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Richard Rorty
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Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 June 8, 2007)

was an American philosopher. Educated at the University Richard Rorty
of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests
and training in both the history of philosophy and
contemporary analytic philosophy, the latter of which
came to comprise the main focus of his work at Princeton
University in the 1960s.[1] He subsequently came to reject
the tradition of philosophy according to which knowledge
involves correct representation (a "mirror of nature") of a
world whose existence remains wholly independent of
that representation. 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. Among Born Richard McKay Rorty
his most influential books are Philosophy and the Mirror October 4, 1931
of Nature (1979), Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), New York City
and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).
Died June 8, 2007 (aged 75)
Rorty saw the idea of knowledge as a "mirror of nature" Palo Alto, California
as pervasive throughout the history of western Alma mater University of Chicago (BA/MA)
philosophy. Against this approach, Rorty advocated for a Yale University (PhD)
novel form of American pragmatism, sometimes called
neopragmatism, in which scientific and philosophical Era 20th-century philosophy
methods form merely a set of contingent "vocabularies" Region Western Philosophy
which people abandon or adopt over time according to
School Pragmatism, postanalytic
social conventions and usefulness. Abandoning
representationalist accounts of knowledge and language, philosophy
Rorty believed, would lead to a state of mind he referred Institutions Wellesley College
to as "ironism," in which people become completely Princeton University
aware of the contingency of their placement in history University of Virginia
and of their philosophical vocabulary. Rorty tied this Stanford University
brand of philosophy to the notion of "social hope"; he
believed that without the representationalist accounts, and Main Epistemology
interests Philosophy of language
without metaphors between the mind and the world,
human society would behave more peacefully. He also Philosophy of mind
emphasized the reasons why the interpretation of culture Ethics
as conversation (Bernstein 1971), constitutes the crucial Metaphilosophy
concept of a "postphilosophical" culture determined to Liberalism
abandon representationalist accounts of traditional Postmodernism
epistemology, incorporating American pragmatist
Notable ideas Postphilosophy
naturalism that considers the natural sciences as an
advance towards liberalism. Ironism
Final vocabulary
Epistemological behaviorism
Antirepresentationalism
Contents
Influences
1 Biography

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2 Major works Influenced

2.1 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
2.2 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
2.3 Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
2.4 Essays on Heidegger and Others
2.5 Achieving Our Country
3 On human rights
4 Reception and criticism
5 Select bibliography
6 See also
7 Notes
8 Further reading
9 External links

Biography
Richard Rorty was born on October 4, 1931, in New York City.[2] His parents, James and Winifred Rorty,
were activists, writers and social democrats. His maternal grandfather, Walter Rauschenbusch, was a central
figure in the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century.[3] His father experienced two nervous
breakdowns in his later life. The second breakdown, which he had in the early 1960s, was more serious and
"included claims to divine prescience."[4] Consequently, Richard Rorty fell into depression as a teenager and
in 1962 began a six-year psychiatric analysis for obsessional neurosis.[4] Rorty wrote about the beauty of
rural New Jersey orchids in his short autobiography, "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids." His colleague Jrgen
Habermas's obituary for Rorty points out that Rorty's contrasting childhood experiences, such as beautiful
orchids versus reading a book in his parents' house that defended Leon Trotsky against Stalin, created an
early interest in philosophy. He describes Rorty as an ironist:

"Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', the strict
atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: 'My sense of the holy is bound up
with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which
love is pretty much the only law.'"[5]

Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago shortly before turning 15, where he received a bachelor's and a
master's degree in philosophy (studying under Richard McKeon),[6][7] continuing at Yale University for a
PhD in philosophy (19521956).[8] He married another academic, Amlie Oksenberg Rorty (Harvard
University professor), with whom he had a son, Jay, in 1954. After two years in the United States Army, he
taught at Wellesley College for three years until 1961.[9] Rorty divorced his wife and then married Stanford
University bioethicist Mary Varney Rorty in 1972. They had two children, Kevin and Patricia. While
Richard Rorty was a "strict atheist" (Habermas),[5] Mary Varney Rorty was a practicing Mormon.[4]

Rorty was a professor of philosophy at Princeton University for 21 years.[9] In 1981, he was a recipient of a
MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the "Genius Award," in its first year of awarding, and in 1982
he became Kenan Professor of the Humanities at the University Of Virginia.[10] In 1997 Rorty became
professor of comparative literature (and philosophy, by courtesy), at Stanford University, where he spent the
remainder of his academic career.[10] During this period he was especially popular, and once quipped that he
had been assigned to the position of "transitory professor of trendy studies."[11]

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Rorty's doctoral dissertation, "The Concept of Potentiality" was an historical study of the concept,
completed under the supervision of Paul Weiss, but his first book (as editor), The Linguistic Turn (1967),
was firmly in the prevailing analytic mode, collecting classic essays on the linguistic turn in analytic
philosophy. However, he gradually became acquainted with the American philosophical movement known
as pragmatism, particularly the writings of John Dewey. The noteworthy work being done by analytic
philosophers such as Willard Van Orman Quine and Wilfrid Sellars caused significant shifts in his thinking,
which were reflected in his next book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979).

Pragmatists generally hold that the meaning of a proposition is determined by its use in linguistic practice.
Rorty combined pragmatism about truth and other matters with a later Wittgensteinian philosophy of
language which declares that meaning is a social-linguistic product, and sentences do not 'link up' with the
world in a correspondence relation. Rorty wrote in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989):

"Truth cannot be out therecannot exist independently of the human mindbecause sentences
cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.
Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own unaided by the
describing activities of humans cannot."(5)

Views like this led Rorty to question many of philosophy's most basic assumptionsand have also led to
him being apprehended as a postmodern/deconstructionist philosopher. Indeed, from the late 1980s through
the 1990s, Rorty focused on the continental philosophical tradition, examining the works of Friederich
Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Jean-Franois Lyotard and Jacques Derrida. His work from
this period included Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical
Papers (1991) and Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers (1998). The latter two works attempt to bridge
the dichotomy between analytic and continental philosophy by claiming that the two traditions complement
rather than oppose each other.

According to Rorty, analytic philosophy may not have lived up to its pretensions and may not have solved
the puzzles it thought it had. Yet such philosophy, in the process of finding reasons for putting those
pretensions and puzzles aside, helped earn itself an important place in the history of ideas. By giving up on
the quest for apodicticity and finality that Edmund Husserl shared with Rudolf Carnap and Bertrand Russell,
and by finding new reasons for thinking that such quest will never succeed, analytic philosophy cleared a
path that leads past scientism, just as the German idealists cleared a path that led around empiricism.

In the last fifteen years of his life, Rorty continued to publish his writings, including four volumes of his
archived philosophical papers, Achieving Our Country (1998), a political manifesto partly based on readings
of Dewey and Walt Whitman in which he defended the idea of a progressive, pragmatic left against what he
feels are defeatist, anti-liberal, anti-humanist positions espoused by the critical left and continental school.
Rorty felt these anti-humanist positions were personified by figures like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault.
Such theorists were also guilty of an "inverted Platonism" in which they attempted to craft overarching,
metaphysical, "sublime" philosophieswhich in fact contradicted their core claims to be ironist and
contingent. Rorty's last works, after his move to Stanford University, focused on the place of religion in
contemporary life, liberal communities, comparative literature and philosophy as "cultural politics."

Shortly before his death, he wrote a piece called "The Fire of Life," (published in the November 2007 issue
of Poetry magazine),[12] in which he meditates on his diagnosis and the comfort of poetry. He concludes, "I
now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out
on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that
Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have
lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnutsjust as I would have if I had made more
close friends. Cultures with richer vocabularies are more fully humanfarther removed from the
beaststhan those with poorer ones; individual men and women are more fully human when their memories

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are amply stocked with verses."

On June 8, 2007, Rorty died in his home from pancreatic cancer.[8][10][13]

Major works
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty argues that the central problems of modern
epistemology depend upon a picture of the mind as trying to faithfully represent (or "mirror") a
mind-independent, external reality. If we give up this metaphor, then the entire enterprise of foundationalist
epistemology is misguided. A foundationalist believes that in order to avoid the regress inherent in claiming
that all beliefs are justified by other beliefs, some beliefs must be self-justifying and form the foundations to
all knowledge.

There were two senses of "foundationalism" criticized in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. In the
epistemological sense, Rorty criticized the attempt to justify knowledge claims by tracing them to a set of
foundations (e.g., self-evident premises or noninferential sensations); more broadly, he criticized the claim
of philosophy to function foundationally within a culture. The former argument draws on Sellars's critique
of the idea that there is a "given" in sensory perception, in combination with Quine's critique of the
distinction between analytic sentences (sentences which are true solely in virtue of what they mean) and
synthetic sentences (sentences made true by the world). Each critique, taken alone, provides a problem for a
conception of how philosophy ought to proceed, yet leaves enough of the tradition intact to proceed with its
former aspirations. Combined, Rorty claimed, the two critiques are devastating. With no privileged insight
into the structure of belief and no privileged realm of truths of meaning, we have, instead, knowledge as
those beliefs that pay their way. The only worthwhile description of the actual process of inquiry, Rorty
claimed, was a Kuhnian account of the standard phases of the progress of disciplines, oscillating through
normal and abnormal periods, between routine problem-solving and intellectual crises.

After rejecting foundationalism, Rorty argues that one of the few roles left for a philosopher is to act as an
intellectual gadfly, attempting to induce a revolutionary break with previous practice, a role that Rorty was
happy to take on himself. Rorty suggests that each generation tries to subject all disciplines to the model that
the most successful discipline of the day employs. In Rorty's view, the success of modern science has led
academics in philosophy and the humanities to mistakenly imitate scientific methods. Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature popularized and extended ideas of Wilfrid Sellars (the critique of the Myth of the given)
and Willard Van Orman Quine (the critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction) and others who advocate
the Wittgensteinian doctrine of "dissolving" rather than solving philosophical problems.

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), Rorty abandons specifically analytic modes of explication in
favor of narrative pastiche in order to develop an alternative conceptual vocabulary to that of the
"Platonists" he rejects. This schema is based on the belief that there is no worthwhile theory of truth, aside
from a boring, non-epistemic semantic one (as Donald Davidson developed out of the work of Alfred
Tarski). Rorty suggests that the task of philosophy should be distinguished along public and private lines.
Private philosophers, who provide one with greater abilities to (re)create oneself, a view adapted from
Nietzsche and which Rorty also identifies with the novels of Marcel Proust and Vladimir Nabokov, should
not be expected to help with public problems. For a public philosophy, one might turn to Rawls or
Habermas.

This book also marks his first attempt to specifically articulate a political vision consistent with his
philosophy, the vision of a diverse community bound together by opposition to cruelty, and not by abstract

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ideas such as 'justice' or 'common humanity,' policed by the separation of the public and private realms of
life.

In this book, Rorty introduces the terminology of Ironism, which he uses to describe his mindset and his
philosophy.

Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth

Amongst the essays in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (1990), is "The
Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in which Rorty defends Rawls against communitarian critics. Rorty
argues that liberalism can "get along without philosophical presuppositions," while at the same time
conceding to communitarians that "a conception of the self that makes the community constitutive of the self
does comport well with liberal democracy."[14] For Rorty, social institutions ought to be thought of as
"experiments in cooperation rather than as attempts to embody a universal and ahistorical order."[15]

Essays on Heidegger and Others

In this text, Rorty focuses primarily on the continental philosophers Heidegger and Derrida. He argues that
these European "post-Nietzscheans" share much with American pragmatists, in that they critique
metaphysics and reject the correspondence theory of truth. When discussing Derrida, Rorty claims that
Derrida is most useful when viewed as a funny writer who attempted to circumvent the Western
philosophical tradition, rather than the inventor of a philosophical (or literary) "method." In this vein, Rorty
criticizes Derrida's followers like Paul de Man for taking deconstructive literary theory too seriously.

Achieving Our Country

In Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (1997), Rorty differentiates
between what he sees as the two sides of the Left, a cultural Left and a progressive Left. He criticizes the
cultural Left, which is exemplified by post-structuralists such as Foucault and postmodernists such as
Lyotard, for offering critiques of society, but no alternatives (or alternatives that are so vague and general as
to be abdications). Although these intellectuals make insightful claims about the ills of society, Rorty
suggests that they provide no alternatives and even occasionally deny the possibility of progress. On the
other hand, the progressive Left, exemplified for Rorty by the pragmatist Dewey, Whitman and James
Baldwin, makes hope for a better future its priority. Without hope, Rorty argues, change is spiritually
inconceivable and the cultural Left has begun to breed cynicism. Rorty sees the progressive Left as acting in
the philosophical spirit of pragmatism.

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.[16]

Reception and criticism

Rorty is among the most widely discussed and controversial contemporary philosophers,[17] 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,

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Jrgen Habermas, Hilary Putnam, John McDowell, Jacques Bouveresse, and Daniel Dennett, among
others.[18] 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."[19]

John McDowell is strongly influenced by Rorty, particularly by Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
(1979).[20] In continental philosophy, authors such as Jrgen 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. American novelist David Foster Wallace titled a short story
in his collection Oblivion: Stories "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature", and critics have accredited Rorty's
influence to some of Wallace's writings on Irony.[21]

Susan Haack has been a fierce critic of Rorty's neopragmatism. Haack criticises Rorty's claim to be a
pragmatist at all and wrote a short play called We Pragmatists, where Rorty and Charles Sanders Peirce have
a fictional conversation using only accurate quotes from their own writing. For Haack, the only link between
Rorty's neopragmatism and the pragmatism of Peirce is the name. Haack believes Rorty's neopragmatism is
both anti-philosophical and anti-intellectual, and exposes people further to rhetorical manipulation.[9][22][23]

Although Rorty was an avowed liberal, his political and moral philosophies have been attacked by
commentators from the Left, some of whom believe them to be insufficient frameworks for social justice.[24]
Rorty was also criticized by others for his rejection of the idea that science can depict the world.[25] One
criticism, especially of Contingency, irony, and solidarity is that Rorty's philosophical 'hero', the ironist, is
an elitist figure.[26] Rorty claims that the majority of people would be "commonsensically nominalist and
historicist" but not ironist. These people would combine an ongoing attention to the particular as opposed to
the transcendent (nominalism), with an awareness of their place in a continuum of contingent lived
experience alongside other individuals (historicist), without necessarily having continual doubts about the
resulting worldview as the ironist does. An ironist is someone who: 1) "has radical and continuing doubts
about their final vocabulary"; 2) "realizes that argument phrased in their vocabulary can neither underwrite
nor dissolve these doubts"; and 3) "does not think their vocabulary is closer to reality than others" (all 73,
Contingency, irony, and solidarity). On the other hand, the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo alongside the
Spanish philosopher Santiago Zabala in their 2011 book Hermeneutic Communism: from Heidegger to Marx
affirm that "together with Richard Rorty we also consider it a flaw that 'the main thing contemporary
academic Marxists inherit from Marx and Engels is the conviction that the quest for the cooperative
commonwealth should be scientific rather than utopian, knowing rather than romantic.' As we will show
hermeneutics contains all the utopian and romantic features that Rorty refers to because, contrary to the
knowledge of science, it does not claim modern universality but rather postmodern particularism."[27]

Rorty often draws on a broad range of other philosophers to support his views, and his interpretation of their
works has been contested.[28] Since Rorty is working from a tradition of re-interpretation, he remains
uninterested in 'accurately' portraying other thinkers, but rather in utilizing their work in the same way a
literary critic might use a novel. His essay "The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres" is a thorough
description of how he treats the greats in the history of philosophy. In Contingency, irony, and solidarity,
Rorty attempts to disarm those who criticize his writings by arguing that their philosophical criticisms are
made using axioms that are explicitly rejected within Rorty's own philosophy.[29] For instance, Rorty defines
allegations of irrationality as affirmations of vernacular "otherness", and soRorty claimsaccusations of
irrationality can be expected during any argument and must simply be brushed aside.[30]

Select bibliography
As author

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Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. ISBN
Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. ISBN
978-0816610631
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN
978-0-521-35381-6
Philosophical Papers vols I-IV:
Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers I. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0521353694
Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers II. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991. ISBN
Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
ISBN
Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007.
Mind, Language, and Metaphilosophy: Early Philosophical Papers Eds. S. Leach and J. Tartaglia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-107-61229-7.
Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0674003118
Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin, 2000. ISBN
Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies: A Conversation with Richard Rorty. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm
Press, 2002. ISBN
The Future of Religion with Gianni Vattimo Ed. Santiago Zabala. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0231134941
An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-231-15056-9

As editor

The Linguistic Turn, Essays in Philosophical Method, (1967), ed. by Richard M. Rorty, University of
Chicago press, 1992, ISBN 9780226725697 (an introduction and two retrospective essays)
Philosophy in History. ed. by R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985 (an essay by R. Rorty, Historiography of philosophy, pp. 2976)

See also
Anti-foundationalism
Contributions to liberal theory
Deconstruction-and-religion
List of American philosophers
List of thinkers influenced by deconstruction

Notes
1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/#1
2. "Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher". press.uchicago.edu. 1931-10-04. Retrieved
2012-09-26.
3. Bernstein, Adam (11 June 2007). "Richard Rorty, 75; Leading U.S. Pragmatist Philosopher".
washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
4. Bruce Kuklick. "Neil Gross, Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher." Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society 47.1 (2011):36.
5. "Jrgen Habermas: Philosopher, poet and friend (12/06/2007)". signandsight. Retrieved 2012-09-26.
6. Marchetti, Giancarlo. "Interview with Richard Rorty." Philosophy Now Volume 43, Oct.-Nov. 2003.

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7. Ryerson, James. "The Quest for Uncertainty Richard Rorty's Pragmatic Pilgrimage." Linguafranca Volume 10,
Dec. 2000/Jan. 2001. Web. 21 June 2011. <http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/print/0012/feature_quest.html>
8. "Richard Rorty, distinguished public intellectual and controversial philosopher, dead at 75" (http://news-
service.stanford.edu/news/2007/june13/rorty-061307.html) (Stanford's announcement), June 10, 2007
9. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/)
10. "Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75" (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/obituaries/11rorty.html?_r=3&
ref=obituaries&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) (NY Times Obituary), June 11, 2007
11. Ryerson, James. "Essay: Thinking Cheerfully." (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/books/review/Ryerson-
t.html?em&ex=1185163200&en=b5c7e421ef8aa6b6&ei=5087%0A) The New York Times Book Review. July 22,
2007: p 27.
12. Rorty, Richard (November 2007). "The Fire of Life". Poetry magazine.
13. "Richard Rorty," (http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=188) (short
obituary), June 9, 2007.
14. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (1990), p 179
15. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (1990), p 196
16. See Barreto, Jos-Manuel. "Rorty and Human Rights: Contingency, Emotions and How to Defend Human Rights
Telling Stories." (http://www.utrechtlawreview.org/index.php/ulr/article/viewFile/164/163) Utrecht Law Review,
Volume 7 Issue 2 April 2011
17. (Last sentence of the introduction) (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/)
18. Amazon.com: Rorty and His Critics (Philosophers and their Critics): Robert B. Brandom: Books
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0631209824)
19. Scruton, Roger (2007-06-12). "Richard Rorty's legacy". openDemocracy. Retrieved 2012-09-26.
20. In the preface to Mind and World (pp. ixx) McDowell states that "it will be obvious that Rorty's work is [...]
central for the way I define my stance here".
21. Howard, Jennifer. "The Afterlife of David Foster Wallace". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved
30 December 2013.
22. Susan Haack (November 1997). "Vulgar Rortyism". New Criterion.
23. Haack, Susan (1993). "Ch. 9: Vulgar Pragmatism: an Unedifying Prospect". Evidence and Inquiry. Oxford UK:
Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-11851-9.
24. "Objectivity and Action: Wal-Mart and the Legacy of Marx and Nietzsche" (http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/JUR-
online/PDF/2005/heyer.pdf), A discussion of Terry Eagleton's attacks on Rorty's philosophy as insufficient in the
fight against corporations such as Wal-Mart
25. "The failure to recognize science's particular powers to depict reality, Daniel Dennett wrote, shows 'flatfooted
ignorance of the proven methods of scientific truth-seeking and their power.'"[1] (http://www.iht.com/articles
/2007/06/11/frontpage/obits.php)
26. Rob Reich The Paradoxes of Education in Rorty's Liberal Utopia (http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook
/96_docs/reich.html)
27. Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala. Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx Columbia University
Press. 2011. Pgs. 2 and 3
28. Richard Rorty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/)
29. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN, p 44
30. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN, p 48

Further reading
What We Mean By Experience (http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=21276%7C) / Marianne Janack,
2012
''Feminist Interpretations of Richard Rorty (http://www.psupress.org/books/titles
/978-0-271-03628-1.html) / Marianne Janack (editor), 2010
Richard Rorty: Critical Assessments (4 vols) / James Tartaglia, 2009
Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher / Neil Gross, 2008
Rorty's Politics of Redescription / Gideon Calder, 2007
Rorty and the Mirror of Nature / James Tartaglia, 2007
Richard Rorty: Pragmatism and Political Liberalism / Michael Bacon, 2007
Richard Rorty: politics and vision / Christopher Voparil, 2006
Richard Rorty: his philosophy under discussion / Andreas Vieth, 2005

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Richard Rorty / Charles B Guignon., 2003

Rorty / Gideon Calder, 2003
Richard Rorty's American faith / Taub, Gad Shmuel, 2003
The ethical ironist: Kierkegaard, Rorty, and the educational quest / Rohrer, Patricia Jean, 2003
Doing philosophy as a way to individuation: Reading Rorty and Cavell / Kwak, Duck-Joo, 2003
Richard Rorty / Alan R Malachowski, 2002
Richard Rorty: critical dialogues / Matthew Festenstein, 2001
Richard Rorty: education, philosophy, and politics / Michael Peters, 2001
Rorty and his critics / Robert Brandom, 2000
On Rorty / Richard Rumana, 2000
Philosophy and freedom : Derrida, Rorty, Habermas, Foucault / John McCumber, 2000
A pragmatist's progress?: Richard Rorty and American intellectual history / John Pettegrew, 2000
Problems of the modern self: Reflections on Rorty, Taylor, Nietzsche, and Foucault / Dudrick, David
Francis, 2000
The last conceptual revolution: a critique of Richard Rorty's political philosophy / Eric Gander, 1999
Richard Rorty's politics: liberalism at the end of the American century / Markar Melkonian, 1999
The work of friendship : Rorty, his critics, and the project of solidarity / Dianne Rothleder, 1999
For the love of perfection : Richard Rorty and liberal education / Ren Vincente Arcilla, 1995
Rorty & pragmatism: the philosopher responds to his critics / Herman J Saatkamp, 1995
Richard Rorty : prophet and poet of the new pragmatism / David L Hall, 1994
Reading Rorty: critical responses to Philosophy and the mirror of nature (and beyond) / Alan R
Malachowski, 1990
Rorty's humanistic pragmatism : philosophy democratized / Konstantin Kolenda, 1990
Arriaga M / Richard Rorty's anti-foundationalism and traditional philosophy's claim of social
relevance.

External links
Richard Rorty (https://www.dmoz.org/Society/Philosophy
Wikiquote has quotations
/Philosophers/R/Rorty%2C_Richard/) at DMOZ related to: Richard Rorty
UCIspace @ the Libraries digital collection: Richard Rorty
born digital files, 19882003 (http://ucispace.lib.uci.edu/handle/10575/7)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article (http://www.iep.utm.edu/rorty/)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/)
Rorty audio (http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2006/04/rorty_on_posner.html), "Dewey and
Posner on Pragmatism and Moral Progress," University of Chicago Law School, April 14, 2006.
PhilWeb's entry for Richard Rorty (http://www.phillwebb.net/history/TwentiethCentury/Pragmatism
/Rorty/Rorty.htm) An exhaustive compilation of on-line links and off-line sources.
Rorty essays (http://dissentmagazine.org/search.php?searchType=author&
subSearchText=Richard+Rorty) published in Dissent (magazine)
Rorty audio (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/fren-ital/opinions/rorty.html), informative interview by
Prof. Robert P. Harrison, Nov. 22, 2005.
Rorty interview (http://www.scienzepostmoderne.org/diversiautori/Rorty/AgainstOligarchies.pdf),
"Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies," conducted by Derek Nystrom & Kent Puckett, Prickly
Paradigm Press, Sept. 1998.
Rorty interview (http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/ba980423.htm), The Atlantic
Monthly, April 23, 1998.
Rorty Memorial Lecture (https://web.archive.org/web/20071104173604/http://www.telospress.com
/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=204) by Jrgen Habermas, Stanford University,
Nov. 2, 2007.

9 von 10 09.03.2017 15:41

Richard Rorty - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty

Rorty eulogized (http://www.slate.com/id/2168488/) by Richard Posner, Brian Eno, Mark

Edmundson, Jrgen Habermas, Daniel Dennett, Stanley Fish, David Bromwich, Simon Blackburn,
Morris Dickstein & others, Slate Magazine, June 18, 2007.
"The Inspiring Power of the Shy Thinker: Richard Rorty" (http://www.telospress.com
/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=189) by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, TELOS, June
13, 2007.
Richard Rorty at Princeton: Personal Recollections (http://www.bu.edu/arion/Geuss.htm) by Raymond
Geuss in Arion, Winter 2008
Rereading Rorty (http://krisis.eu/index_en#htmlpart=issues.php?issue=2008,%20Issue%202) by
Albrecht Wellmer in Krisis, 2008.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Rorty&oldid=768994750"

Categories: 1931 births 2007 deaths 20th-century American writers 21st-century American writers
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