Summary
Contents
Subject index
This comprehensive book provides an indispensable introduction to the most significant figures in contemporary social theory. Grounded strongly in the European tradition, the profiles include Michel Foucault, J[um]urgen Habermas, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, Martin Heidegger, Frederic Jameson, Richard Rorty, Nancy Chodorow, Anthony Giddens, Stuart Hall, Luce Irigaray and Donna Haraway. In guiding students through the key figures in an accessible and authoritative fashion, the book provides detailed accounts of the development of the work of major social theorists and charts the relationship between different traditions of social, cultural and political thought.
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Biographical Details and Theoretical Context
Richard Rorty was born in New York in 1931 and was the University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. Rorty is a controversial figure in (professional) philosophy, mainly because in works like The Linguistic Turn (1967) he has suggested that the entire Western philosophical tradition is on the defensive. Philosophy can no longer give an adequate account of the grounds upon which its view of unitary Truth could be confirmed, and hence it is likely that we have moved into a ‘postphilosophical’ world. The role of philosophy, he argues in The Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), is not to provide eternal foundations of Truth, but rather to be a voice alongside literature and art in the ...
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