Rorty, Religion, and Metaphysics

John Owens

doi:10.5771/9781498560399

Summary

Believing that humanity would be better off if it simply dropped its traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs, Richard Rorty proposes an alternative approach, drawn from the American pragmatist tradition, where things get their significance against a background of broad human interests, and knowledge is regarded as part of the active pursuit of a better world. Rorty, Religion, and Metaphysics argues that while Rorty’s case is clearly and robustly made, it is fundamentally challenged by the phenomenon of human recognition, the relationship that arises between people when they talk to one another. John Owens demonstrates that recognition, so central to human life, cannot be accommodated within Rorty’s proposals, given that it precisely attributes a reality to others that goes beyond anything a pragmatist framework can offer. It follows that there is more to human interaction than can be explained by Rorty’s pragmatism.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2019
ISBN-Print: 978-1-4985-6038-2
ISBN-Online: 978-1-4985-6039-9
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 222
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 12
1. 1. The Silence of the World No access
  2. Causal Relations and Relations of Justification No access
  3. Debates with Charles Taylor No access
  4. Debates with John Searle No access
  5. Debates with Hilary Putnam No access
  6. Further Controversies No access
  7. An Alternative Metaphysics? No access
  8. Notes No access
2. 1. “Things Made” and “Things Found” No access
  2. The Contemplative Ideal No access
  3. MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism No access
  4. Aristotelian Realism and Pragmatism No access
  5. Notes No access
3. 1. A Broad Notion of Pragmatism No access
  2. The Notion of “Coping” No access
  3. Rorty’s Modified Pragmatism No access
  4. An Alternative Metaphysics? No access
  5. Pragmatism as a Recommendation No access
  6. A Pragmatist Vocabulary No access
  7. Brandom on Existence No access
  8. Notes No access
1. 1. Defending Pragmatist Religion No access
  2. The Costs of Pragmatist Religion No access
  3. The Notion of Cultural Politics No access
  4. Pragmatist Religion in Public Life No access
  5. Religion and Democracy No access
  6. Dewey’s “A Common Faith” No access
  7. Notes No access
2. 1. Pragmatism as Negative Theology No access
  2. Pragmatist Religion and “Weak” Thought No access
  3. Pragmatist Religion as a Personal Choice No access
  4. Affirmative Pragmatist Religion No access
  5. Robbins’ Development of Dewey No access
  6. Notes No access
1. 1. Pragmatic Social Adjustment No access
  2. The Question of Altruism No access
  3. The Question of Ethnocentrism No access
  4. The Case of the Feral Child No access
  5. Pragmatism and Consequentialism No access
  6. Notes No access
2. 1. Rorty’s Questionable “We” No access
  2. Recognition and Language No access
  3. The Question of Recognition No access
  4. A Pragmatist Spirituality? No access
  5. The “Other” in Nabokov’s Lolita No access
  6. Notes No access
Conclusion No access Pages 191 - 210
Bibliography No access Pages 211 - 216
Index No access Pages 217 - 220
About the Author No access Pages 221 - 222