CFP: Humanities: The Legacy of Richard Rorty

During his lifetime Richard Rorty was unusual insofar as his work was more influential outside philosophy departments than inside. This was in part due to the fact that his ‘deconstructive’ attacks on what he took to be his discipline’s moribund obsession with truth and objectivity generated no small degree of antagonism. But in his attempt to find a place for the intellectual in modern culture his interests inclined increasingly towards those subjects and practices that engage more directly in shaping that culture, and thinkers in these areas were often encouraged to encounter a thinker who rejected the notion that their activities were in some sense lacking the appropriate cognitive bona fides. That Rorty was willing to engage seriously with the work of, amongst others, Foucault, Heidegger and Derrida made him all the more suspect to the one constituency and attractive to the other. Two factors complicate this story, however. On the one hand, the revival of interest in pragmatism has raised questions about Rorty’s neo-pragmatist rejection of the human aspiration towards objectivity; and on the other, thinkers on the political left who are amenable to that rejection are repelled by the ethnocentrism of his liberalism. The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore these and related tensions in Rorty’s work and in so doing help us arrive at a critical evaluation of his legacy. Papers are therefore welcome from those working in any area that conduces to that end.

Dr. Neil Gascoigne ([email protected]), Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to the website. Once you are registered, click to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. For the first couple of issues the Article Processing Charge (APC)will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

Keywords

• American exceptionalism
• Sellars
• Dewey
• Pragmatism and neo-pragmatism
• Liberalism
• Truth and Objectivity
• Relativism
• Literary Theory
• Mind and World
• Postmodernism