The Ironist and the Romantic: Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell

At the time of his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was widely acclaimed as one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers. Stanley Cavell, who has been a leading intellectual figure for six decades, has been just as philosophically influential as Rorty, though perhaps not as politically divisive. Both philosophers have developed from analytic to post-analytical thought, both move between philosophy, literature and cultural politics, and both resurrect American intellectual traditions in a new key.
The Ironist and the Romantic: Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell finds the sound of Rorty’s cheerful pragmatism strikingly at odds with the anxious romanticism of Cavell. Through comprehensive comparative analysis of their philosophical inheritance, procedure, thematic and writing style, the work of these two philosophers is presented in a novel and mutually illuminating perspective. Áine Kelly’s unique and original comparative reading will be of interest to all those working on Rorty and Cavell and anyone concerned with the current state of American philosophy.