What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics

In this thought-provoking essay collection, philosopher Rorty (1931–2007) weighs in on the relationship between politics and philosophy, the “practical superiority of democracy to any other imaginable system,” right-wing campaigns to discredit leftist academics, racial injustice, and other matters. Throughout, Rorty, whose 1998 book Achieving Our Country predicted the rise of a “strongman” president supported by white, working-class voters disillusioned with globalization and “the political establishment,” stresses the importance of reducing economic inequality to ensure the proper functioning of democracy and calls for his fellow intellectuals to offer concrete solutions rather than “detached critiques or self-serving rationalizations of the status quo.” In “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096,” Rorty imagines that a “breakdown of democratic institutions” lasting from 2014 to 2044 ended when a “coalition of trade unions and churches” toppled the country’s military dictatorship, in part by shifting the focus of political discourse from protecting individual “rights” to fostering “fraternity.” Elsewhere, Rorty discusses how waging the Cold War “subtly and silently corrupted our country from within,” advocates for liberals to move away from “identity politics” and toward consensus building, and scrutinizes how “elitist disdain” has widened the gap between America’s intelligentsia and middle class. Fiercely argued yet thoroughly empathetic, these political musings are littered with valuable insights and astute analysis. (May)