[O]ne of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.

In these lectures Rorty is singing the same old (and good) song about what we must give up. We must give up our striving to be in touch with the really real, and we must give up the illusion that by paring away the accidental features of our temporal lives we can finally be in touch with our true, authentic, selves. The lesson is so bracing and so difficult because it is delivered in the context of a tradition--philosophy since Plato--that had been dedicated to the doing of these impossible things for centuries. Where is Richard Rorty when we need him? He is here.

In 2004, the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty spent three days holding his Page-Barbour lectures entitled Philosophy as Poetry. Its beautiful title captures important aspects of Rorty’s philosophy.

These lectures connect Rorty’s distinctive and controversial views about the nature and history of philosophy to a number of topics and issues he has not previously considered. The vigor with which Rorty presents his account of philosophy, and the questions raised by how he connects it to topics like poetry and romanticism, are stimulating and fascinating.

These lectures are a fine introduction to Rorty’s work. It’s all here: the affirmation of poets over philosophers, the interest in conversation as against analysis, the theory of the "new vocabulary" as preferable to the (sought for) perfect representation of the world as it is, the attempt to meld Nietzsche with American pragmatism, the mistrust of analytical philosophy and the affirmation of the imaginative. There’s also the great sweep, the grand statements, and the provocative temperament. Rorty is one of the most eloquent, provoking and original mid to late-century American writers with an interest in philosophy.

Richard Rorty, in these wonderfully clear and compact lectures, gave the best summary of his views of the meaning of truth and the philosophy of language and mind. His defense of ‘narrative philosophy’ is enhanced by the vivid and memorable sketches of Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and other moderns who aimed as Rorty did to reconcile the work of reason and imagination.

In these lectures Rorty is singing the same old (and good) song about what we must give up. We must give up our striving to be in touch with the really real, and we must give up the illusion that by paring away the accidental features of our temporal lives we can finally be in touch with our true, authentic, selves. The lesson is so bracing and so difficult because it is delivered in the context of a tradition--philosophy since Plato--that had been dedicated to the doing of these impossible things for centuries. Where is Richard Rorty when we need him? He is here.

In 2004, the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty spent three days holding his Page-Barbour lectures entitled Philosophy as Poetry. Its beautiful title captures important aspects of Rorty’s philosophy.

Richard Rorty, in these wonderfully clear and compact lectures, gave the best summary of his views of the meaning of truth and the philosophy of language and mind. His defense of ‘narrative philosophy’ is enhanced by the vivid and memorable sketches of Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and other moderns who aimed as Rorty did to reconcile the work of reason and imagination.

[O]ne of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.

These lectures connect Rorty’s distinctive and controversial views about the nature and history of philosophy to a number of topics and issues he has not previously considered. The vigor with which Rorty presents his account of philosophy, and the questions raised by how he connects it to topics like poetry and romanticism, are stimulating and fascinating.

These lectures are a fine introduction to Rorty’s work. It’s all here: the affirmation of poets over philosophers, the interest in conversation as against analysis, the theory of the "new vocabulary" as preferable to the (sought for) perfect representation of the world as it is, the attempt to meld Nietzsche with American pragmatism, the mistrust of analytical philosophy and the affirmation of the imaginative. There’s also the great sweep, the grand statements, and the provocative temperament. Rorty is one of the most eloquent, provoking and original mid to late-century American writers with an interest in philosophy.