Abstract:

The concept of meliorism which means future would be better with joint human efforts has drawn attention of pragmatist thinkers and philosophers. William James, John Dewey, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Richard Rorty are important philosophers placing an emphasis on Meliorism in pragmatism. Rorty has reinterpreted the pragmatist way of thinking focusing on two dimensions. As he criticises traditional philosophy, he draws attention to the role of pragmatism in creating intellectual culture in society.Rorty’s understanding of pragmatism may be described as anti-representialist, anti- essentialist, anti- foundationalist, experimentalist, hopeful, and forward-looking. The purpose of this study is to explore Richard Rorty’ s philosophy of social hope building on meliorism. He has proposed a social hope theory building in which he underlines the importance of the five types of emotions to access social hope. These include sense of imagination, sense of uncertainty, sense of communication, sense of self-awareness and sense of self-respect. Rorty suggests that people who have the five emotions may be forward-looking, which is a combined emotion of hope, anticipation, and something enjoyable in the future. He recommends individual focusing on future with hope and skip the past.

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