Signposts along the way that Reason went

Richard Rorty

  • Margins of Philosophy by Jacques Derrida, translated by Alan Bass
    Harvester, 330 pp, £25.00, May 1983, ISBN 0 7108 0454 7

If you want to know what the common sense of the bookish will be like fifty years from now, read the philosophers currently being attacked as ‘irrationalist’. Then discount the constructive part of what they are saying. Concentrate on the negative things, the criticisms they make of the tradition. That dismissal of the common sense of the past will be the enduring achievement of the long-dead ‘irrationalist’. His or her suggestions about what to do next will look merely quaint, but the criticisms of his or her predecessors will seem obvious.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions