Richard Rorty’s project of discarding philosophy as a whole suffers a contradictory, self-defeating problem that I call philosophical exorcism. Since Rorty’s understanding of radicality is misleading, when he criticizes philosophy in its entirety, his criticism returns to itself so that his project itself is to be discarded. As a remedy for the exorcism, a different radicality, found in Dewey’s concept of quality, is examined through two films directed by John Cassavetes and David Lynch. The radicality at stake contains a paradox of sharing the unsharable, which distances philosophy from Rorty’s self-defeating pragmatism.
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Bernstein Richard J . 1987. “One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward: Rorty on Liberal Democracy and Philosophy,” in The New Constellation (Cambridge: The mit Press, 1992).
Carney Ray . 1994. The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Dewey John . 1938. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt and Company).
Dewey John . 1930. “Qualitative Thought,” in The Essential Dewey. Volume 1. Pragmatism, Education, Democracy , ed. Hickman Larry A. and Alexander Thomas M. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
Dewey John . 1929. “Experience, Value and Criticism,” in The Later Works of John Dewey , vol. 1, ed. Boydston Jo Ann (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981).
Dewey John .1935. “An Empirical Survey of Empiricisms,” in The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 11, ed. Boydston Jo Ann (Cambondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987).
Rorty Richard . 1988. “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” in The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom , ed. Peterson Merrill and Vaughan Robert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Rorty Richard . 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Žižek Slavoj . 1995. “The Lamella of David Lynch,” in Reading Seminar xi: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, eds. Feldstein Richard , Fink Bruce , and Jaanus Maire (Albany: State University of New York Press).
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Richard Rorty’s project of discarding philosophy as a whole suffers a contradictory, self-defeating problem that I call philosophical exorcism. Since Rorty’s understanding of radicality is misleading, when he criticizes philosophy in its entirety, his criticism returns to itself so that his project itself is to be discarded. As a remedy for the exorcism, a different radicality, found in Dewey’s concept of quality, is examined through two films directed by John Cassavetes and David Lynch. The radicality at stake contains a paradox of sharing the unsharable, which distances philosophy from Rorty’s self-defeating pragmatism.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 567 | 39 | 4 |
Full Text Views | 220 | 2 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 49 | 10 | 6 |