Richard Rorty
Also known as Richard McKay Rorty
American pragmatist philosopher (1931 to 2007) who rejected philosophy as a mirror of nature.
At a glance
Main ideas
Against representationalism, Truths are made, Ironism …
See all 5Criticism
Susan Haack, Roger Scruton, From the left
See all 3Books to start with
The Linguistic Turn, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity …
See all 5Connections
Cornel West, John Rawls and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
See all 3
Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Rorty was a philosopher and public intellectual who taught at Princeton, the University of Virginia and Stanford.
- He rejected the idea that knowledge mirrors an external reality, arguing that knowledge is a matter of language and that "since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths".
- Drawing on pragmatism and the later Wittgenstein, he turned toward continental philosophy in the 1980s and 1990s.
- He described himself as a "postmodern bourgeois liberal" and defended a pragmatic, progressive left.
Why it matters
- He is one of the most widely discussed and controversial philosophers of his time, and the leading voice of neopragmatism.
Key facts
- Born
- 4 Oct 1931, New York City1
- Died
- 8 Jun 2007, at his home, of pancreatic cancer1
- Education
- University of Chicago, BA and MA in philosophy, under Richard McKeon; Yale, PhD in philosophy (1952 to 1956), under Paul Weiss1
- Career
- Wellesley College; Princeton for 21 years, Stuart Professor of Philosophy; Kenan Professor of the Humanities, University of Virginia, from 1982; professor of comparative literature, Stanford, from 19981
- Award
- MacArthur Fellowship (1981), in its first year1
- Family
- Grandson of the Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch1
Main ideas
-
Against representationalism1
Philosophy wrongly sought to show the mind as a mirror of objective reality.
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Truths are made1
Only descriptions can be true or false, and descriptions are human creations.
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Ironism1
The ironist doubts her own final vocabulary but has no neutral criterion for a better one.
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Private and public1
Self-creation is a private matter; the public task is reducing cruelty.
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Institutions as experiments1
Social institutions are experiments in cooperation, not embodiments of a universal order.
Criticism
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Susan Haack1
Argued his neopragmatism shares only a name with Peirce's pragmatism and is anti-intellectual.
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Roger Scruton1
Said he made his own opinion immune to criticism by appealing to consensus among people like himself.
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From the left1
Some critics found his politics an insufficient framework for social justice.
Books to start with
The line under a date fills as it gets older: empty when new, full at 2 years.
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The Linguistic Turn1
An anthology he edited of analytic essays.
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Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature1
Against philosophy as the mirror of reality.
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Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity1
Ironism, liberalism and the avoidance of cruelty.
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Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth1
Philosophical Papers, volume 1.
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Achieving Our Country1
A manifesto for a pragmatic, progressive left.
Connections
Links
Sources
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