulty of finding connections between Rorty's and Dewey's ideas. Therefore, Rorty's views are better separated from those of his pragmatic predecessors, including Dewey and his contemporaries. The distance between Rorty's views and the US political reality along with Rorty's complex stance, torn between the advocacy of the values of liberalism: freedom, moral identity, and self–creation and, on the other hand, the progressive belief in social justice, solidarity and progress. Therefore, the philosophical project undertaken by Rorty is a quest for a utopia that he calls 'postmodern bourgeois liberalism', whose hero is an ironic intellectual and whose ultimate goal is the reduction of pain and cruelty in an aesthetic and poetic post–philosophical culture.

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This article demonstrates aspects of the consolidation of neo–pragmatism's relationship with contemporary political thought, through an examination of Philosopher Richard Rorty's work. Rorty's philosophical approaches are governed by their symbiosis with democratic liberalism, by prioritizing democracy over philosophy; hope over knowledge; and solidarity over objectivity. This is based on a view of US political practice as an experience in time and history, without an attempt to ground it theoretically. The article attempts to answer two questions: Did Rorty's critical views affect other political theories? Does the intellect in Rorty's works have any pragmatic impact on reality, as his mentor, John Dewey, had? The article highlights the difficulty of finding connections between Rorty's and Dewey's ideas. Therefore, Rorty's views are better separated from those of his pragmatic predecessors, including Dewey and his contemporaries. The distance between Rorty's views and the US political reality along with Rorty's complex stance, torn between the advocacy of the values of liberalism: freedom, moral identity, and self–creation and, on the other hand, the progressive belief in social justice, solidarity and progress. Therefore, the philosophical project undertaken by Rorty is a quest for a utopia that he calls 'postmodern bourgeois liberalism', whose hero is an ironic intellectual and whose ultimate goal is the reduction of pain and cruelty in an aesthetic and poetic post–philosophical culture.

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