by Richard Rorty

Back in the days when I thought that I wanted to be a history professor, I had a job at the University of Virginia Law Library. One of my duties was to deliver various journals, newspapers, and periodicals to the professors' offices. To perform these duties, I had a passkey. I was drunk with power, I tell you, empowered to snatch 5-week-overdue reference books from professors' desks in semi-regular guerilla raids.

One of the UVA professors whose office I would visit was Richard Rorty (he now holds a position at Stanford). Unfortunately, I don't recall anything about him or his office, but his name stood out as I was vaguely aware that he was some philosophy hot-shot; I often wondered why he was on the law faculty as opposed to the philosophy department faculty.

Well, after reading this book of his essays, I've decided that it's likely that the philosophy department didn't want him anywhere near their students. Rorty is from the Pragmatist school and as such has spent the bulk of his lengthy and prodigious career arguing against the very premises upon which much of traditional philosophy is based. Rorty describes this as "a set of philosophical distinctions (appearance-reality, matter-mind, made-found, sensible-intellectual, etc.): what Dewey called 'a brood and nest of dualisms'."

The classic example of philosophical dualism is Plato's Allegory of the Cave. That is, our perception of the world around us is fuzzy at best, and we can only approximate the "essence" of the things we encounter. It should be every thinking person's goal to understand this hidden, deeper "reality" that exists in the world.

Rorty doesn't exactly say that these hidden truths do not exist. His point is that human beings are inherently incapable of comprehending the essence of things since our very existence depends on interactions with the world around us. Everything has some relation to something else; it is the only way we can make sense of things. So rather than say his opponents are wrong, he simply says that they are thinking in the wrong terms. In other words, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant are simply no longer relevant.

Instead of searching for a hidden truth, Rorty focusses on how to improve human interactions in order to create a better society. This of course is the source of the "pragmatist" label. This is also where the title of this book figures in. Rorty sees much to be hopeful for in the slow evolution of our societal values. This trend is not inevitable, though. He warns of potential obstacles to continued improvement and advocates for vigilance in maintaining human freedoms. This book was published in 1999 and, clearly, he now has some serious doubts about the direction our society is heading today.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book right now. It's the kind of book that, as I read, I find myself nodding in agreement. Rorty inhabits a space equally annoying to the political right and academic left that seems very comfortable to me. I'm secretly hoping to find within this book's pages an answer to the semi-troubling question Mike posed a while ago.