Richard Rorty's Unfulfilled Humanism and the Public/Private Divide
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10434146 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Giuseppe Ballacci (0000-0003-3214-2110, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 79 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 427-450 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Review of Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0034670517000249 |
| OpenAlex | W2724797713 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 25 |
Rorty's separation between self-creation and political commitment is at the same time one of the pillars of his political theory and one of its most criticized elements. In this paper I offer a novel criticism of this separation, elaborating a comparison between him and the rhetorical-humanistic tradition of Cicero, Quintilian, the Italian Humanists, and Vico. If many have emphasized the deep humanism of Rorty's thought, still unnoticed is the fact that his version of humanism contradicts a basic tenet of that tradition: the idea that the mastery of communicative skills is key to the development of the person both as individual and citizen. As I will show, Rorty's conclusion about the necessity to neatly separate the two realms is in contradiction not only with that tradition but also with the general scope of his own project and the very humanistic picture he himself draws of culture, society, and the intellectuals
Art · Cicero · Contradiction · Criticism · Epistemology · Humanism · Literature · Political science · Politics · Rhetorical question · Scope (computer science · Sociology · Computer Science · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications
Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes
The new constellation
The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen
II. On the Encyclopedic Structure of the New Science
Rethinking nihilism
The Unbearable Seriousness of Irony
Rorty and His Critics
Between past and future
Consequences of pragmatism
Strong Poets and Utopia
Cicero on decorum and the morality of rhetoric
Taking Other Human Beings Seriously
Richard Rorty's Deep Humanism
Deconstruction and Pragmatism
Private Irony and Public Decency
| Highly cited | No |
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