Richard Rorty’s new book—the third volume of his philosophical papers—has three sections. Part 1 consists of disquisitions on, or rather against, the idea of objective truth; part 2 discusses moral progress; and part 3, which has the not quite accurate title “The Role of Philosophy in Human Progress,” comprises essays about the history of philosophy.

I’ll begin with a short description of part 3. In its first essay, Rorty gives a rather interesting account of some possible ways of writing history of philosophy. One might write about a philosopher, say Kant, from what one hopes would be Kant’s own point of view, or from the point of view of a later school of thought, or as part of the project of describing the spirit (Geist) of the eighteenth century. All these approaches are O.K., says Rorty, but he condemns a fourth way, labelled doxography. By doxography he...

 

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