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)
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)
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)
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)
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 (Part Two)
Continuing on Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Ch. 3–4.
Rorty claims that Kantians improperly read Kantian concerns (the connection between the senses and reason) back into the ancients. He thought that Sellars’s “epistemological behaviorism” was right on, and despite what you may have heard does not give a bad rep to animals and babies. Plus, psychological nominalism! Woo hoo!
End song: “The Ghosts Are Alright” from The Bye-Bye Blackbirds; check out the interview on Nakedly Examined Music #32.
Episode 155: Richard Rorty Against Epistemology (Part One)
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.
Episode 155: Richard Rorty Against Epistemology (Citizen Edition)
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.
Get a PEL Wall Calendar before they’re gone at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store!
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
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 (Part Two)
Continuing on Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Part I: “Our Glassy Essence.” Rorty relates the immateriality of mind to the ontology of universals. Plus, the return of the semantic/syntactic distinction! With guest Stephen Metcalf.
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 (Part One)
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.
Episode 153: Richard Rorty: There Is No Mind-Body Problem (Citizen Edition)
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’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
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
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
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!