Richard Rorty

This thesis explores the manner in which the vocabularies of quantum and classical physics can be redescribed in the vocabulary of Richard Rorty’s ironist and common sense dyad, and vice-versa. Of primary concern in this exploration is an examination of the ways in which such a redescription might encourage the realization of Rorty’s postmetaphysical culture and its attendant model of human solidarity. It is suggested that the concept of decoherence in the quantum mechanical tradition will prove especially useful to the (...) Rortian who wishes to usher in the aforementioned cultural shift as decoherence both preserves the commonsensical understanding of the world and also offers a compelling description of the way in which irony must remain, as suggested by Rorty, a private pursuit. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's early works criticize the development of modern democratic institutions as creating a surveillance society, which functions to control bodies by making them feel watched and monitored full time. His later works attempt to recover private space by exploring subversive techniques of the body and language. Following Foucault, pragmatists like Richard Shusterman and Richard Rorty have also developed very rich approaches to this project, extending it deeper into the literary and somatic dimensions of self-stylizing. Yet, for a debate centered (...) on the re-creation of the vision of the self, these discussions have yet to fully engage—even while they set the conditions for this engagement with—issues of posthuman technologies, such as AI, robotics, and genetic engineering. These certainly will constitute the primary engine of public institutional surveillance in the years to come. With this surveillance, the two spheres of private self-fashioning and public institutions will continue to evolve in relation to one another. As they do so, democratic society will change considerably. Perhaps Rorty's own normative and linguistic ideal of conversational maintenance may provide something of a democratic limit case on any future posthuman self-fashioning. (shrink)

Originally published in Proceedings of the British Academy 60 (1974), 339-359.

Richard Rorty is one of the most important philosophers of our current world. His thought, inside the movement known as pragmatism, has had a great influence in the North American universities. This article treats on his principal work, Philosophy and future, in that the central concepts of the philosophy they are put in context, looking for it real utility and assuming the conflicts that they generate.

This article addresses the question whether the model of social criticism as 'connected' or 'loyal' which is advanced by Richard Rorty and Michael Walzer offers an adequate picture of social criticism. Two claims are made. First, it is suggested that loyalty is an internally conflicted concept, with three components: a recognition of situatedness in a particular relationship; an affirmation of that relationship by the loyal agent; a set of values or local principles. Where the third component is prominent, loyalty is (...) more reflective and distanced; where the second component predominates, loyalty slips into unreflective commitment. Second, it is argued that Rorty and Walzer conflate the social critic's recognition of his or her situatedness in contexts of power with the affirmation of that situatedness. It is concluded that the model of loyal social criticism is mislead mg, and that the practice of the critic must be tempered by the operation of the sense of injustice. Key Words: connection • loyalty • Rorty • social criticism • Walzer. (shrink)

In spite of the routine acknowledgement of Richard Rorty's ubiquitous influence, those who have invoked his name en route to advancing their case for a pragmatist bioethics have not given us a very clear picture of exactly how Rorty's work might actually contribute to methodological discussion in this field. I try to provide such an account here. Given the impressive depth and scope of Rorty's work during the past two decades, I make no pretense of presenting either a comprehensive or (...) novel interpretation of his project. My primary aim here is simply to sketch what I take to be the implications of Rorty's neopragmatism for our methodological debates within bioethics. I conclude that the yield of Rorty's pragmatism for current methodological debates in bioethics is primarily negative, knocking the props out from under any pretensions to foundations and universal principles of right and wrong. His "professorial pragmatism" and philosophical trash disposal efforts would clearly sweep away some approaches based upon appeals to nature or universal human dignity, and his deflationary nominalist view of principles would threaten the foundations of some influential principlist approaches to bioethics. (shrink)

In this article I offer a way of interpreting Richard Rorty's political suggestions. I believe Rorty's lack of offering concrete proposals for dealing with the usual key problems of liberalism is deliberate. I look at this lack from a generous point of view and claim that what Rorty offers us is another kind of political intentionality. As a pragmatist, Rorty does not look for a foundational way of justifying things but, instead, searches for a description that makes liberalism an attractive (...) practice. Following Gadamer and Rorty, I intend looking at liberalism as a kind of game and a public lifestyle. I claim that such a prior understanding illuminates and articulates liberal key terms such as: freedoms, public sphere, respecting the other. (shrink)

El concepto de lo público en Richard Rorty, heredero de la tradición liberal, admite ser tratado como parte de un juego del lenguaje denominado liberalismo democrático. En ese sentido, una de las reglas de este juego para saber si una jugada es válida consiste en asumir la distinción entre esfera pú..

In opening the Lowell Lectures of 1906 with "The Present Dilemma in Philosophy," William James confounded his audience with the initial thesis that "The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of temperaments." This article revisits James's thesis, using the latitude afforded by his title to describe a different dilemma than he was concerned with in his lecture. Pragmatism can be applied to diagnose the apparently irreconcilable perspectives that give rise to a dilemma about (...) knowledge and justification, and to suggest a philosophically advantageous "mediating way of thinking.". (shrink)

For pragmatists, the inability to stand outside of the contingencies of human practice does not impede social criticism. However, several pragmatists have argued that Richard Rorty’s position unnecessarily and undesirably circumscribes the scope of social criticism, allowing for nothing more than an appeal to current practices, with no way to challenge or revise them. This article argues against this understanding, showing that on Rorty’s account, social criticism is an interpretive activity in which critics draw on elements within current practices, focusing (...) attention on the ways in which a society’s practices fail to live up to its self-image. In so doing, Rorty’s position is shown to allow for everything that his fellow pragmatists think important, but take him to be denying. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s notion of ironism has been widely criticized for entailing frivolity and light-mindedness, for being inimical to moral commitment and, perhaps most importantly, for its putative incompatibility with his vision of liberalism. This paper suggests that these criticisms are misplaced, stemming from a misunderstanding of ironism that Rorty’s presentation has itself in part encouraged. The paper goes on to argue that ironism is not only consistent with the liberal society which Rorty favours, but that it can serve such a (...) society by helping to illustrate the ways in which those societies contain unrecognized injustices. (shrink)

At first sight it would seem difficult to find two philosophers as different as Brian Barry and Richard Rorty. It is widely held that the former is one of the most forceful proponents of liberal universalism, whereas the latter is typically viewed as the quintessential relativist. In this essay, different usages of the term univeralism are considered, and it is argued that Rorty's position is much closer to that of Barry than is generally supposed. Indeed, the article concludes by suggesting (...) that it is Rorty who offers the less question-begging philosophical account of political liberalism. (shrink)

Asking about the place of religion in a democratic society refers straightforwardly to the kind of pluralism we adopt. Given that intra-societal tensions mark out a democratic pluralistic society, then it seems that there is no doubt that there should be a place for religion and religious people in it. What is crucial for a democratic society is taking a suitable view on pluralism. There could be, at least, two versions of pluralism: Incommensurable or radical and commensurable or moderate. It (...) is argued that the incommensurable account of pluralism confronts with serious problems both theoretically (like the impossibility of outer critique) and practically (like replacing persuasion with force). Rorty advocates a commensurable pluralism based on pragmatic conventions or "know-how" skills without any meta-narrative or translation manual among the doctrines of rival views. However, along with Davidson, it is stated that some kind of translation among the rival views is inevitable. In addition, it is argued that commensurable pluralism could not be limited to merely know-how skills and it needs some know-that insights. This view of pluralism not only opens the door of dialogue, but also provides a basis for removing superficial differences or conflicts between the rivals. Real differences, however, could remain and should be tolerated. (shrink)

This article examines Richard Rorty's approach to the self in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity . In spite of their differing philosophical bases, Rorty and Emmanuel Levinas converge methodologically in their treatments of the self by avoiding paradigmatic notions of human nature and a philosophical project of justification. Although Rorty refuses to prioritize a moralist account of the self over its romanticist rivals, his presentation relies on the reader's response to the ethical appeal of the other as depicted by Levinas: Rorty (...) ultimately de-divinizes the moralist self on an ethical basis. Finally, a Levinasian approach would supplement Rorty's view of the self by manifesting: concern for victims of de-moralization, greater appreciation for philosophical rationality and justification, and acceptance of self-critically executed paternalistic interventions. In addition, Rorty's mistrust of universals converges with Kant's apprehension that ethical universalization could treat human beings as less than ends in themselves. Key Words: ethics • Immanuel Kant • Emmanuel Levinas • neopragmatism • phenomenology • postmodernity • psychology • Richard Rorty • the self • solidarity. (shrink)

Richard Rorty challenges Jurgen Habermas's belief that validity-claims raised within context-bound discussions contain a moment of universality validity. Rorty argues that immersion within contingent languages prohibits any neutral, context-independent ground, that one cannot predict the defense of one's assertions before any audience, and that philosophy can no more escape its contextual limitations than strategic counterparts. Alfred Schutz's phenomenological account of motivation, the reciprocity of perspectives, and the theoretical province of meaning can articulate Habermas's intuitions.Since any claim can be analyzed from (...) an observer's perspective for its because-motives, it can always be shown to be context-related; but to the participant involved in the in-order-to project of establishing a claim's validity, the claim appears objectively valid until counter-evidence surfaces. Rorty, even when explaining what it is to make a truth claim, resorts to the observer perspective and omits reference to the in-order-to perspective, within which alone unconditional validity becomes visible. Furthermore, the expectation that one's claim is universally valid depends not on an empirical prediction that one''s claim can survive hypothesized future possible audiences. Rather, because of the reciprocity of perspectives, making possible communication and a common life, theoreticians assume that others will recognize what they take to be objective or valid, independently of diverse biographical circumstances. Finally, within the theoretical province requiring relevances different from those of everyday life, philosophy articulates claims with a greater potential to arrive at universal validity than projects that aim less universally, in spite of the fact that its theoretical context is always susceptible to because motive analysis. (shrink)

My paper is going to illustrate how a universal normative ground can be individuated behind Richard Rorty’s political philosophy, chiefly as he develops it in his well-known Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. I shall show how a foundational moral assumption is constantly backing his active defence of liberalism, which defines “cruelty” as “the worst thing we do” and claims that “no well-grounded theoretical answer” can be given in reply to the interrogative “why not be cruel?” After delineating very briefly Rorty’s two (...) crucial concepts of “ethnocentrism” and “antirepresentationalism”, a clear understanding of which is necessary to appreciate Rorty’s position, I shall focus my attention on Rorty’s conception of cruelty. Structuring within a consistent frame the many hints that he furnishes with regard to this issue, I shall determine its most frequent and characteristic features, the study of which shall resolve into the individuation of the concept working as the universal normative ground for his liberalism, namely an underlying pain-aversion principle, which regularly supports Rorty’s claims against cruelty – and ergo his claims in favour of liberalism. Such a discovery is tantamount to the realisation that a contradiction undermines Rorty’s negation of the possibility to find a “well-grounded theoretical answer” to the question “why not be cruel?” Specifically, either a metaphysical aversion to pain is presupposed by Rorty, as Christine Korsgaar’s study on the sources of normativity can help us to see, or a similar point is actually inherent to Rorty’s arguing and acting pro liberalism, as he has been doing for more than twenty years. In the former case, the contradiction would be formal; in the latter case, the contradiction would be performative. (shrink)

O presente trabalho pretende resgatar o debate entre Richard Rorty e Nancy Fraser, ocorrido no início da década de 1990, especificamente a partir do texto Feminismo e Pragmatismo apresentado na Tanner Lectures on Human Value. Nesta conferência o filósofo discorreu sobre a possibilidade de conciliação entre o seu pragmatismo e o feminismo. Rorty aborda o feminismo enquanto autocriação da mulher através da “redescrição” mediante a manifestação poética, onde o filósofo encara as feministas como criadoras do novo. Em seguida, exporemos a (...) crítica de Fraser, que trabalha sobre a proposta apresentada pelo pragmatista e que oferece suas próprias idéias dentro de uma concepção do feminismo como movimento democrático de massa. Ao final, uma breve avaliação das implicações das críticas e sugestões apresentadas por Rorty ao feminismo e também da resposta de Fraser. (shrink)