Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

Filósofo e crítico norte-americano. Estudou em Chicago e Yale e foi professor de Humanidades na Universidade da Virgínia

Democracy and philosophy
"Jefferson and Kant would have been bewildered at the changes that have taken place in the Western democracies in the last two hundred years. For they did not think of equal treatment for blacks and whites, or of female suffrage, as deducible from the philosophical principles they enunciated. Their hypothetical astonishment illustrates the anti-foundationalist point that moral insight is not, like mathematics, a product of rational reflection. It is instead a matter of imagining a better future, and observing the results of attempts to bring that future into existence." Richard Rorty, who died last month, outlines in the tenth anniversary edition of Kritika&Kontext the anti-foundationalist premise of his philosophy. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-en.html