ABSTRACT

To read Richard Rorty is to enter an intellectual world Carr never really knew and which Elton, insofar as he was aware of it, rejected. How does one get into this world, this perspective?

On the face of it, it does not look easy. A list of Rorty’s books and articles as given at the end of Malachowski’s Reading Rorty (which includes work from 1959 to 1989 to which he has since added) covers some eight densely packed pages. Yet, if this means that there is an awful lot of Rorty to consider, and whilst there is clearly no ‘essential Rorty’, it seems possible to identify a limited number of concerns -or indeed ‘a’ concern-to which he constantly attends. What might this be?