PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL HOPE

A provocative figure in recent philosophical, literary and cultural debate, Richard Rorty has sustained an influential attack on the methods and temper of conventional "systematic" philosophy. Rorty has argued that one's understanding of truth and value is essentially, historically and culturally contingent, and so philosophical discussion should aim to an open and edifying debate, not a systematic and final presentation of timeless truths. The book includes his most influential work along withsome more polemical and less strictly philopophical essays.