Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the contemporary debate on modern nihilism. Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus, and Sean Dorrance Kelly—the main voices of this debate—adopt the “overcoming” strategy against the malaise of nihilism. They argue that human culture could be redeemed from nihilism with the help of the sacred or a non-human power. The use of this strategy has resulted in an impasse in the discussion. I introduce Richard Rorty as a participant in this conversation, despite initially appearing as an unlikely interlocutor. My claim is that a reconfiguration of Rorty’s pragmatist philosophy can help reframe and advance the debate.
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Notes
- 1.
The Rorty Reader states that “Redemption from Egotism” was published in Spanish and German before coming to print in English posthumously and that a draft of the work in English was available in Rorty’s Stanford webpage for a short time. There is a discrepancy here, for while the title and the abstract of the article in Telos were in Spanish, the text was written in English (see Rorty 2001, 2003).
- 2.
Correction in brackets mine. I thank Professor Hubert Dreyfus for the electronic copy of his memorial lecture for Rorty, his permission to use it in my research, his hospitality during my visit at the University of California, Berkeley, and for introducing me to Mary Varney Rorty in January 2015. Bert passed away on April 22, 2017. His passing was wittily announced as “Reports of my demise are not exaggerated” on Twitter.
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Llanera, T. (2020). The Great Debate. In: Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45058-8_1
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