This volume presents a selection of the philosophical papers which Richard Rorty has written over the past decade, and complements three previous volumes of his papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Essays on Heidegger and Others, and Truth and Progress. Topics discussed include the changing role of philosophy in Western culture over the course of recent centuries, the role of the imagination in intellectual and moral progress, the notion of ‘moral identity’, the Wittgensteinian claim that the problems of philosophy are linguistic in nature, the irrelevance of cognitive science to philosophy, and the mistaken idea that philosophers should find the ‘place’ of such things as consciousness and moral value in a world of physical particles. The papers form a rich and distinctive collection which will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in philosophy and its relation to culture.

理查德·罗蒂(Richard Rorty，1931-2007)，当代美国最有影响力的哲学家、思想家，美国新实用主义哲学和后现代主义的代表人物之一。罗蒂在耶鲁大学取得哲学博士学位，曾执教于普林斯顿大学、弗吉尼亚大学、斯坦福大学。罗蒂的主要著作在国内出版的有：《哲学和自然之镜》及《后哲学文化》等。

理查德·罗蒂生前亲自选取在其学术生涯的不同时期所发表的具有代表性的论文，经过分类整理而成本套自选集，其中大多数论文是第一次在国内出版，具有很高的学术价值。