Is Richard Rorty a philosophical quietist? We consider different stances Rorty has assumed toward philosophy, arguing that on the face of it there is no conflict between them. However, Rorty's extensive writing on the topic of truth suggests a tension between Rorty's own recommendation of “benign neglect” of metaphysics and his actual philosophical practice. The topic of truth actually serves Rorty's philosophical purposes well, allowing him to change the direction of conversation from a concern with the nature of concepts to (...) a direct concern with human practice. The switch Rorty envisions is captured in the emblematic figure of the ironist, and we consider the ironist variety of quietism accordingly. For Rorty, we conclude, quietism is a contingent, conditional, strategic stance. Rorty's aim is to change the direction of a strand of philosophical conversation, not to free us from philosophical illusion or to bring philosophy to an end. (shrink)

The spirited part, thumos, plays a complex and often disputed role in Plato's account of the soul. The doctrine of the soul as specifically tri‐partitioned seems to depend on a substantial conception of thumos as fundamental and non‐reducible. Building on John Cooper's contribution in the discussion of the topic, this article aims to show that the role of thumos is characterised by an indispensable, deep‐rooted urge for dignified self‐preservation. The view is supported by Plato's own examples, and discussed with regards (...) to Myles Burnyeat's account of thumos as an essentially social phenomenon. The main claim is that in order to preserve the Platonist idea of thumos as fundamental one should discard Burnyeat's characterisation of thumos as unequivocally social, and instead advocate a view of thumos as concerned with a particular form of self‐preservation, which Cooper's account suggests, but does not fully elaborate. (shrink)

In this introduction to the fourth part of an ongoing symposium on quietism, Perl, the editor of the sponsoring journal Common Knowledge, remarks on a new question raised in this latest grouping of articles. Can there be such a thing as a “mezza voce quietism”? Can there be activist quietists or quietist activists or active teachers of quietism without self-contradiction? Perl takes Gandhi and “passive resistance” as his own test case, concluding that Gandhi was a teacher of quietism and that (...) satyagraha was a type of moral education directed at those (first the South Africans, then, more momentously, the British in India) whose spirits were imperiled by their self-confident certainty and whose manners were spoiled by their indelicacy and intrusiveness. (shrink)