Achieving Our Country
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| Author | Richard Rorty |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Louis Lozowick; design by Annamarie McMahon |
| Country |
Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, London Great Britain |
| Language | English |
| Series | Part of "The William E. Massey, Sr. lectures in the history of American civilization" |
| Subject | Politics, philosophy |
| Published | 1998 (Harvard University Press) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 159 pp |
| ISBN | (1998); (1999) |
| OCLC | 37864000 |
| 303.48/4 21 | |
| LC Class | HN90.R3 R636 1998 |
Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, London
Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America is a book by American philosopher Richard Rorty, in which Rorty differentiates between what he sees as the two sides of the Left, a critical Left and a progressive Left. He criticizes the critical Left, which is exemplified by post-structuralists such as Michel Foucault and post-modernists such as Jean-François Lyotard. Although these intellectuals make insightful claims about the ills of society, Rorty holds that they provide no alternatives and even present progress as problematic at times. On the other hand, the progressive Left, exemplified for Rorty by John Dewey, makes progress its priority in its goal of "achieving our country." Rorty sees the progressive Left as acting in the philosophical spirit of pragmatism.
Achieving Our Country is an adaptation of lectures Rorty gave at Harvard University. It consists of expanded versions of the three lectures, two appendices ("Movements and Campaigns", "The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature") as well as the notes, acknowledgements, and index.
Rorty begins by arguing the case for "national pride"; having pride in a nation motivates people to seek to improve their nation - one must feel emotion of some sort But in recent times, such as after the Vietnam War and towards the end of the twentieth century, art and for Rorty literature in particular are not cultivating a form of national pride and hence are affecting politics: "Competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation's self-identity, and between differing symbols of its greatness.
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