“ Dewey, but not Russell, can adopt Locke’s suggestion that role of the philosopher is that of an under-laborer, clearing away the rubbish of the past in order to make room for the constructions of the future. But Dewey would have admitted, I think, that the philosopher is occasionally able to fuse this janitorial role with the role of prophet. Such a combination is found in Bacon and Descartes, both of whom combined the attempt to clear away Aristotelian rubbish with visions of a utopian future. Similarly, the effort of Dewey to get philosophy out from under Kant, of Habermas to untangle it from what he calls ‘the philosophy of consciousness,’ and of Derrida to liberate it from what he calls ‘the metaphysics of presence’ are intertwined with prophecies of the fully democratic society whose coming such extrication will hasten.
— Richard Rorty, “The Future of Philosophy”
