Richard Rorty and the Idea of Political Hope

Robert Lamb is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Thomas Paine and the Idea of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Chair of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought (BIAPT).

'Inspiring as it is rigorous, Robert Lamb's Richard Rorty and the Idea of Political Hope is a timely work for the darkening present. At its core stands a revelatory account of the late, oft-maligned and misunderstood pragmatist thinker, from whom Lamb reconstructs a specifically political vision of hope as a crucially collaborative social disposition. In the process, Lamb carefully traverses an extraordinary range of topics, with bracing and insightful discussions of Hegel, Rawls, Marx, feminism, liberalism, realism, justice, social truth, optimism, pessimism, curiosity, progress, utopia, love, humility, cruelty, philosophy, literature, and so much more. A wonderful book.' Loren Goldman, University of Pennsylvania

• Acknowledgements; Note on texts; Introduction: hope and politics; 1. Moral psychology and the depoliticization of hope; 2. Political theory and the instrumentalisation of hope; 3. Yearning for a contingent future: Richard Rorty and the idea of liberal hope; 4. Hope as political philosophy: reading Rawls with Rorty; 5. Hope and the ethos of a liberal community; 6. Hopelessness; Bibliography; Index.