Volume 30, Number 7 · April 28, 1983
Auto-da-Fé
By Bernard Williams
Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays 1972-1980)
by Richard Rorty
University of Minnesota Press, 237 pp., $29.50; $11.95 (paper)
Richard Rorty's recent book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature[*] is an original and sustained attack on the idea that it can be the aim of philosophy, or even of science, to represent the world accurately. Neither activity can reveal, as he sometimes puts it, a vocabulary in which the world demands to be described. The book is remarkable for its learning and for its powers of critical exposition. At the same time, some of it is slapdash, and its program for what philosophy should do when robbed of its traditional conceptions of truth and objectivity is, to put it mildly, schematic.
Review, 5315 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |