Anti-Authoritarianism as a Liberal Culture: Richard Rorty Between Communitarian and Liberal Criticism

Contemporary Pragmatism 19 (3):170-194 (2022)
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Abstract

In recent years, Rorty’s anti-authoritarianism has been repeatedly associated with the loss of truth and a post-factual age. At the same time, Rorty is presented as a strict opponent of such positions. How is it that the same thinker who is held responsible for a postmodern decline is also to be understood as the most severe critic? To answer this question, this paper reconstructs Rorty’s anti-authoritarianism as a practice of solidarity by referring to his theory of recognition and virtue of contingency. Subsequently, it can be shown why the accusations of post-facticity and ethnocentrism fall short. On the contrary, because his theory combines different political archetypes, the paper presents Rorty’s description of anti-authoritarianism as a social paradigm of contemporary societies.

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References found in this work

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.Richard Rorty - 1989 - The Personalist Forum 5 (2):149-152.
Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity.Charles Taylor - 1994 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1):187-190.
The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.J. F. Lyotard - 1985 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63:520.
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.Richard Rorty - 1979 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 86 (4):562-563.
Postmodernist Bourgeois liberalism.Richard Rorty - 1983 - Journal of Philosophy 80 (10):583-589.

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