Australian Left Review

Article Title

A More Banal Politics?

Authors

Peter Beilharz

Abstract

Peter Beilharz responds that, while a more ordinary politics may be a good thing, it still needs to rise to the occasion.

Richard Rorty is one of the most provocative and insightful of contemporary philosophers—which is to say, of course, that by some criteria he is not a philosopher at all. He is a vital critic and public intellectual. In the age where grand narratives collapse noisily like ageing dinosaurs in the jungle, Rorty pursues central social problems in a prose that is at once sprightly and clear. No mean feat. But do we need more banality in politics?