Where contemporary thinkers well disposed towards Rorty tend to emphasize the significance of Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, more skeptical voices are apt to impugn his relevance to ongoing debates in philosophy on the grounds that that work’s attempt to dispose of the traditional conception of the discipline in the name of a nebulous “literary criticism” is little more than an exercise in self-therapy. The contention of this chapter, then, is that the antagonism this emphasis generates is both unfruitful and ill-conceived. Taking as its starting point reactions to criticism of his early (eliminativist) materialism, it argues that Rorty’s work in the 1970s offers a vindication of the activity of traditional philosophy, albeit within the broader conception of intellectual inquiry we’ve come to call neopragmatism and – latterly – “cultural politics.” From this perspective, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity is just one (perhaps self-revealing) prophetic-theoretical proposal amongst many that neopragmatism/philosophy-as-cultural-politics makes possible. But that in turn shows how important this period of Rorty’s work is, not only to understanding his later output but also to elucidating the options available to contemporary philosophy.

In “Brandom’s Conversationalism: Davidson and Making It Explicit,” Rorty offers a clear and concise summary of the main argument of Brandom’s book its proximity to Davidson’s thought, and its particular limitations. Rorty takes the reader through a careful, point-by-point explication of where in their respective texts Brandom and Davidson endorse each other’s positions and where the apparent divergences in their attempts to naturalize semantics and philosophy of mind are not differences that make a difference. Rorty pays particular attention to where Brandom violates his claim that “there is no realm in which concepts do not apply” to endorse the existence of nonlinguistic facts.

This introduction provides a context for understanding the volume’s contents and their contemporary significance. First, it establishes a frame for understanding Rorty’s intellectual development, in general, and the essays collected in the volume, in particular, through Rorty’s enduring commitment to the idea of doing “critical philosophy.” Second, it offers a précis of the individual essays, including what they contribute to our knowledge of Rorty’s thought and to ongoing philosophical debates.