Abstract

The paper explores the unity of Richard Rorty's philosophy. It interprets his „eliminative materialism“ as stemming from the insight that the language games we use in talking about ourselves and each other are the result of our own choice, they are not forced on us from the „outside“. It interprets Rorty's later development as an application of this thought to the field of the objective: Can „brute facts“ prescribe how we speak about them? The paper argues that in this field there are also choices we have to make concerning our social activity of speaking, but that this does not necessarily deprive the word „objectivity“ of its meaning, as the author has worked out in Making it Explicit