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Cargando... Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-century America (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization) (1998 original; edición 1998)por Richard Rorty (Autor)
Información de la obraAchieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America por Richard Rorty (1998)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Whitman, Dewey and Democracy This book contains a series of lectures given by R. Rorty about leftist thought and political action in 21st America accompanied by two short texts in which he intended to clarify even more his thoughts on the matter. Rorty lamented the turn of many leftist academics and thinkers to what he denominated “cultural problems” or “victim studies”. Drawing in his interpretation of Whitman and Dewey, he pointed that in order to achieve relevance in the political landscape of contemporary America the left must embraces the ideas that compound its identity, rather than emphasizes its sins. Dewey and Whitman, he argues, “...wanted to put hope for a casteless and classless America in the place traditionally occupied by knowledge of the will of God. They wanted that utopian America to replace God as the unconditional object of desire. They wanted the struggle for social justice to be the country’s animating principle, the nation’s soul”. Rorty views this path as the one which answers the political aspirations of the majority of the american people. He urges the left to not disregard it and predicts a political outcome similar to that of Trump election, if it does. The book is worth reading. Rorty writes with clarity. His arguments are well grounded. At the end, the reader leaves with a better comprehension of the questions examined. It was Rorty's passing that prompted me to pick this up and it intrigued me enough to want to read more. Although I was a philosophy major (a long, long time ago), I hadn't been exposed to his work before and suspect it was an unforgivable lapse on the part of my professors at UConn that he was never required reading. Really, I don't recall pragmatism getting much of a shake and feel like there's a pretty big gap in my education as a result. If nothing else, this book could serve as an inoculation for the student who's read some of the Ancient Greeks, Utilitarianism through Mill, and Kant but is now getting out of Philosophy 101 and about to be exposed to the egghead nexus where Marxism meets literary criticism. Where Rorty is perhaps most engaging is in his discussion of agents vs. spectators and the appropriate balance between national pride and shame. He's passionate about the need to be proud of our progressive history and focusing on that pride on participation in our democratic process. He says, I'm paraphrasing here, "Look, you can acknowledge our nation's mistakes, some of the horrible and cruel, and either disengage from the system in protest, believing that it can't be fixed ... or you can be part of the solution." The pragmatic thing to do is not get hung up on how far away we are attaining a society that is just, but instead to try to make progress. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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Pueden los pecados cometidos por Estados Unidos en el pasado enturbiar sus esperanzas de futuro? Eso es lo que viene afirmando en los ultimos tiempos la izquierda norteamericana, mientras se dedica a lamentar las verguenzas de la nacion atrincherada en sus elegantes salones academicos. Con el fin de desafiar a esta B+generacion perdidaB; a que reconsidere el papel que podria desempenar dentro de la gran tradicion de la accion intelectual democratica b"de Walt Whitman a John Dewey, Richard Rorty rastrea los origenes de esta conciencia de culpa y descubre que en su esencia no hay otra cosa que el conflicto entre la vieja y la nueva izquierda surgido durante la guerra de Vietnam. Asi, describe como la paradojica victoria del movimiento antibelicista, que marco el comienzo de la presidencia de Nixon, empujo a una desencantada generacion de intelectuales hacia la busqueda de grandes teorias, lo cual la llevo a olvidarse de replantear el papel de las ideas en la vida cotidiana. En medio de este panorama, y en ausencia de una izquierda viva y dinamica, los intelectuales de la derecha han conseguido dominar la vida publica estadounidense. Hay que dar, pues, los primeros pasos para compensar los desequilibrios de la vida cultural del pais y exigir a la izquierda el compromiso civico y los estimulos necesarios para poder llegar a forjar un nuevo enfoque de los Estados Unidos de America. Richard Rorty es profesor de Literatura Comparada en la Universidad de Stanford y autor de libros tan influyentes como La filosofia y el espejo de la naturaleza, Consecuencias del pragmatismo, El giro linguistico, Contingencia, ironia y solidaridad, Objetividad, relativismo y verdad, Ensayos sobre Heidegger yotros pensadores contemporaneos, Pragmatismo y politica o La filosofia en la historia con J No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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The book is grounded in an analysis of the early-to-mid twentieth century's reformist left and its differences with the cultural left that blossomed in the American academy from the 60's through the 90's when the book was written. Based on his analysis, Rorty simply looks to the horizon and sees 2016 shimmering in the distance.
This is an account meant for a target audience on the left. If these are your leanings, you should read this book to get a clear idea of the options available for what the left might choose to do in the future and in the wake of 2016. If these are not your leanings, listen in and see what the opposition might be up to. ( )