Philosopher
Richard Rorty
Overview
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher, historian of ideas, and public intellectual. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, Rorty's academic career included appointments as the Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, the Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University. Among his most influential books are Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).
Rorty rejected the long-held idea that correct internal representations of objects in the outside world are a necessary prerequisite for knowledge. Rorty argued instead that knowledge is an internal and linguistic affair; knowledge relates only to our own language. He claimed that language is made up of vocabularies that are temporary and historical, concluding that "since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths". The acceptance of the preceding arguments leads to what Rorty calls "ironism"; a state of mind where people are completely aware that their knowledge is dependent on their time and place in history, and are therefore somewhat detached from their own beliefs. However, Rorty also argued that "a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought worth dying for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstance".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Richard Rorty
- J. O. Urmson
- Stephen Toulmin
- Jürgen Habermas
- Kai Nielsen (philosopher)
- John McDowell
- Intellectual
- P. F. Strawson
- Simon Critchley
- Charles Taylor (philosopher)
- Donald Davidson (philosopher)
- Peter Geach
- Wilfrid Sellars
- Martin Heidegger
- Paul Thagard
- Richard McKeon
- Cornelius Castoriadis
- Alfred North Whitehead
- F. H. Bradley
- Michel Foucault
- Jacques Derrida
- Rudolf Carnap
- Cornel West
- Paul Feyerabend
- Ernesto Laclau
Ideas Richard Rorty discusses
- Epicurus
- Roger Scruton
- Empiricism
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- John Rawls
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Historicism
- Atheism
- Idealism
- Analytic philosophy
- John Dewey
- Jürgen Habermas
- Scientism
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Leon Trotsky
- Linguistic turn
- Harvard University
- Liberalism
- Marcel Proust
- Mormonism
- Nominalism
- John McDowell
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Lingua Franca (magazine)
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.