Philosophers

Richard Rorty is dead and I think philosophy is poorer for it. But I have found during my undergraduate philosophy studies that most Anglo-American academics are largely hostile towards most of what he has written. Perhaps some one or more members panel can confirm this widespread hostility and articulate the more common reasons behind it.

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Maybe "hostile" is a little strong. To speak just for myself, I never found anything helpful to me in anything I read by Rorty. And I guess that's why I didn't bother reading very much of what he wrote. I've only got so much time, you know?

But if some people do seem hostile towards Rorty's writings, I can't said I wouldn't understand the sentiment. I found a lot of what Rorty wrote kind of hostile, not to mention a bit holier-than-thou.

Richard Rorty had a long career during which his viewsevolved. He influenced a wide range of philosophers grappling with some of thekey directions philosophy was going in the second half of the 20thcentury. A student of Wilfrid Sellars, in some of his early work in theepistemology and in the philosophy of mind, Rorty helped articulate the attackon foundationalism in epistemology, and on the idea that mental states areprivate and incorrigible. (See, for example, “Incorrigibility as a Mark of theMental”, Journal of Philosophy, v67,n12, 1970) He influenced the next generation of epistemologists andphilosophers of language, including Michael Williams (Groundless Belief and UnnaturalDoubts) and Robert Brandom (Making itExplicit). Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is,in my view, an important work with an historical focus. While sweeping andperhaps somewhat grandiose, Rorty attempts to attack traditional epistemologyby taking it very seriously. There are analyses of key ideas in Descartes’ Meditations, for example, well worthlooking at in that book.

Rorty took the consequences of the view that knowledge doesnot rest on a foundation of certainty in a particular (and some would argueextreme) pragmatist direction, one in which he holds that philosophyrelinquishes its status as having any priority to other disciplines. Heembraced the idea that philosophical inquiry and the critical analysis ofliterary texts are on a par. Interestingly, other students of Sellars, namelyPaul and Patricia Churchland, also reject the idea that we have incorrigibleaccess to our mental states, and they argue for a continuity of philosophicalinquiry with other forms of inquiry. But while Rorty emphasized the continuitywith literary theorizing, the Churchlands hold that philosophical insight,particularly into the nature of the mind, requires investment in the methods ofthe brain sciences. Many philosophers find such views, often presented as heralding the deathof philosophy, misguided or at least very much over-stated. Perhaps this isresponsible for the sense of some hostility you suggest exists towards Rorty’swork.

Like the Churchlands, (see the recent New Yorker profile of them) Rorty was more widely known in generalintellectual circles than are most philosophers, even some of the mostimportant philosophers. I think it’s important to consider the whole body of Rorty’swork, not just the essays and books that made him so well-known in recentyears.

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