cover image Mind in Action CL

Mind in Action CL

Amelia O. Rorty. Beacon Press (MA), $27.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-1404-2

Rorty, a Rutgers professor of philosophy, maintains that love, jealousy, hope, fear of death and self-knowledge are all processes rather than mental states. This dynamic outlook undergirds her attempt to set forth an ethical theory capable of guiding our actions. She charts the concept of the person as a self-defining, free agent in the writings of philosophers, Freud and Western literature from Greek drama through Jane Austen's world of nascent, introspective selves to Beckett's plays devoid of free will. Examining the workings of self-deception, Rorty, whose books include Explaining Emotions , advances a view of the self as a set of subsystems in need of integration. Her penetrating, dense essays remind us that jealousy need not involve love, and that an attitude of calm rationality may be inappropriate to one's life circumstances. She also argues brilliantly that every ethical theory implies an underlying political commitment to a particular distribution of power. (September)