scholarly journals Richard rorty and moral progress in global relations

Politikon ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Jordaan
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Global Relations

Richard Rorty on Equality and Cultural Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rondel
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Moral Progress

This chapter provides a sympathetic sketch of Rorty’s “ethnocentric” liberalism and defends it against several critics. It also highlights the importance of “redescription” in Rorty’s thought and illustrate how what Rorty calls “cultural politics” together with his (anti-Kantian) “sentimentalist” conception of moral progress provides a useful lens through which to grasp the “cultural-valuational” register of egalitarian theorizing. Rorty’s political theory has been chastised for its apparent conservatism. But this chapter argues that Rorty’s endorsement of the Sellarsian thesis that “all awareness is a linguistic affair” coupled with his controversial claim that “anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed” opens up a potentially unlimited space for goods to be pursued and bads to be rejected. This makes Rortyan “cultural politics” as radical or conservative as spinners of new descriptions are apt to make it.

Replacing Truth with Social Hope and Progress with Redescription: Can the Pragmatist Philosophy of Richard Rorty Help Reinvigorate Planning?

2019 ◽  
pp. 0739456X1982763
Author(s):  
T. William Lester
Keyword(s):  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

Through a review of Richard Rorty’s philosophical work and critiques of original planning documents from the Urban Renewal era, this paper makes three points. First, a pragmatist epistemological approach offers a better foundation for planning than the current communicative paradigm. Second, updating planning’s Enlightenment roots with Rorty’s view of moral progress as a process of “redescription” can help reduce the anxiety planners feel in putting forward bold visions. Last, Rorty’s concept of the liberal ironist provides an interesting model for planners that sees equal value in the contributions made by both the Jane Jacobs’s and Robert Moses’s of the field.

Verità, etica e religione in Richard Rorty

PARADIGMI ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Stefano Marino
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty Questions All, Including Us

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 347-356
Author(s):  
Randolph D. Pope
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty

The Evolution of Moral Progress. A Biocultural Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-164
Author(s):  
Allan Buchanan ◽  
Russel Powell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Progress

Richard Rorty

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques De Visscher
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty

Naturalizing Moral Regression

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Group Threat ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
Harsh Conditions ◽  
Development And Evolution

This chapter proposes a theory of moral regression, arguing that inclusivist gains can be eroded not only if certain harsh biological and social conditions indicative of out-group threat actually reappear but also if significant numbers of people come to believe that such harsh conditions exist even when they do not. It argues that normal cognitive biases in conjunction with defective social-epistemic practices can cause people wrongly to believe that such harsh conditions exist, thus triggering the development and evolution of exclusivist moralities and the dismantling of inclusivist ones. Armed with detailed knowledge of the biological and social environments in which progressive moralities emerge and are sustained, as well as the conditions under which they are likely to be dismantled, human beings can take significant steps toward transforming the classic liberal faith in moral progress into a practical, empirically grounded hope.

A Typology of Moral Progress

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Premarital Sex ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Point

This chapter identifies a number of developments that are candidates for moral progress: abolition of the Atlantic chattel slavery, improvements in civil rights for minorities, equal rights for women, better treatment of (some) non-human animals, and abolition of the cruellest punishments in most parts of the world. This bottom-up approach is then used to construct a typology of moral progress, including improvements in moral reasoning, recognition of the moral standing or equal basic moral status of beings formerly thought to lack them, improvements in understandings of the domain of justice, the recognition that some behaviors formerly thought to be morally impermissible (such as premarital sex, masturbation, lending money at interest, and refusal to die “for king and country”) can be morally permissible, and improvements in understandings of morality itself. Finally, a distinction is made between improvements from a moral point of view and moral progress in the fullest sense.

Exiles from Eden

1992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R. Schwehn
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Christian Spirituality ◽  
Henry Adams ◽  
Spiritual Community ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Parker Palmer ◽  
Allan Bloom

In this thoughtful and literate study, Schwehn argues that Max Weber and several of his contemporaries led higher education astray by stressing research--the making and transmitting of knowledge--at the expense of shaping moral character. Schwehn sees an urgent need for a change in orientation and calls for a "spiritually grounded education in and for thoughtfulness." The reforms he endorses would replace individualistic behavior, the "doing my own work" syndrome derived from the Enlightenment, with a communitarian ethic grounded in Judeo-Christian spirituality. Schwehn critiques philosophies of higher education he considers misguided, from Weber and Henry Adams to Derek Bok, Allan Bloom, and William G. Perry Jr. He draws out valid insights, always showing the theological underpinnings of the so-called secular thinkers. He emphasizes the importance of community, drawing on both the secular communitarian theory of Richard Rorty and that of the Christian theorist Parker Palmer. Finally, he outlines his own prescription for a classroom-centered spiritual community of scholars. Schwehn's study will interest all those concerned with higher education in America today: faculty, students, parents, alumni, administrators, trustees, and foundation officers.

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