Abstract

My aim in these remarks is to sketch a way of approaching the thought of Richard Rorty that I will call reading Rorty politically. I argue that reading Rorty politically is not only the most fruitful way to read Rorty, it is necessary to understand the full force of his challenge to philosophy. After sketching Rorty’s important early metaphilosophical work, I outline the fundamental shift from epistemology and metaphilosophy to the moral and political that drives the development of his thought, culminating in his notion of philosophy as cultural politics