Original scientific paper
Literature And Liberal Democracy in the Postphilosophical Philosophy of Richard Rorty
Krešimir Šimić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek
Abstract
A well accepted thesis in contemporary criticism is that to a significant extent contemporary literary criticism and fiction are (if it is appropriate, after post-structural studies, to discuss fiction as “thing-in-itself” – “Ding an sich”) marked as “political” (which is not a mere instrument of governing but a structural condition of human relations that cannot be placed in higher categories). It is enough to remember the Russian formalists and authors of Marxism and post-Marxism. Although to a certain extent in accordance with French and British authors (influenced by the tradition of Marxism, structuralism and post structuralism), the American theoretician Richard Rorty has decided to write on the relationship between literature and liberal democracy from a different tradition, that of pragmatism. The article presents Rorty's key terms: poetic culture, redescription, irony, contingency and solidarity. It then presents objections to the project of poetic culture (Joseph Rouse, Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas). Finally, the article brings out the idea of the "kenotic culture".
Keywords
Richard Rorty; literature; poetic culture; irony; contingency; liberal democracy
Hrčak ID:
225905
URI
Publication date:
7.10.2019.
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