Meliorism and Social Hope in Pragmatism: Richard Rorty’s Reinterpretations

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. Rorty’s pragmatism may be described as anti-representialist, anti- essentialist, anti- foundationalist, experimentalist, hopeful, and forward looking. He has proposed a social hope theory building up the idea of meliorism in pragmatism. The purpose of this study is to explore Richard Rorty’ s philosophy of social hope building on meliorism. Rorty underlines the importance of the five types of emotions to access social hope. These includes sense of imagination, sense of uncertainity, sense of communication, sense of self-awareness and sense of self-respect. He suggests that with having five emotions ones might be forward looking which is a combined sense of feeling of hope, expecting, and regarding something pleasurable in the future. He recommends focusing on future with hope and skip the past.