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PREVIEWS-Eps 192-193 Allan Bloom & Liberal Education Follow-Ups

July 6, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Hear highlights from two supporter-only discussions: Allan Bloom on Nietzsche/Freud/etc. and Leo Strauss vs. Richard Rorty on liberal education and democracy.

Episode 193 Follow-Up: Strauss and Rorty on Liberal Education and Democracy (Citizens Only)

July 1, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Wes and Dylan discuss Leo Strauss’s “Mass Education and Democracy” (1967) and Richard Rorty’s “Democracy and Philosophy” (2007). Must philosophical training, or liberal education more generally, necessarily be restricted a privileged minority? PEL Citizens get to find out!

Episode 157: Richard Rorty on Politics for the Left (Part Two)

February 6, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 74 Comments

Continuing on Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th Century America (1998). We talk more about Rorty’s description of the conflict between the “reformist left” and the “cultural left.” Do political-comedy shows serve a a positive political purpose? Can an enlightened political viewpoint really be a mass movement at all? Is it better to pursue specific political campaigns or be part of a “movement?” Can Rorty’s diagnosis cure Seth’s malaise?

End song: “Wake Up, Sleepyhead,” by Jill Sobule, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #11.

Episode 157: Richard Rorty on Politics for the Left (Part One)

January 30, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 54 Comments

On Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th Century America (1998). What makes for efficacious progressivism? Rorty argues that reformism went out of fashion in the ’60s in favor of a “cultural left” that merely critiques and spectates, leaving a void that a right-wing demagogue could exploit to sweep in, claiming to be a champion of regular working people. Sound familiar?

Episode 157: Richard Rorty on Politics for the Left (Citizen Edition)

January 29, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 16 Comments

On Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th Century America (1998). What makes for efficacious progressivism? Rorty argues that reformism went out of fashion in the ’60s in favor of a “cultural left” that merely critiques and spectates, leaving a void that a right-wing demagogue could exploit to sweep in, claiming to be a champion of regular working people. Sound familiar?

End song: “America Back” by Jill Sobule, as featured in Nakedly Examined Music episode 18.

Episode 155: Richard Rorty Against Epistemology

January 2, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 14 Comments

On Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Part II: “Mirroring.”

Is a “theory of knowledge” possible? Rorty thinks that any such account will be a fruitless search for foundations. Knowledge is really just a matter of social agreement, and beliefs must be justified from other beliefs, not from any alleged relationship to reality.

End song: “The Ghosts Are Alright” from The Bye-Bye Blackbirds (Houses and Homes, 2008), as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #32.

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Episode 155: Richard Rorty Against Epistemology (Citizen Edition)

January 1, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Part II: “Mirroring.”

Is a “theory of knowledge” possible? Rorty thinks that any such account will be a fruitless search for foundations. Knowledge is really just a matter of social agreement, and beliefs must be justified from other beliefs, not from any alleged relationship to reality.

End song: “The Ghosts Are Alright” from The Bye-Bye Blackbirds (Houses and Homes, 2008), as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #32.

Richard Rorty and the Origins of Post-Truth

December 30, 2016 by Ana Sandoiu 34 Comments

Some have traced the origins of our “post-truth” era back to post-modernism and relativism. Could a look at Richard Rorty’s philosophy help us understand the “post-truth” phenomenon?

Episode 153: Richard Rorty: There Is No Mind-Body Problem

December 5, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer 11 Comments

On Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Part I: “Our Glassy Essence.”

“The mind” seems to be an unavoidable part of our basic conceptual vocabulary, but Rorty thinks not, and he wants to use the history of philosophy as a kind of therapy to show that many of our seemingly insoluble problems like the relation between mind and body are a result philosophical mistakes by Descartes, Locke, and Kant. With guest Stephen Metcalf of Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast.

End song: “Wall of Nothingness” from Sky Cries Mary from This Timeless Turning (1994). Listen to Mark’s interview with the band’s frontman, Roderick Romero, in Nakedly Examined Music ep. 9.

Episode 153: Richard Rorty: There Is No Mind-Body Problem (Citizen Edition)

December 4, 2016 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

On Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Part I: “Our Glassy Essence.”

“The mind” seems to be an unavoidable part of our basic conceptual vocabulary, but Rorty thinks not, and he wants to use the history of philosophy as a kind of therapy to show that many of our seemingly insoluble problems like the relation between mind and body are a result philosophical mistakes by Descartes, Locke, and Kant. With guest Stephen Metcalf of Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast.

End song: “Wall of Nothingness” from Sky Cries Mary from This Timeless Turning (1994). Listen to Mark’s interview with the band’s frontman, Roderick Romero, in Nakedly Examined Music ep. 9.

Not School Groups In December

December 4, 2014 by Daniel David Leave a Comment

December’s Not School Groups are reading Houellebecq and Grotowski. Maybe some Rorty, Proudhon, and Heidegger too. Come check them out, or start your own group!

Pirsig as an American Pragmatist

February 22, 2012 by David Buchanan 26 Comments

Philosophology is to philosophy as art history is to painting, Pirsig says. He uses that ridiculous-sounding word to draw a distinction between comparative analysis and original thought, between critical examination and creative production. In the tradition of Emerson’s famous 1837 speech, “The American Scholar”, Pirsig is calling for creativity and originality. This is not to say that the critics and Continue Reading …

Lawrence Cahoone on Rorty: Bridging Analytic and Continental Philosophy

April 12, 2011 by Tom McDonald 4 Comments

Richard Rorty: A friend of Dan Dennett (and his dreaded scientism : ). A neo-pragmatist. An analytic philosopher who began teaching around the mid-20th-century, he eventually turned against its scientism. Rorty felt that 20th-century analytic thought was going down the wrong track by taking up the same sort of epistemological foundationalist project as Descartes. Rorty saw the narrow sense-data and Continue Reading …

Later Pragmatists: Rorty on truth

July 22, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Maybe the most famous current pragmatist is Richard Rorty. He doesn’t like William James’s redefinition of the word “truth,” but he thinks that virtually everything James said about it could be better applied to the word “justification.” Plus, you get to see subtitles in (I think) Dutch!

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The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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