Who are we when we are ‘Us, at Our Best?’
| dc.contributor.author | Dieleman, Susan | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-04-23T19:21:31Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.description | Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) applies | |
| dc.description.abstract | Recently, political commentators have taken to characterizing our dystopian present (or near-future) as either Huxleyan or Orwellian. This pairing can be seen as an invitation to reconsider the philosophical distinction between persuasion and force, a distinction the interrogation of which was a career-defining task for Richard Rorty. In this article, I suggest that Rorty’s interrogations, and specifically his claims regarding what it means to think of ourselves, at our best, can help us to gain a firmer grasp on the nature of the dystopian present (or near-future) we inhabit and of which contrasting pictures were offered by Huxley and Orwell. | |
| dc.description.peer-review | Yes | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Dieleman, S. (2025). Who are we when we are ‘Us, at Our Best?’. Philosophy and Social Criticism. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537251380120 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10133/7354 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Sage | |
| dc.publisher.department | Department of Philosophy | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Arts and Science | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Lethbridge | |
| dc.publisher.url | https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537251380120 | |
| dc.subject | Richard Rorty | |
| dc.subject | Persuasion | |
| dc.subject | Force | |
| dc.subject | Dystopia | |
| dc.subject | Huxley | |
| dc.subject | Orwell | |
| dc.subject | Attention economy | |
| dc.subject | Near-future | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Rorty, Richard--Criticism and interpretation | |
| dc.title | Who are we when we are ‘Us, at Our Best?’ | |
| dc.type | Article |