This article examines the philosophical thought of Richard Rorty and, in particular, its political dimension, outlining your unique and critical treatment of central themes in contemporary political theory. The objective of this paper is threefold: to draw attention to the fertility of the ideas of an author still little read in Brazil (i), noted the remarkable corrosive consequences of Rorty's approach to foundational assumptions and pretensions of important lines of thought in political theory (ii), and, in a more positive light, pointing the motivational potential of the writings of this author for thinking about new ways of justification of democracy (iii). Also point out, in this latter case, the limits to this kind of political-intellectual endeavor. The approach is to demarcate the general outlines of the philosophical project of the author, followed by a presentation of the more properly political topics of the work of Rorty. More specifically, the article explores Rorty's proposal to replace the notion of truth in justification, pointing up the consequences for claims of truth, objectivity and universalism, present in various lines of political theory. In this shaft, the article discusses the possible implications of Rorty's relativistic theses, coming up, by this route, the ideas of contingency, imagination and persuasion, which are a central core concept in thinking the author studied. A brief contrast to positions of authors like Habermas and Rawls, admired for Rorty, is outlined in order to clarify the specificity of Rorty's approach to politics. Examining these topics, the text results in a synthetic overview of Rorty's perspective about what comes to be, in the contemporaneity, a "democratic politics", free of "universalism" and "objectivity", in which gain decisive status issues of justification, tolerance and coexistence, necessarily thought of as contingent cultural constructs, within democratic societies and the global level (where there are political regimes with different and even contradictory political values). Thus, it seeks to provide the reader with an introduction and a sample of critical and constructive dimensions present in the work of Rorty, betting that research agendas concerned with the issue of ethical and normative justification of democracy and the limits of democratic tolerance to find this author a fruitful source of inspiration.
contemporary political theory; neo-pragmatism; democracy; justification; limits of tolerance