Rorty’s Last Book Published in Persian

The last book ‘Philosophy as Cultural Politics,’ by Richard Rorty (1931-2007), the late professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University in the US, is now available in Persian.

Researcher in philosophy and social sciences, author, essayist and translator Nasseroddin Ali Taqavian, in collaboration with psychologist, essayist, journalist, translator and crossword designer Babak Tahmasbi, translated the book into Persian.

It was recently released in Iran by the publishing house of the Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, a research center in Tehran, affiliated to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, IBNA reported.

A compilation of selected philosophical papers, Rorty wrote it between 1997 and 2007 where he explores the relation between philosophy and culture.

The book complements three previous volumes of his papers: ‘Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth’, ‘Essays on Heidegger and Others’ and ‘Truth and Progress,’ according to the blurb.

Topics discussed include the changing role of philosophy in western culture over the course of recent centuries, the role of imagination in intellectual and moral progress, the notion of ‘moral identity’, the Wittgensteinian (relating to or characteristic of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein or his ideas) claim that the problems of philosophy are linguistic in nature, the irrelevance of cognitive science to philosophy, and the mistaken idea that philosophers should find the ‘place’ of such things as consciousness and moral value in a world of physical particles.

The papers form a rich and distinctive collection which may appeal to anyone with a serious interest in philosophy and its relation to culture.