Most philosophy since Plato has aimed at true knowledge, penetrating beneath appearances to an underlying reality. To this tradition, argues Richard Rorty, pragmatism opposes a philosophy of hope.

One of the most provocative figures in recent philosophical and wider literary and cultural debate, Richard Rorty brings together in this collection a wide range of philosophical, political and cultural writings, many published in book form for the first time. He explains in a fascinating memoir how he began to move away from Plato towards James and Dewey, culminating in his own version of pragmatism. What matters, he suggests, is not whether our ideas correspond to some fundamental reality but whether they help us carry out practical tasks and create a fairer and more democratic society. In an introduction called `Relativism` and a (previously unpublished) afterword on the unfortunate popularity of the term `postmodern`, Rorty responds to charges that he is a `postmodern relativist`.

In these eloquent essays, articles and lectures, all aimed at a wide audience, Rorty gives a stimulating summary of his central philosophical beliefs and how they relate to his political hopes; he also offers some challenging insights into contemporary America, justice, education and love. The result is an superb introduction to one of today`s leading thinkers.

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Relativism: Finding and Making


I. Autobiographical
1. Trotsy and the Wild Orchids


II. Hope in Place of Knowledge: A Version of Pragmatism
2. Truth without Correspondence to Reality
3. A World without Substances or Essences
4. Ethics without Principles


III. Some Applications of Pragmatism
5. The Banality of Pragmatism and the Poetry of Justice
6. Pragmatism and Law: A Response to David Luban
7. Education as Socialization and as Individuation
8. The Humanistic Intellectual: Eleven Theses
9. The Pragmatist`s Progress: Umberto Eco on Interpretation
10. Religious Fatih, Intellectual Responsibility and Romance
11. Religion as Conversation-stopper
12. Thomas Kuhn, Rocks, and the Laws of Physics
13. On Heidegger`s Nazism


IV. Politics
14. Failed Prophecies, Glorious Hopes
15. A Spectre is Haunting the Intellectuals: Derrida on Marx
16. Love and Money
17. Globalization, the Politics of Identity and Social Hope


V. Contemporary America
18. Looking Backwards from the Year 2096
19. The Unpatriotic Academy
20. Back to Class Politics


Afterword: Pragmatism, Pluralism and Postmodernism
Index