Michael Bacon gives a critical presentation of Rorty's writings on pragmatism and political theory, comparing and contrasting him with pragmatists such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack and liberals such as John Rawls and Brian Barry. The result is an imaginative presentation of one of contemporary philosophy's most innovative and important thinkers.

This essay introduces a running symposium on the work of Richard Rorty and its legacy fifteen years after his passing. The arc of Rorty's thought defines a trajectory through American pragmatism, tracing a variation unimagined until he expressed it. His work raised Anglophone philosophers’ interest in American pragmatism as never before and also focused the interest of the whole world on American pragmatism as never before, even though the result was to define a pragmatism saturated (...) with nominalism and suppressing the most original qualities of the sources that he celebrated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 369-396 [Access article in PDF] Worlds or Words Apart?The Consequences of Pragmatism for Literary Studies:An Interview with Richard Rorty Richard Rorty, with E. P. Ragg ER: I WANTED TO ASK YOU first about holism. Clearly holism doesn't just mean being interdisciplinary. Nor, as you argue in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is it merely a question of antifoundationalist polemic. Rather, (...) you say it marks "a distrust of the whole epistemological enterprise." 1 Could you explain what you mean by that?RR: If you weren't some kind of foundationalist you wouldn't bother to get into epistemology. Epistemology only looks attractive if you think that there is a topic called knowledge whose nature can be studied. The idea is that once you have learned its nature, you might get more of it than you had before. Only someone who thinks that knowledge has foundations located in sense perception, or pure reason, or divine revelation, or something, would take the idea of studying knowledge, its nature and limits, seriously. I think of holism as just the view that people change their beliefs in such a way as to achieve coherence with their other beliefs, to bring their beliefs and desires into some sort of equilibrium—and that that is about all there is to be said about the quest for knowledge. There are no rules for which beliefs you sacrifice in order to accommodate other beliefs, or which desires you change to accommodate changed beliefs. Because there aren't any rules, there aren't any methods you can study in order to improve the way you achieve equilibrium. The whole idea of studying how belief is changed is pretty hopeless. It's just too holistic a process to be an appropriate topic of study. [End Page 369]ER: Holism is obviously a natural corollary of pragmatism because pragmatists urge bringing as many different useful vocabularies to discussion as we can. This reminds me of your definition of "literariness." In Contingency, irony, and solidarity you describe literary skill as the ability to effect "surprising gestalt switches by making smooth rapid transitions from one terminology to another." 2 Would it be fair to say, then, that thinking holistically is, to some degree, literary?RR: No, I don't think so. It would be more appropriate to say thinking holistically, in the sense of not being limited to a given context or disciplinary framework, is a matter of thinking imaginatively. Politicians and theologians and engineers think imaginatively just as much as literary people do. To call it literary would be unduly to privilege literature.ER: Would you say that, as a writer, your own work has been treated holistically: first in the sense that your texts are seen as a growing body of thought—that is, that there is a difference between the writer of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and the author of Contingency, irony, and solidarity—and, second, in the sense that people have thought holistically about your ideas, have brought them to bear on literature, philosophy, social science, the very demarcations you want to transcend?RR: I think that the stuff I do is more interesting to people outside of philosophy than those inside it. This is an example of the same phenomenon that led Kuhn to be much more read by people outside the hard sciences than by people within them. My stuff, like Kuhn's, debunks certain views that various earlier philosophers, especially the positivists, had tried to impose on the culture. My readers are people who are looking for a way out from the view they absorbed, without much liking it, when they were young. People inside of philosophy, however, often regard all this debunking as endangering the problems to the solution of which they have devoted their lives. They do not want the problems dissolved, because that would dissolve their solutions as well. So they welcome it less than do outsiders.ER: One of the markers of your... (shrink)

In his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.

Nystrom and Puckett's pamphlet gives us the most comprehensive picture available of Richard Rorty's political views. This is Rorty being avuncular, cranky, and straightforward: his arguments on patriotism, the political left, and philosophy—as usual, unusual—are worth pondering. This pamphlet will appeal to all those interested in Rorty's distinct brand of pragmatism and leftist politics in the United States.

The aim of this paper is to argue that Richard Rorty’s claim that pragmatism is opposed to all varieties of metaphysics is fundamentally mistaken. After detailing pragmatist reasons for thinking Rorty’s proposal is justified, I argue that there are more compelling pragmatist reasons to think Rorty’s metaphilosophical interpretation of pragmatism is rather problematic: firstly, Rorty has a narrow understanding of ‘metaphysics’ and he does not take into account Peirce’s argument that it is impossible to eliminate metaphysical concepts (...) from ordinary language and our scientific practices; secondly, Rorty’s Sellarsian philosophical anthropology and his proto-Brandomian theory of the constitution of norms are in fact instances of metaphysical positions. I conclude the paper by claiming that given that pragmatism is in fact supportive of a specific variety of metaphysics, the relationship between idealism and pragmatism ought to be seen as involving more convergence rather than great contestation. (shrink)

This book is a discussion of the nature and import of Richard Rorty's philosophy, particularly as it relates to his reevaluation of American pragmatism.

Pragmatists believe that philosophical inquiry must engage closely with practice to be useful and that practice serves as a source of social norms. As a growing alternative to the analytic and continental philosophical traditions, pragmatism is well suited for research in business ethics, but its role remains underappreciated. This article focuses on Richard Rorty, a key figure in the pragmatist tradition. We read Rorty as a source of insight about the ethical and political nature of business practice in (...) contemporary global markets, focusing specifically on his views about moral sentiments, agency, and democratic deliberation. Importantly for business ethicists, Rorty’s approach sets in stark relief our moral responsibility as useful, practical thinkers in addressing the societal challenges of our time. We use “modern slavery” as an empirical context to highlight the relevance of Rorty’s approach to business ethics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Sin and Truth Classical Pragmatism and the Need to Reconcile Science with Religion Pragmatism as Liberation from the Primal Father Conclusion.

The first complete posthumous reflection on the work of Richard Rorty, one of the most important and influential American philosophers of recent times.

An engagement between Confucianism and the philosophy of Richard Rorty.

It is a relatively rare, and very welcome, event when an original, brilliantly imaginative analytic philosopher takes a fresh look at earlier figures in the history of philosophy and proceeds to tell a story that ties in their work with his own. Analytic philosophy’s greatest disability remains its lack of historical resonance, and Hilary Putnam is one of the few who have worked hard to help it overcome this handicap. His discussion of the great American pragmatists has made it possible (...) for students to see past the dismissive attitudes that Russell and Ayer, for example, adopted toward James and Dewey. Advancing along lines sketched out some decades ago in Morton White’s prescient Toward Reunion in Philosophy, Putnam has helped us see in detail how Quinean skepticism about the language-fact and essence-accident dualisms ties in with James’s and Dewey’s skepticism about many other traditional dualisms. (shrink)

The figure of Richard Rorty stands in complex relation to the tradition of American pragmatism. On the one hand, his intellectual creativity, lively prose, and bridge-building fueled the contemporary resurgence of pragmatism. On the other, his polemical claims and selective interpretations function as a negative, fixed pole against which thinkers of all stripes define themselves. Virtually all pragmatists on the contemporary scene, whether classical or "new," Deweyan, Jamesian, or Peircean, use Rorty as a foil to justify their (...) positions. The resulting internecine quarrels and divisions threaten to thwart and fragment the tradition's creative potential. More caricatured than understood, the specter of Rorty is blocking the road of inquiry and future development of pragmatism. Reconstructing Pragmatism moves beyond the Rortyan impasse by providing what has been missing for decades: a constructive, non-polemical account of Rorty's relation to classical pragmatism. The first book-length treatment of Rorty's intellectual debt to the early pragmatists, it establishes his selective appropriations not as misunderstandings or distortions but as a sustained, intentional effort to reconstruct their thinking. Featuring chapters devoted to five key pragmatist thinkers - Peirce, James, Dewey, Royce, and Addams - the book draws on archival sources and the full scope of Rorty's writings to challenge prevailing misconceptions and caricatures. By illuminating the critical resources, still largely untapped, that Rorty offers for articulating classical pragmatism's ongoing relevance, the book reveals limitations in the received images of the classical pragmatists that predominate in current debates and opens up new modes of understanding pragmatism and why it matters today. (shrink)

Liberal democracy needs a clear-eyed, robust defense to deal with the increasingly complex challenges it faces in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately much of contemporary liberal theory has rejected this endeavor for fear of appearing culturally hegemonic. Instead, liberal theorists have sought to gut liberalism of its ethical substance in order to render it more tolerant of non-liberal ways of life. This theoretical effort is misguided, however, because successful liberal democracy is an ethically demanding political regime that requires its citizenry to (...) display certain virtues and habits of mind. Against the grain of contemporary theory, philosopher Richard Rorty blends American pragmatism and romanticism to produce a comprehensive vision of liberal modernity that features a virtue-based conception of liberal democracy. In doing so, Rorty defends his pragmatic liberalism against a host of notable interlocutors, including Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Hilary Putnam, Richard J. Bernstein, and Jean Bethke Elshtain. (shrink)

This article considers the validity and strength of Richard Rorty’s pragmatist theory of interpretation in the light of two ethical issues related to literature and interpretation. Rorty’s theory is rejected on two grounds. First, it is argued that his unrestrained account of interpretation is incompatible with the distinctive moral concerns that have been seen to restrict the scope and nature of valid approaches to artworks. The second part of the paper claims that there is no indispensable relationship between supporting (...) Rorty’s pragmatist theory of interpretation and the important place that is attached to literature in the liberal society outlined by him. A reading of Donald Davidson’s texts on literary language and interpretation implies that an intentionalist theory of interpretation can accommodate those features that Rorty values in literature as well. (shrink)

En la primera parte de este artículo se discute el punto de vista del filósofo de las ciencias Arthur Fine, sobre el realismo y el antirealismo. Se establecen algunas relaciones semánticas y pragmáticas con D. Davidson y R. Brandon, sin dejar de insistir en que el lenguaje ya no puede seguir s..

Richard Rorty is famous, maybe even infamous, for his philosophical nonchalance. His groundbreaking work not only rejects all theories of truth but also dismisses modern epistemology and its preoccupation with knowledge and representation. At the same time, the celebrated pragmatist believed there could be no universally valid answers to moral questions, which led him to a complex view of religion rarely expressed in his writings. In this posthumous publication, Rorty, a strict secularist, finds in the pragmatic thought of John (...) Dewey, John Stuart Mill, William James, and George Santayana, among others, a political imagination shared by religious traditions. His intent is not to promote belief over nonbelief or to blur the distinction between religious and public domains. Rorty seeks only to locate patterns of similarity and difference so an ethics of decency and a politics of solidarity can rise. He particularly responds to Pope Benedict XVI and his campaign against the relativist vision. Whether holding theologians, metaphysicians, or political ideologues to account, Rorty remains steadfast in his opposition to absolute uniformity and its exploitation of political strength. (shrink)

A penetrating and illuminating exchange of views between Richard Rorty, a highly influential and sometimes controversial philosopher, and seven of his most thoughtful critics, providing new insights into the impact of his work on contemporary American philosophy.

Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusive philosophical language games. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism (...) into critical confrontation with one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993. The ground for this debate is layed out in introductory papers by Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, and the remainder of the volume records Derrida's and Rorty's responses to each other's work. Chantal Mouffe gives an overview of the stakes of this debate in a helpful preface. (shrink)

Demonstrating Richard Rorty's breadth of scholarship and his influence on diverse issues across the social sciences and humanities, this comprehensive bibliography contains 1,165 citations. A unique reference work on neo-pragmatism, this bibliography is essential for anyone researching Rorty's work and its impact on philosophy, literature, the arts, religion, the social sciences, politics, and education.

In these eloquent essays, articles and lectures, Rorty gives a stimulating summary of his central philosophical beliefs and how they relate to his political ...

Of course, talking about pragmatist ethics is difficult because Richard Rorty and earlier pragmatists deny that ethics, at least in the way the canonical philosophers have discussed it, is the sort of thing about which one should have views. Ethics, understood as the philosophic inquiry which looks into the meanings, and legitimacy of such terms as good, and so forth, is just the sort of enterprise which we pragmatists lament. Each of the pragmatists had known and dealt with tragedy (...) in his or her life. But, strangely, it is just in the face of tragedy that the pragmatists argue for the moral value of hope. For Rorty the connection depends on what he calls solidarity, social hope and utopian politics. The claim of common hopes is much closer to what John Dewey sees as central to communities – common purposes, in the development and implementation of which each member of the community has a role. (shrink)

I think … we ought to distinguish two sense of “deconstruction.” In one sense the word refers to the philosophical projects of Jacques Derrida. Taken this way, breaking down the distinction between philosophy and literature is essential to deconstruction. Derrida’s initiative in philosophy continues along a line laid down by Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. He rejects, however, Heidegger’s distinctions between “thinkers” and “poets” and between the few thinkers and the many scribblers. So Derrida rejects the sort of philosophical professionalism (...) which Nietzsche despised and which Heidegger recovered. This does indeed lead Derrida in the direction of “a general, undifferentiated textuality.” In his work, the philosophy-literature distinction is, at most, part of a ladder which we can let go of once we have climbed up it.In a second sense of “deconstruction,” however, the term refers to a method of reading texts. Neither this method, nor any other, should be attributed to Derrida—who shares Heidegger’s contempt for the very idea of method.2 But the method exists, and the passage I have quoted from Culler describes one of its essential features. Culler is quite right to say that deconstruction, in the second sense, needs a clear distinction between philosophy and literature. For the kind of reading which has come to be called “deconstructionist” requires two different straight persons: a macho professional philosopher who is insulted by the suggestion that he has submitted to a textual exigency, and a naive producer of literature whose jaw drops when she learns that her work has been supported by philosophical oppositions. The philosopher had thought of himself as speaking a sparse, pure, transparent language. The poetess shyly hoped that her unmediated woodnotes might please. Both reel back in horror when the deconstructionist reveals that each has been making use of complex idioms to which the other has contributed. Both go all to pieces at this news. A wild disorder overtakes their words. Their whimpers lend into interminable androgynous keening. Once again, deconstructionist intervention has produced a splendidly diffuse irresolution. Richard Rorty is Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Consequences of Pragmatism and is currently writing a book on Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

The following is a transcript of a discussion about the question between Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and James Conant. The discussion was part of a series of discussions on more or less philosophical subjects broadcast on Chicago Public Radio. This discussion is anchored by Gretchen Helfrich. Two listeners (Chris and Edwin) also took part.

Nietzsche’s views of truth and knowledge are often trought to be incompatible with political liberalism. But these views are pretty much the same as those of William James and John Dewey, who were right to see no such incompatibility. The pragmatists, like Nietzsche, wanted to drop the congnitivism which has dominated western intellectual life since Plato, but, unlike Nietzsche, they wished to do so in the interests of an egalitarian society rather than in the interests of a defiant and lonely (...) individualism. (shrink)

My colleague E. D. Hirsch has skillfully developed the consequences for literary interpretation of a “realistic” epistemological position which he formulates as follows: “If we could not distinguish a content of consciousness from its contexts, we could not know any object at all in the world.” Given that premise, it is easy for Hirsch to infer that “without the stable determinacy of meaning there can be no knowledge in interpretation.”1 A lot of people disagree with Hirsch on the latter point, (...) and they look to philosophy for replies to the premise from which it was inferred. But it is not clear where in philosophy they should look: To epistemology? Ethics?2 Philosophy of language? What Jacques Derrida calls “a new logic, … a graphematics of iterability”?3 Where do we find first principles from which to deduce an anti-Hirsch argument?I want to argue that there is no clear or straight answer to this question and that there need be none. I shall begin by criticizing the strategy used against Hirsch and others by my fellow pragmatists Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels. They think that one can start with philosophy of language and straighten things out by adopting a correct account of meaning. I share their desire to refute Hirsch, their admiration for Stanley Fish, and their view that “theory”—when defined as “an attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general”—has got to go . But they want to defend this position by exposing a mistake which they think common to all theory so defined: an error about the relation between meaning and intention. They assert that “what is intended and what is meant are identical” and that one will look for an “account of interpretation in general” only if one fails to recognize this identity . Such failure leads to an attempt to connect meaning and intention or to disconnect them . But such attempts must fail, for they presuppose a break “between language and speech acts” which does not exist . 1. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., The Aims of Interpretation , pp. 3, 1.2. See ibid., where Hirsch offers a “fundamental ethical maxim for interpretation” which, he says, “claims no privileged sanction from metaphysics or analysis” . Here and elsewhere Hirsch suggests that it may be ethics rather than epistemology which provides the principles that govern interpretation. There remain other passages, however, in which he retains the view, conspicuous in his earlier writings, that an analysis of the idea of knowledge is the ultimate justification for his approach.3. Jacques Derrida, “Limited Inc abc … , ” Glyph 2 : 219. Richard Rorty is Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Consequences of Pragmatism , among other works, and is currently writing a book on Martin Heidegger. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Deconstruction and Circumvention,” appeared in the September 1984 issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists by Chris Voparil Richard Kenneth Atkins Chris Voparil. Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xiv + 377. Hardback, $74.00.

Neither philosophy in general, nor deconstruction in particular, should be thought of as a pioneering, path-breaking, tool for feminist politics. Recent philosophy, including Derrida's, helps us see practices and ideas as neither natural nor inevitable—but that is all it does. When philosophy has finished showing that everything is a social construct, it does not help us decide which social constructs to retain and which to replace.

Though coming from distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion. Instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious. This unique collaboration fuses pragmatism and hermeneutics and (...) recognizes the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. Rorty discusses Vattimo's work Belief and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Vattimo explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. In a concluding dialogue, both philosophers analyze the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

What is truth? What value should we see in or attribute to it? The war over the meaning and utility of truth is at the center of contemporary philosophical debate, and its arguments have rocked the foundations of philosophical practice. In this book, the American pragmatist Richard Rorty and the French analytic philosopher Pascal Engel present their radically different perspectives on truth and its correspondence to reality. Rorty doubts that the notion of truth can be of any practical use (...) and points to the preconceptions that lie behind truth in both the intellectual and social spheres. Engel prefers a realist conception, defending the relevance and value of truth as a norm of belief and inquiry in both science and the public domain. Rorty finds more danger in using the notion of truth than in getting rid of it. Engel thinks it is important to hold on to the idea that truth is an accurate representation of reality. In Rorty's view, epistemology is an artificial construct meant to restore a function to philosophy usurped by the success of empirical science. Epistemology and ontology are false problems, and with their demise goes the Cartesian dualism of subject and object and the ancient problematic of appearance and reality. Conventional "philosophical problems," Rorty asserts, are just symptoms of the professionalism that has disfigured the discipline since the time of Kant. Engel, however, is by no means as complacent as Rorty in heralding the "end of truth," and he wages a fierce campaign against the "veriphobes" who deny its value. _What's the Use of Truth?_ is a rare opportunity to experience each side of this impassioned debate clearly and concisely. It is a subject that has profound implications not only for philosophical inquiry but also for the future study of all aspects of our culture. (shrink)

Romanticism and Pragmatism offers a new and original perspective by elucidating how pragmatism, humanism, anti-authoritarianism, and postmetaphysics are linked and is the first monograph to offer a detailed discussion of Richard Rorty's idea of a literary or poeticized culture. It argues that pragmatism's use of Romanticism is an integral part of a modern antifoundationalist story of progress, and that it can help us appreciate the significance of Romanticism in the twenty-first century. It also analyses the relation (...) between pragmatism and race (and cosmopolitanism), and approaches the question of a pragmatist literary ethics. (shrink)