Achieving Our Country

Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

Paperback, 172 pages

English language

Published Sept. 1, 1999 by Harvard University Press.

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3 stars (3 reviews)

Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America is a 1998 book by American philosopher Richard Rorty, in which the author differentiates between what he sees as the two sides of the left, a cultural left and a reformist left. He criticizes the cultural 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 reformist left as acting in the philosophical spirit of pragmatism.

3 editions

Review of 'Achieving Our Country ' on Goodreads

4 stars

A few lectures from the 1990s giving an excellent critique of how the left in America has ceded political agency and economic goals that can speak to globalization, in favor of dismay and cultural observation. His short rants about the dangers of Buchanan-ist populism and the left's willingness to let the right set the framework even for cultural debates ring very true still today, just an all around punchy call to political involvement by standing for utopian possibilities.

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Subjects

  • American history: from c 1900 -
  • Socialism & left-of-centre democratic ideologies
  • Political
  • Politics / Current Events
  • Philosophy
  • USA
  • History & Theory - Radical Thought
  • Philosophy / Political
  • Movements - Pragmatism