Richard Rorty is among the most cited, influential and notorious of recent philosophers. His 1979 work "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" has recently been listed by the TLS as one of the fifty most important books written in any field since World War 2, winning the philosopher an audience which transcends traditional academic boundaries. His media profile is high - especially in the US, but increasingly in Europe too (a recent BBC4 documentary confirms the trend). A controversial figure, his dismissal of "traditional" assumptions about the nature of truth, progress and morality have resulted in him being maligned and championed in equal measure. Nevertheless, Rorty's work tends to be received with hesitance, or even hostility, amongst contemporary practitioners of philosophy. This book seeks to take Rorty seriously as a social and political philosopher, and to argue that his work is not as flippant, as frothy, or as easily dismissed as his opponents often tend to portray it.