Admission requirements
Admission to this course is restricted to:
BA students in Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including Philosophical Skills and one of the following combinations: Logic and Epistemology OR World Philosophies: Greek and Roman Antiquity and Language and Thought OR Ethics and Political Philosophy.
BA students in Filosofie, who have successfully completed at least 70 ECTS credits of the mandatory components of the first and second year of their bachelor’s programme, including Filosofische vaardigheden and one of the following combinations: Logica and Epistemologie OR Griekse en Romeinse filosofie and Medieval Philosophy OR Ethiek and Politieke filosofie.
Pre-master’s students in Philosophy who are in possession of an admission statement and who have to complete an advanced seminar.
Description
The Enlightenment liberated us from a theocentric conception of ethics according to which God determines what is good. Instead, as Kant forcefully argues, human beings are autonomous: nothing can be a norm for us unless we recognise it as self-imposed. Kant’s transcendental idealism is his attempt to assert this autonomy also in theoretical thought; but this project has not met with nearly as much success. Most philosophers today believe that Reality is both fully independent of us and a norm to which our thinking has to conform.
The American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty (1931–2007) uncompromisingly defended the claim that ‘reality has no norms of its own to offer, apart from those which we develop.’ We will read his posthumously published book Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism (2021). Rorty sees his task as that of freeing human beings from all subservience to non-human authority, a task that the Enlightenment started but failed to complete.
Rorty engages with the philosophy of religion and with ethics; but the main focus of both the book and the course is theoretical philosophy. We study Rorty’s criticism of the notion of representation, and his resulting anti-representationalism. We find him rethinking concepts like truth, knowledge, justification, and essence; and defending himself against the frequent charges of relativism that came his way. One of the strengths of Rorty’s work has always been the wide range of thinkers he engages with, and in Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism he discusses not only the classic American pragmatists, but also Annette Baier, Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Sigmund Freud, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, and Friedrich Nietzsche, among others.
We will also study contemporary allies and critics of Rorty, with a special emphasis on Brandom. Our aim throughout is to make up our own minds about the central issues. Is it possible to reject all forms of non-human authority? Does Rorty’s pragmatism give us a viable alternative to metaphysical realism? Should we get rid of the notion of representation? Can norms, epistemic or ethical, be fully ours and yet still be norms? And what – come to think of it – is the future of philosophy?
Course objectives
This course aims to give students detailed insight into the thought of Richard Rorty, as well as engage them in critical reflections on its major themes, including pragmatism, anti-authoritarianism and anti-representationalism.
Students who successfully complete this course will have a good understanding of:
the later thought of Richard Rorty and how it relates to the contemporary and historical context, especially as concerns recent analytic philosophy;
contemporary debates about relativism, realism, and related issues;
the relations between these debates in theoretical philosophy and issues in ethics and the philosophy of religion.
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
explain the ideas of Richard Rorty and his critics;
apply these ideas in contemporary debates and draw well-argued philosophical conclusions from them;
fruitfully discuss these ideas with fellow students;
independently search out and read academic articles, and write a substantial paper based on these readings.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
Final paper (100%)
Weekly reading and discussion exercises (mandatory for being allowed to participate in the exam; excellent performance can give a 0.5 bonus point for the final paper)
Weighing
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
The resit covers the final paper. The weekly exercises cannot be retaken.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
- Richard Rorty, Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism, Belknap/Harvard (2021).
Other texts will be provided during the course.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Huizinga
Remarks
Not applicable.