Richard Rorty
By Carlin Romano The
Chronicle Review, 53(43), p. B9 (2007)
Edited by Andy Ross
Richard
Rorty (1931-2007) edited one of analytic philosophy's most widely used
anthologies, The Linguistic Turn (1967).
Rorty's synoptic bent set
him apart from many colleagues. His most crucial deviation from colleagues
came in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), followed quickly by
Consequences of Pragmatism (1982). He'd emerged as a red-white-and-blue
Nietzsche, philosophizing with a hammer. One explanation couldn't fit all
cultures, times, and languages, he argued. Instead, Rorty celebrated and
revived the democratic, public-spirited pragmatism of William James and John
Dewey.
Rorty further outraged the analytic philosophical
establishment by drawing on the work of its senior figures to construct a
tale about modern philosophy meant to stop epistemology in its tracks. Rorty
insisted that the theory of knowledge as mirrorlike representation of the
world in language had imploded from within; that scientific method in
philosophy amounted to a myth; that we should see philosophy and science as
forms of literature; that one could avoid realism without adopting
relativism; that philosophy might best be understood as conversation, not a
tribunal for judging other types of knowledge.
One effort to
delegitimize Rorty's work rests on claims that he got everyone crucial to
his work — Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein — wrong. As a pragmatist, Rorty
focused not on what a philosopher thought his work meant, but an
understanding of that work that fit the larger philosophical vision in which
Rorty believed. At a seminar on the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer to
which Rorty invited the great man, Rorty summarized Gadamer's views. Gadamer
then protested in heavily accented English: "Dick, you've got me all wrong."
Rorty grinned, shrugged, and replied, "Yes, Hans, but that's what you should
have said."
In the end, Rorty proved more genuinely original and
unique than any of the thinkers he deferred to. In Philosophy and Social
Hope (1999), he wrote that he'd come to see the term "philosopher" as "the
most appropriate description for somebody who remaps culture — who suggests
a new and promising way for us to think about the relation among large areas
of human activity."
AR (June 2007) Richard Rorty
was not a philosopher for whom I had any special admiration as a student,
but his position is at least refreshingly different from that of his
Anglo-American analytic contemporaries, and therefore deserves a passing
nod.
(December 2010) I like his definition of "philosopher" — it
works for my aim in G.O.D. Is Great
and supports the narrative of my forthcoming autobiography.


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