Richard Rorty

53
Richard Rorty bigraphy, stories - Philosophers

Richard Rorty : biography

October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007

Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and then Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy, as well as contemporary analytic philosophy, the latter comprising the main focus of his work at Princeton University in the 1960s. He subsequently came to reject the tradition of philosophy according to which knowledge concerns correctly representing a world whose existence remains wholly independent of those representations. His best known booksBased upon sales are Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).

The idea of knowledge as a "mirror of nature" he saw as pervasive throughout the history of western philosophy. Against this approach, Rorty advocated for a novel form of American pragmatism, sometimes called neopragmatism, in which scientific and philosophical methods form merely a set of contingent "vocabularies" which people abandon or adopt over time according to social conventions and usefulness. Abandoning representationalist accounts of knowledge and language, Rorty believed, would lead to a state of mind he referred to as "ironism", in which people become completely aware of the contingency of their placement in history and of their philosophical vocabulary. Rorty tied this brand of philosophy to the notion of "social hope"; he believed that without the representationalist accounts, and without metaphors between the mind and the world, human society would behave more peacefully. He also emphasized the reasons why the interpretation of culture as conversation (Bernstein 1971), constitutes the crucial concept of a "postphilosophical" culture determined to abandon representationalist accounts of traditional epistemology, incorporating American pragmatist naturalism that considers the natural sciences as an advance towards liberalism.

Rorty had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University.

Notes

On human rights

Rorty’s notion of human rights is grounded on the notion of sentimentality. He contended that throughout history humans have devised various means of construing certain groups of individuals as inhuman or subhuman. Thinking in rationalist (foundationalist) terms will not solve this problem, he claimed. Rorty advocated the creation of a culture of global human rights in order to stop violations from happening through a sentimental education. He argued that we should create a sense of empathy or teach empathy to others so as to understand others’ suffering.See Barreto, José-Manuel. Utrecht Law Review, Volume 7 Issue 2 April 2011

Reception and criticism

Rorty is among the most widely discussed and controversial contemporary philosophers, and his works have provoked thoughtful responses from many well-respected philosophers. In Robert Brandom’s anthology, entitled Rorty and His Critics, for example, Rorty’s philosophy is discussed by Donald Davidson, Jürgen Habermas, Hilary Putnam, John McDowell, Jacques Bouveresse, and Daniel Dennett, among others. In 2007, Roger Scruton wrote,"Rorty was paramount among those thinkers who advance their own opinion as immune to criticism, by pretending that it is not truth but consensus that counts, while defining the consensus in terms of people like themselves".

John McDowell is strongly influenced by Rorty, particularly by Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979).In the preface to Mind and World (pp. ix-x) McDowell states that "it will be obvious that Rorty’s work is […] central for the way I define my stance here". In continental philosophy, authors such as Jürgen Habermas, Gianni Vattimo, Jacques Derrida, Albrecht Wellmer, Hans Joas, Chantal Mouffe, Simon Critchley, Esa Saarinen and Mike Sandbothe are influenced in different ways by Rorty’s thinking.