Consequences of Pragmatism

Rorty seeks to tie philosophy’s past to its future by connecting what he sees as the positive (and neglected) contributions of the American pragmatic philosophers to contemporary European developments. What emerges from his explorations is a revivified version of pragmatism that offers new hope for the future of philosophy.“Rorty’s dazzling tour through the history of modern philosophy, and his critical account of its present state (the best general introduction in print), is actually an argument that what we consider perennial problems—mind and body, consciousness and objects, the foundations of knowledge, the fact/value distinction—are merely the dead-ends this picture leads us into.