"I urge that whatever good the ideas of 'objectivity' and 'transcendence' have done for our culture can be attained equally well by the idea of a community which strives after both intersubjective agreement and novelty–a democratic, progressive, pluralistic community of the sort of which Dewey dreamt. If one interprets objectivity as intersubjectivity, or as solidarity, then one will drop the question of how to get in touch with 'mind-independent and language-dependent reality.'  One will replace it with questions like 'What are the limits of our community?  Are our encounters sufficiently free and open? Has what we have recently gained in solidarity costs us our ability to listen to outsiders who are suffering? To outsiders who have new ideas?'  These are political questions rather than metaphysical or epistemological questions." (Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Vol. 1, p 13)
Philosophy Annual Public Lecture

Cosponsored by: Department of the Classics, Department of English, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Department of History, Department of Linguistics, Department of Philosophy, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, Department of Speech Communications, Drobny Interdisciplinary Program for the Study of Jewish Culture and Society, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, Program in Comparative Literature, Program for the Study of Religion, Unit for Cinema Studies, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, Graduate Philosophy Organization