May 13, 2003
This lecture series by Richard Rorty in Oxford looks interesting in light of the current diifficulties facing the humanities. The link is courtesy of Lawrence Solum's Legal Theory Blog/
What sort of role can/should philosophy play in our culture? My guess is that Rorty will say something along the lines of it being a rhetorical/literary role; something that will enable philosophy to step outside the academy and find a non-academic life of its own in civil society. (Does anyone know if these lecture series go online?) Rorty opens up a space to think differently about the way philosophy can be practiced.
Maybe the only future for a discipline like philosophy lies in its capacity for self-criticism, and consequently, for reinventing itself creatively. It is a romantic and Deleuzean conception of philosophy. And this is how it reinvents itself creatively: philosophy creates new concepts.
Where does that leave philosophy as rhetoric; as a public reason? Do we have the development of different kinds or forms of philosophy that draw on all sorts of texts? Do we insist on the differences and the diverse styles and ways of writing philosophy in postmodernity? Insist on the repeating the different ways of forming questions?
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I don't know about online, but I imagine they'd probably be published in book form at some point.