Abstract
Richard Rorty reimagined the traditional liberal private-public divide to face contingency. This chapter explains Rorty’s understanding of it as a crucial component of any just and stable political order in the post-secular West. Rorty’s continued defense of the liberal private-public divide has been criticized from the political right and left. His foundation-neutral model is, however, equipped (or can easily be modified) to answer these objections. And this is good news, because Rorty has shown us that the leading post-secular alternatives (e.g., identity politics) threaten freedom, risk humiliation, and undermine solidarity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See, e.g., Anderson 2017b, p. 367. This chapter looks to update and expand upon arguments first presented in this article.
- 2.
Despite this risk, pace Rorty, Fraser is nevertheless convinced that the politics of recognition should not be abandoned, only modified. William Curtis, however, questions whether Fraser’s revised version of identity politics (her “status model” of recognition politics) is so subdued that it differs little from Rorty’s model (see Curtis 2015, pp. 152–155).
References
Anderson, John P. 2017a. Law beyond God and Kant: a pragmatist path. Journal of Law and Religion 32: 98–122.
Anderson, John P. 2017b. Paintbrushes and crowbars: Richard Rorty and the new public-private divide. Contemporary Pragmatism 14(3): 366–386.
Brandom, Robert B. 1994. Making it explicit: Reasoning, representing, & discursive commitment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Curtis, William. 2015. Defending Rorty: Pragmatism and liberal virtue. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dreyfus, Hubert, and Sean Dorrance Kelly. 2011. All things shining. New York: Free Press.
Erez, Lior. 2013. Reconsidering Richard Rorty’s private-public distinction. Humanities 2: 193–208.
Fraser, Nancy. 2000a. Rethinking recognition. New Left Review 3: 107–120.
Fraser, Nancy. 2000b. Why overcoming prejudice is not enough: A rejoinder to Richard Rorty. Critical Horizons 1: 21–28.
Rawls, John. 2005. Political liberalism, Extended ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1998. Achieving our country: Leftist thought in twentieth-century America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1999. The unpatriotic academy. In Philosophy and social hope, 252–254. New York: Penguin.
Rorty, Richard. 2000. Is ‘cultural recognition’ a useful concept for Leftist politics? Critical Horizons 1: 7–20.
Rorty, Richard. 2003. Religion in the public square: a reconsideration. Journal of Religious Ethics 31: 141–149.
Rorty, Richard. 2010. Reply to Jeffrey Stout. In The philosophy of Richard Rorty, eds. Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin, 546–549. Chicago: Open Court.
Rorty, Richard, Derek Nystrom, and Kent Pucket. 1998. Against bosses, against oligarchies: a conversation with Richard Rorty. Charlottesville: Prickly Pear Pamphlets.
Stout, Jeffrey. 2010. Rorty on religious politics. In The philosophy of Richard Rorty, eds. Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin, 523–545. Chicago: Open Court.
Talisse, Robert. 2004. Democracy after liberalism: pragmatism and deliberative politics. New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. The politics of recognition. In Multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition, ed. Amy Gutman, 25–74. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 2009. Why we should reject what liberalism tells us about speaking and acting for religious reasons. In Religion and contemporary liberalism, ed. Paul J. Weithman, 162–181. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press.
Recommended Literature for Further Reading
Anderson, John P. 2003. Patriotic liberalism. Law and Philosophy 22: 577–595.
Curtis, William. 2015. Defending Rorty: Pragmatism and liberal virtue. New York: Cambridge University Press. In addition to offering a novel reading of Rorty as a “virtue liberal,” chapters 3 and 5 of this book offer excellent discussion of Rorty’s private-public divide, as well as many of the challenges it must address.
Erez, Lior. 2013. Reconsidering Richard Rorty’s private-public distinction. Humanities 2: 193–208. The article offers an excellent summary of many of the critiques of Rorty’s private-public divide, as well as some promising solutions and reformulations.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Anderson, J.P. (2023). Achieving Rorty’s New Private-Public Divide. In: Müller, M. (eds) Handbuch Richard Rorty. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16253-5_51
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16253-5_51
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-16252-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-16253-5
eBook Packages: Social Science and Law (German Language)