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Article: The Politics of Hope and Optimism: Rorty, Havel, and the Democratic Faith of John Dewey(*).(Vaclav Havel, Richard Rorty)
- Article from:
- Social Research
- Article date:
- June 22, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 New School for Social Research. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Hope vs. Optimism
In a series of essays culminating in his recent book Achieving Our Country, the philosopher Richard Rorty has advised the Left to become more modest with regard to revolution and more fervent with regard to reform. Revolution, he suggests, according to the twentieth-century Marxist version assumes a vision of transcendent perfection that alone can justify the complete transformation of existing social structures, even at the cost of untold human misery and death. Condemning this version of transcendent history in his essay "The End of Leninism, Havel, and Social Hope," Rorty asks that his fellow philosophers realize that "we have reached a time ...