Rorty Critical Theory and the Fate of Philosophy. This ambitious book addresses the end-of-philosophy debate and the challenge it presents to contemporary philosophy, both continental and analytic. It is a chain of argument as well as a conversation conducted in the presence of the major contributors to that debate the critics especially Richard Rorty of the dominantly Platonic-Cartesian-Kantian tradition on the one hand and its defenders on the other. Nielsens account draws on Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Habermas, and Foucault, among others. Nielsen takes Rortys arguments seriously and insists that they demand a rethinking of the role