The humanism of Rorty’s neopragmatism weaves together practicing philosophy with experiencing life so as to enjoy a more qualitative and worthy existence, both individual and communal. One of the ways this can be done, as Rorty writes in “The Humanistic Intellectual: Eleven Theses,” is expanding our “own moral imaginations” (Rorty Philosophy and Social Hope 1999, 127) so as to better see the lot of others and the evolving possibilities of ourselves. Such an expansion refers especially to people whom he calls ‘intellectual humanists,’ that is the people who “read books in order to enlarge their sense of what is possible and important – either for themselves as individuals or for their society” (ibid.). [Read more…]