Rorty on Science and Politics

Human Affairs ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kremer
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Main Motive ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Present World

Rorty on Science and PoliticsIn my paper I will prove my overall thesis that Rorty consistently enforces his politically saturated liberal ironic standpoint in the fields of science and politics from his "Contingency" book (1989). As a neopragmatist thinker he gives priority to politics in the sense of a liberal democracy over everything else. Even philosophy as "cultural politics" serves this purpose. He did not want to create a detailed political philosophy, but the main motive of his philosophy is political. He is charged with complacency, relativism and misinterpreting traditional pragmatism, but I show that this is mistaken. Rorty offers "only" a non-systematic, but logical and permanently developed interpretation of our present world on the basis of knowledge he appropriated and improved by building bridges between pragmatism, analytic and continental philosophy. I will analyze briefly in the first part his neo-pragmatist thoughts on science in connection with his political views. In the second part I will interpret Rorty as a liberal ironist who regards almost everything as contingent, except democracy. He outlines a liberal utopia that means first of all a just society in a Rawlsian sense, but he also develops his idea further in a neo-pragmatic way.

scholarly journals Poets/Trump/Philosophers: Reflections on Richard Rorty’s Liberalism, Ten Years after His Death

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Baruchello
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Us ◽  
Key Terms

Starting with a prescient 1998 quote on the impending decline of US liberal democracy into right-wing, strong-man-based demagogy, this paper outlines Richard Rorty’s political philosophy, which I believe can help us understand perplexing political trends in today’s political reality well beyond the US alone. Specifically, I tackle three key-terms encapsulating the thrust of Rorty’s political philosophy, i.e. “liberalism of fear”, “bourgeois” and “postmodernism”. Also, I address a contraposition that explains how Rorty would approach and attempt to defend liberal democracy from contemporary right-wing, strong-man-based degenerations, namely the priority of “poetry” over “philosophy”. Essentially, if one wishes to win in the political arena, she must be armed with the most effective rhetorical weaponry, however good, solid and well-argued her political views may be. Finally, some remarks are offered on the role that “philosophy” can still play within the same arena.

John Rawls and the Task of Political Philosophy

2009 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Weithman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Just Society

AbstractIn this article, I sketch a reading of Rawls's work that ties together many of the features that distinguish it from the work of other authors commemorated in this issue. On this reading, the two world wars and the Holocaust pressed the question of whether a just liberal democracy is possible. Seeking to defend reasonable faith in that possibility, Rawls developed a theory of justice for an ideally just liberal democracy. He argued that such a society is a “real possibility” because, given reasonable psychological assumptions, the basic institutions of a just society would engender the moral support of its citizens. In doing so, Rawls challenged alternative accounts of moral motivation that enjoyed some currency in the analytic philosophy of the time. The interpretation of Rawls's work defended here therefore locates him in the philosophical as well as the political history of the twentieth century.

The Tyranny of the Ideal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Gaus
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Open Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
Just Society ◽  
The Ideal

This book lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. It shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. The book argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, the book points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. The book defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, this book rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.

Restoring Catharine Macaulay’s Enlightenment Republicanism?

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Karen Green ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Commons

Can Catharine Macaulay’s enlightenment democratic republicanism be justified from the point of view of contemporary naturalism? Naturalist accounts of political authority tend to be realist and pessimistic, foreclosing the possibility of enlightenment. Macaulay’s utopian political philosophy relies on belief in a good God, whose existence underpins the possibility of moral and political progress. This paper attempts a restoration of her optimistic utopianism in a reconciliation, grounded in a revision of natural law, of naturalist and utopian attitudes to political theory. It is proposed that the coevolution of language, moral law, and conscience (the disposition to judge one’s own actions in the light of moral principles) can be explained as solutions to the kinds of tragedy of the commons situations facing our ancestors. Moral dispositions evolved, but, in the light of its function, law is subject to rational critique. Liberal democracy plausibly offers the best prospect for developing rationally justifiable law.

Hobbes’s Political-Philosophical Project

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-36
Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Human Life ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Philosophical Project

The appropriate theory to guide interpretations of Hobbes’s philosophy is both intentionalist and historical. Intentionalism is the search for what he intended to communicate. What he meant to communicate was conditioned by his historical circumstances. Conceiving of his political philosophy as a science on the model of geometry, Hobbes identified its two methods and its goal. The first method consists of beginning with definitional causes and deducing their effects; the second consists of beginning with effects and hypothesizing possible causes. The goal of philosophy is to improve the quality of human life. As for his subversion, he wanted to subvert the mistaken religio-political views that led to the English Civil War, the belief in limited sovereignty, the practice of superstitions, and the pretension that religion should be independent of the sovereign.

Postmodernism and political philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen K. White
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Liberal Democracy

Just as there is much disagreement over both what is meant by ‘postmodernism’ and which thinkers fall under this rubric, so also is there disagreement over its implications for political philosophy. The claim of postmodernists that raises the most significant issues is that Western modernity’s fundamental moral and political concepts function in such a way as to marginalize, denigrate and discipline ‘others’; that is, categories of people who in some way are found not to measure up to prevailing criteria of rationality, normality and responsibility, and so on. The West’s generally self-congratulatory attitude towards liberal democracy and its traditions obscures this dynamic. Postmodernism aims to disrupt this attitude, and its proponents typically see their efforts as crucial to a radicalization of democracy.

Science and Politics in the U.S.S.R.: The Genetics Debate

1951 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela N. Wrinch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
World Science ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science And Politics

In the Soviet Union, views on all intellectual subjects—the social sciences, philosophy, and even the biological and physical sciences—are frequently regarded as expressions of political views. As a consequence, all intellectual fields are considered appropriate arenas for the struggle against “reaction” and other supposed manifestations of “bourgeois” ideology. To consider science a-political and supra-national, or to speak approvingly of “world science” or “world culture,” is to subscribe to the “bourgeois” ideology of “cosmopolitism”—an ideology which is assumed by virtue of its universalist emphasis to deprecate the contributions to culture made by individual nations.

A Man of Contention: Martin Plessner (1900–1973) and His Encounters with the Orient

Naharaim ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Levy
Keyword(s):  
Personal Life ◽  
Professional Work ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
Spatial Shift ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Oriental Studies

AbstractThe case of German-Jewish orientalist Martin Meir Plessner (1900–1973) presents an opportunity to explore the transplant of Oriental Studies from Germany to Palestine/Israel in the wake of post-Saidian historiography of German Orientalism. Studying and teaching in Germany, the young Plessner’s encounter with the Orient, Arabs and Arabic was mainly a textual one. Following the Nazi rise to power in 1933, he immigrated to Palestine, transforming detached oriental scholarship into a physical encounter at the heart of the emerging Arab-Jewish conflict, on which Plessner held firm dovish-leftist views. This article examines how this spatial shift influenced Plessner’s personal political views; his scholarly and professional work; and above all, the link between the two. Science and politics, this article claims, continued to exist as two unchanging separate spheres for Plessner. Nevertheless, life in the Orient rendered collisions between the two worlds unavoidable, with ramifications on Plessner’s career and personal life. His refusal to let political considerations penetrate the professional sphere may be seen as an expression of his unwavering devotion to the German

scholarly journals Istota kulturoznawstwa

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1(3)) ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Jarosław Płuciennik
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
Present World

THE ESSENCE OF CULTURAL STUDIESThe article presents Polish cultural studies as a scientific discipline and as a field of study. The most important issues used to characterise the essence of cultural studies are as follows: its relation to political science and politics as such; interdisciplinarity, digitisation and globalisation, humanities, humanism and anti-humanism. Polish cultural studies, which is dynamically developing, is variously defined. Therefore, it is difficult to clarify the essence of a field and area which is so hybrid and fluid. However, in the present world, it is worth remembering the principle importance of the humanities and their mission. Cultural studies is one of the key areas where the mission of the humanities is realised.

scholarly journals I. Kant’s conservative liberalism from the standpoint of E. Burke’s liberal conservatism

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 50-64
Author(s):  
Andrey S. Zilber ◽  
◽  
Sergey V. Lugovoy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Reform Policy ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Modern Conservatism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Universal Law ◽  
The French Revolution

I. Kant and E. Burke both presented and developed their political views in 1790s in the common context of the French Revolution. We compare their views in two aspects. First, we consider the question whether Kant in his writings has implicitly referred to Burke’s pamphlet “Reflections on the Revolution in France”. In our view, it remains unproven and doubtful that Kant had read this book (in German translation). Second, we consider Kant’s political views as liberal and Burke’s ones as conservative. We rely on those scholars who distinguish liberalism and conservatism building on the anthropological foundations of political philosophy. Some scholars define Kant’s moderate liberalism as a variation of conservatism, although Kant explicitly criticizes a number of ultra-conser­vative views. Burke is widely known as the founder of modern conservatism but also has substantial liberal points in his views. Both philosophers sought to find balance between stability and improvement of a political order, but they propose completely different cri­teria for a reform policy. For Kant, all reforms should aim to realize the abstract ideal of universal law. Alongside, Kant recommends only moderate and prudent reforms in or­der to preserve the freedom and safety of states as political organisms. Burke views re­forms as a means of reconciling traditions and customs with changing circumstances. Our conclusion is that Burke cannot be named among the prototypes of those ultra-con­servatives whom Kant describes as the most implacable opponents of his views. We sup­port the assessment of Kant’s position as conservative liberalism and Burke's position as liberal conservatism. This perspective reveals a certain similarity of their views despite their fundamental differences.

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