Philosophical Papers. Volume 1: Objectivity, Realism, and Truth; Volume 2: Essays on Heidegger and Others.

First edition, first printing. Two volumes. 8vo. x, 226; x, 202 pp. Original blue cloth, spines lettered in gilt, dust jackets (small bookseller's stamp to front free endpaper of Vol. 1, contents otherwise clean and fresh; some trivial creasing to tips of spine panels, otherwise a near fine copy). New York, Cambridge University Press.

Written during the 1980s, Rorty's two volume set of philosophical papers investigates philosophy and re-conceives issues that have long divided Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers.

In the first volume, Rorty offers a compromise between the two traditions: though he agrees with the French and German conceptions of truth and objectivity, he leans toward the Anglo-Saxon political standpoint and pragmatic applications. Here, Rorty takes up an account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, claiming that objectivity is determined by utility for the purposes of a community. Thus, he argues that though science may be an objective reality, it is only valid in terms of the community who validates it.

In the second volume, Rorty begins with an analysis of Heideggerian and Derridan philosophy, focusing in on their conceptions of language. Rather than accepting Derrida's argument that language is an insurmountable, alienating obstacle of human experience, Rorty takes up the argument that language is nothing but sounds strung together to organise social groups. 

Stock Code: 245708