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Item Koncepcja idealizacji a Marksa metoda naukowa. Studium metodologiczne(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1988) Kocikowski, AndrzejABSTRACT. The first part of the monograph is a polemic with Leszek Nowak’s claim that scientific method used by Marx in “Capital” was characterized by “idealization” (followed by concretization). An analysis of Marx’s “law of value” shows that “idealization assumptions” (Nowak) make Marx’s statement an “empty tautology”. In the second part the author presents his own view of the method used by Marx. The main hypothesis is that the assumptions made by Marx do not in fact make the reality under examination simple, but that they s e e m i n g ly simplify it, and therefore previous notions of “the method of abstraction and concretization” were incomplete.Item Le conventionnalisme dans la philosophie francaise moderne(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1989) Drozdowicz, ZbigniewItem Civil Loop and the Absorption of Elites(Rodopi, 1993) Brzechczyn, KrzysztofThe aim of this paper is to extend Leszek Nowak's theory of power by such categories as civil collapes, elite absorption and balanced revolution.Item Unsuccessful Conquest and Successful Subordination. A Contribution to the Theory of Intersocial Relations(Rodopi, 1993) Brzechczyn, KrzysztofThe aim of this paper is to extend the Leszek Nowak's theory of socialist empire by introducing weaker forms of intersocial relation, e. gr. unsuccessful attempt at conquest and subordination. In the light of concretization of the model of socialist empire some facts from history of Soviet Union (intervention of the Entente and World War II) and socialist countries (autonomy of Albania and Romania in socialist bloc) are explained.Item The State of the Teutonic Order as a Socialist Society(Rodopi, 1993) Brzechczyn, KrzysztofThis paper aims to analyze the social structure of the society in Teutonic state (1226-1525), which was distinct from structure of estate societies. The author put hypothesis that Teutonic Knight monopolised in their state political, economical and spiritual power. In the light of this thesis certain trends from history of the state of Teutonic Order are explained.Item Rorty i Lyotard. W labiryntach postmoderny(Poznań: Wyd. Naukowe IF UAM., 1995) Kwiek, MarekPytania o społeczną pozycję i kulturową funkcję filozofów, a szerzej intelektualistów, stanowią nić przewodnią całej książki. Pytania owe nie pojawiają się w wersjach tytułowych, a brzmią choćby tak: czy są oni autokreacyjni, czy zmierzają do osiągnięcia własnej autonomii? (na podstawie paraewolucji myśli Rorty’ego z ostatnich kilkunastu lat), czy są bardziej filozoficzni, czy bardziej literaccy, czy większe nadzieje pokładają w filozofii czy literaturze, zwłaszcza powieści? (odpowiedź Rorty’ego); w jakiej mierze są antyplatońscy - i czy oznacza to, iż są antyfilozoficzni?; czy odbierają postmodernistycznemu światu tragizm - czy pozbawiają tragizmu ludzki los? (pytania Antygony, pytania postmoderny, pytania Lyotarda); czy są Jedynie estetyczni”, co oznacza - apolityczni i „obok-etyczni”, czyli pytania o splot etyki, estetyki i polityki, jak również o bieguny sztuki i polityki w myśli Lyotarda; i wreszcie czy są - w oparciu o drugą tradycję krytyczną, również wywodzącą się od Kanta, jak chce Foucault - zainteresowani „ontologią aktualności”, „ontologią nas samych”, czyli ujmując to terminem Lyotarda, czy interesują ich „znaki historii” (można by przy miotnikowo zapytać również tak: czy są „heglowscy”, ale w bardzo specyficznym i wąskim rozumieniu tego słowa, „heglowscy” Heglem piszącym Fenomenologię w zgiełku bitwy jenajskiej, jak opisuje go Alexandre Kojève, Heglem - odkrywcą „uczasowienia racjonalności” i historyczności wszelkiej myśli. Wspólną nić prezentowanych tu esejów można by upleść również z opozycji prywatne/ publiczne, przewijającej się przez wszystkie teksty. We wszystkich z nich można wyczytać pytanie - jak i starać się znaleźć prowizoryczną odpowiedź - o to, co ma dzisiaj robić intelektualista (filozof), o to, kim ma być. Jest to metakrytyczne pytanie o swoje własne dzieło, o swoją pracę, są to poszukiwania, w co ją wpisać, jak ją umieścić w kontekście kulturowym. Bo przecież poza tym, że można być czytanym albo nie, można być jeszcze użytecznym lub nie (użytecznym dzisiaj lub w przyszłości), można budować siebie bądź spajać społeczność, kreować swoje życie poprzez swoje dzieło bądź poprzez dzieło dawać niezobowiązujący przykład innym -jako wzór kreacji albo jako algorytm zmian otaczającego świata. Wprowadzenie: intelektualista, moralista, esteta; I. WOKÓŁ FILOZOFOWANIA RICHARDA RORTY’EGO Richard Rorty jako filozof rekontekstualizacji; Rorty a autokreacja; Dlaczego neopragmatyzm kocha literaturę, czyli o wyższości „mądrości powieści” nad „mądrością filozofii”; Rozważania o antyplatonizmie myśli Rorty’ego II. WOKÓŁ FILOZOFOWANIA JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARDA O zatargu tragicznym (dylematy Antygony - dylematy postmoderny; Lyotardowskiej wzniosłości wątki estetyczne, etyczne i polityczne; Lyotard. Między sztuką a polityką; „Znak historii” (Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault. Bibliografia.Item The Olmecs – people that used to worship handicapped(Instytut Psychologii UAM, 1995) Pankalla, AndrzejItem Rorty and literature, or about the priority of the "wisdom of the novel" to the "wisdom of philosophy"(1996) Kwiek, MarekRichard Rorty’s approach to fiction results from its consistently - to use here his own opposition - "solidarity-related" account; the "other side", literary self-creation, remains programmatically and intentionally undiscussed with much seriousness. One can just get the impression that literature, and the novel in particular, has been burdened with heaviness of responsibility... Does in Rorty’s reflections the novel appear as a source of multifarious metaphors, of the whole worlds born out of the writer’s imagination? Is there in it another dimension of the reality in which mundane obligations no longer bind the human being and where one can give rein to usually hidden desires and passions? The answer is in the negative. The world of fiction of which Richard Rorty writes is a pragmaticized one - and fiction itself is supposed first to build, and then to defend a democratic, liberal order as one of utopias feeding that order. On the other extreme, let us hasten to add, there is philosophy with its right to choose self-creation (the right given so willingly to these fragments of Derrida of which the most famous are perhaps the telecommunicational phantasies from The Post Card or quasi-polemics from Limited Inc.). The situation as outlined by Rorty might be described in the following manner: the writer has to be responsible (similar - although with a different ideal to - Sartre’s conception of littérature engagée), the philosopher may indulge in certain irresponsibility - or rather certain irrelevance with respect to social problems. It is as if "poets" are returned back to polis after more than twenty five centuries and made to think about the state and laws, relieving at the same time at least some philosophers from the respectful Platonic duty of "enlightening the darkness" of the world. In today’s intellectual climate it is probably easier to accept a new role for philosophers than to accept putting part of the burden of responsibility for the success of a contingent, like it or not, experiment of liberal democracies on the writer’s shoulders. Rorty thus seems to me to be making both one step forward and two steps backwards, as his pragmatism does not allow for leaving society at the mercy of spiritless technocrats, social engineers of the future, when poets and philosophers no longrr have much to say. (The opposite direction is taken by Jacques Derrida. He accords this "strange institution called literature", as he writes, the right of tout dire, of saying everything, the power of breaking away from existing rules and conventions, of questioning and dislocating them.Item Rorty, Bauman, contingency, and solidarity(Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, 1996) Kwiek, MarekThe philosophical excursus presented here differs from all the others. While in the majority of them we presented Rorty’s polemics and discussions with other philosophers - according to the view that Rorty’s philosophy is being coined to a large extent in confrontations with them rather than it is written in isolation, while in one of them we present in an expanded version the picture of what Rorty criticizes (namely we include the Lyotardian concept of the "différend" in the context of the Rortyan inacceptance of it), here we are trying once again to reverse perspectives. We want to show Zygmunt Bauman’s account of the intellectual and the philosopher in the context of Rorty’s account of the role and tasks of the philosopher today presented throughout the book. The point of connection between the two thinkers will be mild criticism of Rorty presented in numerous places by Bauman. Rorty, as far as I know, never responded to it therefore so far the exchange between them is one-sided. But the way of seeing culture,philosophy, modernity and postmodernity as well as intellectuals is so convergent in the two thinkers that I think it is useful to present Bauman’s account of them. This, I hope, will throw additional, although not direct, light to European connections of neopragmatism, and although Rorty does not participate in discussions with Bauman, the closeness of their standpoints produces extremely interesting tensions between them.Item Hegel’s presence in Rorty(1996) Kwiek, MarekHegel is a philosophical giant that appears in all Rorty’s books, his specter hovers over the Rortyan conception of philosophy and his attitude towards the history of philosophy. But Rorty is interested only in one side of Hegel’s philosophy, namely the Hegel from Phenomenology of Spirit rather than the older Hegel - the creator of the system. The "young Hegel" is one of the greatest Rorty’s heroes (if we think of his philosophical figures in term of good and bad guys, heroes and villains). Rorty never devoted an article to him, nor did he write about him more than a page or two in one place. He never wrote about him in the way a historian of philosophy writes about his "subject" - in a detailed, strict, severe and dull manner. In a great narrative about the history of philosophy written over the years by Rorty, Hegel appears as a turning point in European philosophical tradition: it is he who breaks the "Plato-Kant canon”, who begins the "tradition of ironist philosophy", as Rorty labels it, continued by Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. He is the founder of such kind of philosophy - called also by Rorty a "literary genre" or (cultural) "criticism" - in which philosophers define their achievements through the relation with their predecessors rather than with truth. He is for Rorty a paradigm of the ironist’s abilities to use the possibilities offered by redescriptions of the past. And finally it is he who in Rorty’s stories is opposed to Kant (and Plato) - in the history of philosophy Rorty always favors "Hegelians" as opposed to "Kantians" in his specific sense of both terms. He is for Rorty a paradigm of historicism, a model way in which one can abandon the ideal of philosophy as a search for ahistorical, atemporal and transcendental truths. Historicization of reason, "temporalization of rationality" - was "the single most important step in arriving at the pragmatist’s distrust of Philosophy", Rorty says about Hegel in his "Introduction" to Consequences of Pragmatism Hegel gave philosophy the sense of finitude, temporality, historicity of its problems, helped it to realize that vocabularies change in history, that they are temporal and transient. Rorty’s Hegel is a romantic conducting congenial reinterpretations of earlier interpretations, presenting redescriptions of redescriptions, telling stories about old stories in a new terminology; Hegel is a "poet" in Rorty’s wide sense of the term (that is, "one who makes things new”), a "strong philosopher" who is interested in dissolving old, inherited problems rather than in solving them.Item Philosophy and politics, or about a romantic and a pragmatist(Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, 1996) Kwiek, MarekWe would like to go on to the terrain which is perhaps the most difficult to catch and describe, which may lie at the origin of the most serious criticism, which, finally, requires one’s own choice - in a word (to paraphraze the young Habermas from a famous review of Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics), which requires thinking "with Rorty against Rorty". We will follow here the path of numerous texts, grouping and separating them depending on attempts of answers given over the years to some basic questions, and some basic tensions that are born. The question we want to discuss here pertains to the fundamental - both for Rorty and for his critics as well - issue of the relation between philosophy and politics which makes Rorty bashed from all sides, philosophical and political, radical, leftist, postmodern, feminist as well as neoconservative and rightist (whatever the above labels were to mean, what is significant is their opposition). Let us say in the most general terms: Rorty in his philosophical and political choices is an exceptional figure (for his attitude to the philosophy/politics relation, to the theory/practice distinction etc. etc. is exceptional). Philosophically, he is in accordance with contemporary French postmodern philosophy, with Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard - despite numerous more or less specific differences revealing themselves over the years, as well as changing over the years - therefore he is often referred to as "postmodernist".Item Philosophy of recontextualization, recontextualization of philosophy. General remarks(Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, 1996) Kwiek, MarekLet us begin our more detailed discussions with a rather general chapter that is an attempt to get close to Richard Rorty’s philosophical discourse on as broad a plane as possible and with a brief and introductory analysis of certain themes, questions and issues present in his recent books. Thus this will be a chapter not so much introducing to a wider context but rather introducing to Rorty’s thought itself. In the next chapters there will appear in the form of more detailed analyses, reconstructions, redescriptions and readings some questions incidentally and generally put here in this chapter. The first volume of Rorty’s Philosophical Papers (1991) is devoted, for the most part, to the philosophers from the analytic circle, whereas the second to the figures and questions at the heart of which lie the works of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida and Foucault. It causes some noticeable tension between the two volumes but the links between them are created by "pragmatism" (and "liberalism"), strongly stressed and still clarified by Rorty. The first volume is shadowed mainly by one philosopher - Donald Davidson. Whereas when Rorty was writing his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, the first and extremely influential book, he was strongly influenced, as he admits himself, by Wilfrid Sellars and W.v. O. Quine, during the next decade (in the eighties) it was Donald Davidson that impressed him most and affected his philosophizing to the greatest extent. "I have been writing - explains Rorty - more and more about Davidson - trying to clarify his views to myself, to defend them against actual and possible objections, and to extend them into areas which Davidson himself has not yet explored". Also in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity - the book which seems to use the knowledge and experience of a multitude of texts from the collection of Philosophical Papers (and to which Rorty refers the reader as to its exemplification and a more detailed description), and perhaps a crystallization of these articles - he sees Davidson as an absolutely crucial figure for his own considerations, especially those devoted to language, relations between language and reality, created truth rather than discovered one and so on. As is commonly known, Davidson is an antirepresentationalist and antiessentialist, he rejects the notion of language as some medium, as the third thing, intruding between the self and the reality. Knowledge, both to Rorty and to Davidson as well, is not a matter of getting reality right but rather a matter of "acquiring habits of action for copying with reality", as the former puts it.Item Introduction (Rorty's Elective Affinities)(Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, 1996) Kwiek, MarekThe present book is devoted to "European connections of Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism". The theme, chosen carefully and intentionally, is supposed to show the motivation behind the writing of the present work, as well as to show its intended extent. Let us consider briefly the first three parts of the theme, to enlighten a little our intentions. ''European'1 is perhaps the most important description for it was precisely this thread that was most important to me, being the only context seriously taken into account, as I assumed right from the start that I would not be writing about rather more widely unknown to me - and much less fascinating (even to Rorty, the hero of the story) from my own, traditional, Continental philosophical perspective - American analytic philosophy. So accordingly I have almost totally skipped "American" connections (to use the distinction I need here) of Rorty’s philosophy, that is to say, firstly, a years-long work within analytic philosophy, secondly struggles with it on its own grounds, and finally attempts to use classical American, mainly Deweyan, pragmatism for his own needs and numerous polemics associated with it- th e questions that are far away from my interests and that arise limited interest among reading and writing philosophical audience in Poland, and perhaps also among Continental philosophers. It did not seem possible to me to write a book on Rorty in his American connections for they are insufficiently known to me, demanding knowledge of both post-war American analytic philosophy as well as pragmatism of its father-founders. I could see, setting to work on Richard Rorty, that a book on his American connections (leaving aside the issue that it would not be a philosophical problem but rather, let us say, the one of writing a monograph) written by a Polish philosopher in Poland and then in the USA was not a stimulating intellectual challenge but rather a thankless working task.Item The picture of an ironist who is unwilling to be a liberal and a liberal who is unwilling to be an ironist (Foucault and Habermas)(1996) Kwiek, MarekConstructing the figure of the "liberal ironist" - the inhabitant of a liberal utopia sketched in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity - Rorty notes his differences with "an ironist who is unwilling to be a liberal" and with "a liberal who is unwilling to be an ironist", that is with Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas in his account. Both of them do not fit into his utopia, although for different reasons. Michel Foucault is not allowed to Rorty’s utopia because he lacks commitment in a specific, Rortyan sense of the "lack of hope", while Jürgen Habermas is committed and full of the social hope in question but he does not have a sense of contingency of his own vocabulary of moral reflection. Rorty’s hero of the future must be the bearer of both traits at the same time, it does not suffice to be merely an ironist or merely a liberal. If one took a look at the philosophy of recent decades, it would turn out, with a high degree of probability, that both aforementioned criteria could be met only by Rorty himself, for it is only he who claims that he can combine being an ironist and being a liberal. Rorty, having at his disposal two opposite sides of irony (serious/non-serious), for Habermas and Foucault uses its serious side (as opposed to Heidegger and Derrida, especially as far as the so-called "Heidegger affair" is concerned, to whom he applies its non-serious side). The relations with Habermas and Foucault are such that Rorty seems to radically distinguish himself both from Habermas (with a philosophical rather than political gesture) and from Foucault (with a political rather than philosophical gesture). Habermas turns out for him to be an admirer of liberal democracy devoted to attempts of its universal grounding, providing it with "philosophical foundations", while Foucault turns out for him to be an anarchist who is unwilling to accept the value of "we".Item The question of self-creation(Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, 1996) Kwiek, MarekI would like to take into consideration in this chapter the possibility of Richard Rorty's evolution of views in terms of - suggested by him - distinction between the private and the public as well as in terms of his dichotomous pair of "solidarity" and "self-creation". My efforts would aim at showing that Rorty as a commentator on other philosophers is more and more inclined to value the significance of a self-creational, developing one's "final vocabulary" way of philosophizing, while on the other hand - as a philosopher himself he has remained as far as the private sphere goes - in his own philosophizing - rather moderate and full of reserve. Thus I would like to trace two roles possible in a philosophical language game - to have a look at Rorty’s account of particular philosophers as heroes of the philosophical tradition and to have a look at Rorty himself in the role of a philosopher in a traditional sense of the term, that is to say, interested in the so-called "philosophical problems, "eternal, perennial problems of philosophy", generally - a language game of Philosophy with a capital "p” (to use the opposition between "post-Philosophical philosophy" and "Philosophy" from Consequences of Pragmatism). First, we would have to outline briefly the Rortyan sense of particular elements of the aforementioned dichotomies, explain a little the concepts from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity that interest us in this chapter. Let us begin by saying that Rorty - distinguishing between writers of self-creation (such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger or Nabokov) on the one hand and writers of solidarity (such as Marx, Mill, Habermas or Rawls) on the other - advises us not to attempt to make choices between the two kinds, not to oppose the two camps and rather, as he puts it, to "give them equal weigh and then use them for different purposes".Item Rorty and Lyotard, or about conversation and tragedy(1996) Kwiek, MarekThere are many more and less important points of discord between Richard Rorty and Jean-Francois Lyotard, there are many differences of fundamental importance for the two philosophers. (Lyotard speaks precisely of a "radical divergence" between them. One could write a lot about their different attitude towards utopia, liberal democracy, shape, place and role of philosophy in future culture, towards painting and literature, history of philosophy, the man/his work distinction, different account of the role of particular great philosophers in recent history of philosophy (of Kant in particular) etc. etc. What we are interested here in, though, is mainly one problem and one difference revealing itself through Rortyan disagreement with the Lyotardian idea of "différends". In the statement that the task of philosophy is to "bear witness to différends" (to maintain them and to search for new idioms coined especially for the purpose of expressing them rather than turning them into mere litigations) on Lyotard’s part - and, on the other hand, in questioning of any positive role of différends in culture on Rorty’s part, there is probably the crucial difference between them. Let us say by virtue of an Introduction the following: if Lyotard says in a discussion with Rorty that "il y a entre Richard Rorty et moi un différend", then the point is undoubtedly worth being discussed. Within the "différend" between Lyotard and Rorty (which within detailed discussions in The Différend. Phrases in Dispute of the former seems to be too strong a word, the one characterized by emotions of the ongoing controversy between them), I will confine myself to tracing why Rorty does not recognize différends as such, that is to say, to just a part of a larger "différend" between them, but potentially a very important part. For it seems to me that in his inacceptance of différends there is also the pragmatic inacceptance of tragedy.Item Rorty's Elective Affinities. The New Pragmatism and Postmodern Thought(Wydawnictwo Naukowe IF UAM, 1996) Kwiek, MarekThe present book is devoted to "European connections of Richard Rorty's neopragmatism". The theme, chosen carefully and intentionally, is supposed to show the motivation behind the writing of the present work, as well as to show its intended extent. Let us consider briefly the first three parts of the theme, to enlighten a little our intentions. "European" is perhaps the most important description for it was precisely that thread that was most important to me, being the only context seriously taken into account, as I assumed right from the start that I would not be writing about rather more widely unknown to me - and much less fascinating (even to Rorty, the hero of the story) from my own, traditional, Continental philosophical perspective - American analytic philosophy. So accordingly I have almost totally skipped "American" connections (to use the distinction I need here) of Rorty's philosophy, that is to say, firstly, a years-long work within analytic philosophy, secondly struggles with it on its own grounds, and finally attempts to use classical American, mainly Deweyan, pragmatism for his own needs and numerous polemics associated with it - the questions that are far away from my interests and that arise limited interest among reading and writing philosophical audience in Poland, and perhaps also among Continental philosophers. It did not seem possible to me to write a book on Rorty in his American connections for they are insufficiently known to me, demanding knowledge of both post-war American analytic philosophy as well as pragmatism of its father-founders. I could see, setting to work on Richard Rorty, that a book on his American connections (leaving aside the issue that it would not be a philosophical problem but rather, let us say, the one of writing a monograph) written by a Polish philosopher in Poland and then in the USA was not a stimulating intellectual challenge but rather a thankless working task. Besides, having spent much time on Rorty's philosophy, writing extensively about him and translating his works, I already knew that the "Continental" context was extremely important to his neopragmatism, and that thinking about it could be relatively prolific (as opposed to the context potentially given by American philosophy).Item Anti-Platonism of Rorty’s thought(1996) Kwiek, MarekFrom the perspective of subsequent books and texts by Richard Rorty it can be clearly seen that to have a look at his anti-Platonism and anti-essentialism, it is not enough to read either only Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, or only Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Consequences of Pragmatism and both volumes of Philosophical Papers. For me it turns out that the impression given by various readings of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in Reading Rorty - the first serious collected volume devoted to the American pragmatist - is totally misleading, or at least extremely one-sided. The book, it is claimed there, is merely criticism of traditional epistemology carried out on the grounds of American analytic philosophy not too interesting to a wider public (and, possibly, a loose project of philosophy as "conversation", some of them add). And yet it can only be seen retrospectively that the book provides most interesting philosophical "foundations" to later, often more metaphilosophical, literary and cultural ideas. To put it in a nutshell: one can find there the idea of solidarity and self-creation, there is the fundamental question about the place of philosophy in culture rather than merely that about the place of epistemology in philosophy; as well as there is a question about the future of the philosopher in culture, about mechanisms of production and collapse of his self-image, there is also the germ of the project of the "post-Kantian culture", "philosophy without mirrors" and criticism of merely cognitive - and derived from Plato - paradigm of human activity (and from there there is only a step towards discussions of suffering, pain, novels, redescriptions, recontextualization, private/public etc. - as a matter of fact, the whole "turn" seems to me to be a change of rhetoric to the one culturally better understood).Item Socjologiczny obraz sztuki(1996) Golka, MarianKsiążka jest autorską propozycją ujęcia podstawowych zagadnień z zakresu socjologii sztuki - czyli wszystkich aspektów społecznego funkcjonowania sztuki począwszy od jej tworzenia, poprzez obieg do odbioru.Item Romantyzm i pragmatyzm Richarda Rorty’ego(1997) Kwiek, MarekPodążymy tu szlakiem wielu tekstów Rorty'ego, pogrupujemy je w części wyodrębnione w zależności od udzielonych poprzez lata prób odpowiedzi na podstawowe pytania i podstawowe, rodzące się napięcia. Pytanie, o którym będziemy tu pisać, dotyczy fundamentalnej kwestii stosunku filozofii do polityki, sprawiającej, iż Rorty zbiera krytyczne cięgi ze wszystkich stron, filozoficznych i politycznych, radykalnych, lewicowych, postmodernistycznych, feministycznych oraz neokonserwatywnych i prawicowych. Powiedzmy wstępnie najogólniej: Rorty w swoich wyborach filozoficznych i politycznych jest postacią wyjątkową (bowiem wyjątkowy jest jego stosunek do relacji filozofia/polityka, teoria/praktyka etc.). Filozoficznie zgadza się ze współczesną filozofią francuską, z Derridą, Foucaultem i Lyotardem — pomimo licznych mniej czy bardziej szczegółowych różnic, ujawniających się poprzez lata, i również poprzez lata ulegającym zmianom — dlatego często uznawany jest za „postmodernistę", a najpoważniejszym przeciwnikiem i największym wyzwaniem filozoficznym jest dlań Jürgen Habermas. Natomiast politycznie zgadza się on z Habermasa wyborem socjaldemokraty, a jest przeciwko radykalnym (zwłaszcza w USA), przeważnie lewicowym ujmowaniem polityki przez propagatorów francuskich postmodernistów w Ameryce. Z tych samych filozoficznych wniosków — ponietzscheańskich i poheideggerowskich — wyciąga inne, dalsze wnioski w sprawach społecznych i politycznych. Różni się zatem jednocześnie od Habermasa i od rzeczonych Francuzów, chociaż oni sami różnią się radykalnie między sobą; gdyby zapytać, które różnice są dla Rorty'ego ważniejsze: filozoficzne czy polityczne, odpowiedziałby przypuszczalnie, że polityczne.