Richard Rorty
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Introduction

Richard Rorty's book is a devastating and famous critique of the flaws of contemporary philosophy as based on the foundational epistemology of the Enlightenment. The book sums up the core anti-foundational project.

Sections of this Guide

1. Overview
2. Readings
3. The Foundationalists: Descartes, Locke, Kant
4. Therapeutic (Edifying) and Constructive (Systematic) Philosophy
5. The Anti-Foundationalists: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey
6. Philosophy in the Conversation of Mankind
7. Questions
8. Bibliography

Overview

• Richard Rorty: American Professor of Philosophy (University of Virginia).
• Now one of the most well known living philosophers for his metacritique of philosophy.
• Has been attacked by Alasdair MacIntyre and others as trying to destroy philosophy.

Readings

• Introduction and The Invention of Mind (pp.3-69)
• The Idea of a "Theory of Knowledge" (pp.131-164)
• Priveleged Representations (pp.165-212)
• Epistemology and Philosophy of Language (pp.257-312)
• From Epistemology to Hermeneutics (pp.315-356)
• Philosophy Without Mirrors (pp.357-394)

The Foundationalists: Descartes, Locke, Kant

• Rorty attributes special significance in the genesis of the foundationalist tradition to the work of these three figures.
• Rorty spins a devastating story about the mistakes of foundationalism. Cartesian dualistic thought about the mind and body, and also the method of doubt led to foundationalism, and its fastening onto the prime example of an epistemological foundation, the Cogito argument. Locke made many conceptual mistakes in the perceptual underpinnings of his empiricism, which was one of the key components of the Enlightenment. Kant was most responsible for the professionalization of philosophy as epistemology through his historiography of the struggle between rationalism and empiricism, which was accomplished by means of a set of foundationalist assumptions about a priori thinking.

Therapeutic (Edifying) and Constructive (Systematic) Philosophy

• Rorty does not claim that we need to develop improved alternatives to the epistemologies of the foundationalists. He claims that the foundationalist project is fundamentally flawed, and we need to get over it by setting aside (not arguing against) epistemology and metaphysics as disciplines which are even possible.
• The foundationalist philosophies were fundamentally constructive and systematic for Rorty in that they set out to build up a structured philosophy based on particular epistemological foundations. He contrasts their type of project with philosophies which are therapeutic, trying to help us set aside the vocabulary and mindsets inherited from the seventeenth century Enlightenment philosophers. Rorty characterizes therapeutic philosophers as seeking to "edify" their readers rather than show them the "Truth".

The Anti-Foundationalists: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey

• Rorty identifies these three men as the most significant therapeutic philosophers.
• Each of these individuals set out at the beginning of their careers to elaborate a major foundational philosophy of their time, and each abandoned their quest in favor of a therapeutic approach. Dewey abandoned his early attempt to elaborate and naturalize Hegel's concept of history. Heidegger's work changed very much in tone after Being and Time, lightening up considerably, and acquired a broader focus on history and existentialist themes. Wittgenstein in his later period of the Philosophical Investigations explicitly advocated Philosophy as therapy. He gave up his earlier attempt in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to penetrate to the hidden foundational essence of things.
• Rorty holds out the work of these three philosophers as examples of edifying philosphy, his remedy for the mistakes of the systematic philosophies of the Enlightenment.

Philosophy in the Conversation of Mankind

• Rorty concludes his book by speculating on the shape that philosophy might take once the foundationalist error is recognized. The focus of philosophy can no longer be the search for apodictic truth, but instead must be conversation. This kind of philosophy would have a very different character from the "department of thought concerned with the origin and nature of human knowledge." (p. 156)
• Rorty considers his book "...a sort of prolegomenon to a history of epistemology-centered philosophy as an episode in the history of European culture." (p. 390) Because the story goes back to the Greeks and covers many intervening periods, he does not consider is solely a critique of modern philosophy or the Enlightenment, although he gives that historical period the most attention because it was the primary period in which foundational thought was elaborated.
• In Rorty's view, philosophy as a discipline is not threatened with extinction by his conclusions. He does believe that philosophy must go beyond its formulation in the Kantian paradigm. He also does not claim to know exactly when the therapeutic style of philosophy will actually end the era of systematic philosophy. But just as religion survived the Enlightenment, Rorty believes that "...there will be something called 'philosophy' on the other side of the transition." (p.394) He does insist on the idea that philosophy's concern should be with a continuation of "the conversation of the West," rather than on demanding a special place for philosophy within this conversation.

Questions

• Rorty is curiously silent about what the relationship of his new conversational philosophy should be with non-Western philosophies. There is virtually no mention in his book of the conversations going on in other philosophical traditions. Philosophy departments in American universities are often notoriously defensive about including a seat at the table for non-Western philosophies, which they tend to want to lump together under the (categorically different!) label of religion. If Rorty is serious about his conversational/discourse orientation for philosophy in the future, why does he not really open up the conversation and invite other traditions into the discussion?
• Rorty discusses the psychological attractions that the analytic philosophical style had, the appeal of its pseudo-mathematical and logical techniques and proofs. Is there a role for these techniques (usually associated more with science) in Rorty's inclusive conversational philosophy, or does the style of discourse only include rhetoric and interpretation?
• Is Rorty's style of philosophy (whether called neopragmatism, converstaional philosophy, Sellersian philosophy, or whatever) inherently interdisciplinary?

Bibliography

Kolenda, Konstantin.  Rorty's Humanistic Pragmaticism.  Tampa, Florida: University of 
   South Florida, 1990.

Saatkamp, Herman J. (Ed.) Rorty & Pragmatism.  Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt 
   University Press, 1995.

Nielsen, Kai. After the Demise of the Tradition: Rorty, Critical Theory, and the 
   Fate of Philosophy.  Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1991.