Close-up of American philosopher Richard Rorty, Berlin, Germany, May 24, 1987. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah.
Gallery of Richard Rorty
1987
Berlin, Germany
Portrait of American philosopher Richard Rorty as he poses outdoors, in front of an ivy-covered wall, Berlin, Germany, May 24, 1987. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah.
Gallery of Richard Rorty
1987
Berlin, Germany
Portrait of American philosopher Richard Rorty, Berlin, Germany, May 24, 1987. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah.
Gallery of Richard Rorty
1995
Charlottesville, VA, United States
University of Virginia professor Richard Rorty. Photo by Marty Katz.
Achievements
Membership
American Philosophical Association
Richard Rorty was a member of the American Philosophical Association (president Eastern division in 1979).
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Richard Rorty was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Portrait of American philosopher Richard Rorty as he poses outdoors, in front of an ivy-covered wall, Berlin, Germany, May 24, 1987. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah.
(When it first appeared in 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror...)
When it first appeared in 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature hit the philosophical world like a bombshell. In it, Richard Rorty argued that, beginning in the seventeenth century, philosophers developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation: comparing the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. Rorty's book is a powerful critique of this imagery and the tradition of thought that it spawned. Today, the book remains a must-read and stands as a classic of twentieth-century philosophy. Its influence on the academy, both within philosophy and across a wide array of disciplines, continues unabated. This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The Philosopher as Expert."
(Rorty seeks to tie philosophy’s past to its future by con...)
Rorty seeks to tie philosophy’s past to its future by connecting what he sees as the positive (and neglected) contributions of the American pragmatic philosophers to contemporary European developments. What emerges from his explorations is a revivified version of pragmatism that offers new hope for the future of philosophy.
(In this book, major American philosopher Richard Rorty ar...)
In this book, major American philosopher Richard Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature, or as realizations of supra historical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable but it cannot advance Liberalism's social and political goals. In fact, Rorty believes that it is literature and not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense of human solidarity. Specifically, it is novelists such as Orwell and Nabokov who succeed in awakening us to the cruelty of particular social practices and individual attitudes. Thus, a truly liberal culture would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. Rorty uses a wide range of references - from philosophy to social theory to literary criticism - to elucidate his beliefs.
Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers
(In this volume, Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objecti...)
In this volume, Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.
Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2
(Focusing on the work of Heidegger and Derrida, the second...)
Focusing on the work of Heidegger and Derrida, the second volume of this work continues pursuing the themes of the first through a discussion of philosophers who have broken free of traditional obsessions with "objectivity."
Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3
(This eagerly awaited book complements two highly successf...)
This eagerly awaited book complements two highly successful previously published volumes of Richard Rorty's philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. In this new, provocative collection, Rorty continues to defend a pragmatist view of truth and deny that truth is a goal of inquiry. In these dynamic essays, Rorty also engages with the work of many of today's most innovative thinkers including Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida, JÜrgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Charles Taylor. The collection also touches on problems in contemporary feminism raised by Annette Baier, Marilyn Frye, and Catherine MacKinnon, and considers issues connected with human rights and cultural differences.
Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
(Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the f...)
Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately, the American Left, withdrawing into the ivied halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered yes in both word and deed. In Achieving Our Country, one of America's foremost philosophers challenges this lost generation of the Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers like Walt Whitman and John Dewey.
(Richard Rorty is one of the most provocative figures in r...)
Richard Rorty is one of the most provocative figures in recent philosophical, literary and cultural debate. This collection brings together those of his writings aimed at a wider audience, many published in book form for the first time. In these eloquent essays, articles and lectures, Rorty gives a stimulating summary of his central philosophical beliefs and how they relate to his political hopes; he also offers some challenging insights into contemporary America, justice, education and love.
Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies: A Conversation with Richard Rorty
(Nystrom and Puckett's pamphlet gives us the most comprehe...)
Nystrom and Puckett's pamphlet gives us the most comprehensive picture available of Richard Rorty's political views. This is Rorty being avuncular, cranky, and straightforward: his arguments on patriotism, the political left, and philosophy - as usual, unusual - are worth pondering. This pamphlet will appeal to all those interested in Rorty's distinct brand of pragmatism and leftist politics in the United States.
The Future of Religion: Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo
(Though coming from different and distinct intellectual tr...)
Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead, it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious - ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism (Rorty) and hermeneutics (Vattimo) but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism.
An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion
(One of the most widely discussed philosophers of the 21st...)
One of the most widely discussed philosophers of the 21st century finds common ground between spiritual and secular ethics in this provocative book. As controversial and he was influential, Richard Rorty developed a brand of philosophical pragmatism that rejects all theories of truth. His groundbreaking work also dismisses modern epistemology and its preoccupation with knowledge and representation. Though he was a strict secularist, Rorty believed there could be no universally valid answers to moral questions. This led him to a surprisingly complex view of religion rarely expressed in his writings. In this posthumous publication, Rorty finds in the pragmatic thought of John Dewey, John Stuart Mill, William James, and George Santayana, among others, a political imagination shared by religious traditions. Rather than promote belief or nonbelief, Rorty seeks to locate patterns of similarity and difference so an ethics of decency and a politics of solidarity can rise. He particularly responds to Pope Benedict XVI and his campaign against the relativist vision. Whether holding theologians, metaphysicians, or political ideologues to account, Rorty remains steadfast in his opposition to absolute uniformity and its exploitation of political strength.
Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Volume 4
(This volume presents a selection of philosophical papers ...)
This volume presents a selection of philosophical papers which Richard Rorty has written over the past decade. Topics discussed include the changing role of philosophy in Western culture over the course of recent centuries, the role of the imagination in intellectual and moral progress, and the notion of 'moral identity'.
Mind, Language, and Metaphilosophy: Early Philosophical Papers
(This volume presents a selection of the philosophical ess...)
This volume presents a selection of the philosophical essays which Richard Rorty wrote during the first decade of his career, and complements four previous volumes of his papers published by Cambridge University Press. In this long neglected body of work, which many leading philosophers still consider to be his best, Rorty develops his views on the nature and scope of philosophy in a manner which supplements and elucidates his definitive statement on these matters in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. He also develops his groundbreaking version of eliminative materialism, a label first coined to describe his position, and sets out original views on various central topics in the philosophy of language, concerning private language, indeterminacy, and verificationalism. A substantial introduction examines Rorty's philosophical development from 1961 to 1972. The volume completes our understanding of Rorty's intellectual trajectory and offers lucid statements of positions which retain their relevance to current debates.
Richard McKay Rorty was an American pragmatist philosopher and public intellectual noted for his wide-ranging critique of the modern conception of philosophy as a quasi-scientific enterprise aimed at reaching certainty and objective truth. In politics, he argued against programs of both the left and the right in favor of what he described as a meliorative and reformist "bourgeois liberalism."
Background
Richard McKay Rorty was born on October 4, 1931, in New York City, New York, the United States to the family of writers and political activists James Rorty and Winifred Rauschenbush. His maternal grandfather was Reverend Walter Rauschenbusch, an American theologian and Baptist pastor who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary and was a key figure in the Social Gospel and single tax movements. His parents were literate political radicals (they were followers of Trotsky). Rorty was intellectually precocious. He absorbed the Marxist theories and politics of his parents' circle, read voraciously, and developed aesthetic interests (for example, in wild orchids) that he feared were incompatible with the program for creating a classless society. As Rorty described himself, even after he outgrew Marxism, he felt a continuing tension between the literary and artistic cultivation of the self and the commitment to achieving social justice and articulating a conception of objective truth.
Education
Richard Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago when he was 15 and received his Bachelor of Arts in 1949 and stayed there for another three years for a Master of Arts. He then received his Doctor of Philosophy from Yale in 1956. At Chicago, Rorty absorbed the history of philosophy in an atmosphere where such thinkers as Leo Strauss and Richard McKeon wielded great influence.
After the completion of his Doctorate, followed by two years in the army, Richard Rorty received his first academic appointment, at Wellesley College. In 1961, after three years at Wellesley, Rorty moved to Princeton University where he stayed until he went to the University of Virginia, in 1982, as Kenan Professor of the Humanities. Rorty left the University of Virginia in 1998, accepting an appointment in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. In the course of his career, Rorty received several academic awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1973-1974) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1981-1986). He held a number of prestigious lectureships, giving, among others, the Northcliffe Lectures at University College, London (1986), the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge (1987), and the Massey Lectures at Harvard (1997).
Rorty’s publications include Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).
(Richard Rorty is one of the most provocative figures in r...)
2000
Religion
Richard Rorty was, decidedly and very openly, an atheist. Rorty’s critique of religious belief took a different tack from that of most atheists - especially from those whose rejection of faith relies on scientific arguments. Late in life, Rorty even suggested that "anticlericalism" might be a better term for his outlook than "atheism."
Politics
Richard Rorty argued against programs of both the left and the right in favor of what he described as a meliorative and reformist “bourgeois liberalism."
From Rorty's point of view, it was important to recognize that liberal democracy (specifically in the American form that he ironically referred to as "Postmodern Bourgeois Liberalism") was simply the best and most hopeful social arrangement yet devised. This despite the fact that it could be justified by no transcendental argument and that it continued to struggle with enormous challenges in a difficult and radically uncertain world.
Rorty's anti-objectivist view concepts such as truth and knowledge stress the importance of community perceptions of what is and the language used within that community to configure the world. Rorty wrote frequently on political issues, attempting to clarify issues and strategies in the light of his approach. Thus, since people are members of many groups simultaneously, democratic liberal activism and advocacy become in significant part a matter of projecting outward the world view of a particular group to people not identifying themselves as members of that group. This approach eschews the strategy of the 90s left, which more commonly seeks recourse to claims of rights, which Rorty, borrowing from Harvard legal philosopher Mary Ann Glendon, describes as "unconditional moral imperatives," an approach which leads to a "blind alley," a pointless, distracting discussion of which rights exist and which do not. Instead, Rorty argues that what is really needed is a strategy by advocacy groups to get non-members to put themselves in their shoes, to see and understand the world from their perspective.
Views
At Yale and as a young professor at Wellesleyand Princeton, Rorty immersed himself in analytic philosophy of the sort that had been brought to the United States by such German and Austrian emigres as Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Alfred Tarski. He became caught up in the project, in which American philosophers sought to assimilate the later thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Rorty was quickly recognized for his contributions to the analytical philosophy of mind and language. The anthology he edited, called The Linguistic Turn (1967; the title was borrowed from Gustav Bergmann), seemed to establish a set of thinkers and issues that would be canonical for future work in philosophy.
During the 1970s Rorty's views shifted in important ways. What was new was not his broad historical and cultural interests (which already distinguished him from most of his colleagues) but his definitive abandonment of the search for foundations in knowledge and ethics, which was marked by the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). He now brought together John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, and later Wittgenstein as the heroes of a nonfoundationalist philosophy, who in different ways sought to redirect the discipline to focus on social and historical change or on language as a human practice rather than on the illusory pursuit of timeless truths. Philosophy was to be reconfigured in terms of hermeneutics so as to be devoted to the interpretation of history (including the history of thought) and culture.
While his views were stirring up philosophical controversy, Rorty was demonstrating that he could be an adroit academic statesman. He became president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1979, at a time when a number of scholars, making common cause as "pluralists," claimed that Anglo-American analytic philosophy had attained a disproportionate and exclusionary power within the professional organization. As president, Rorty not only gave an address aimed at showing how his own perspective rendered a number of ostensibly different philosophical positions more compatible than the disputants supposed; he also took the lead in working out compromises and accommodations between the analysts and the pluralists that had a lasting effect on the American philosophical profession.
At the same time, American intellectuals and academics were rapidly assimilating and confronting new waves of European thought, identified with thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Rorty's critical essays on these figures became one of the primary means by which Americans who wanted to understand the significance of critical theory, deconstruction, and post-Modernism could inform themselves.
Rorty came to identify himself increasingly as an American, rather than as a disembodied philosopher. Having called himself a pragmatist for some time, he now addressed questions of culture and politics even more explicitly. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1988) Rorty moved from a powerful new statement of his anti-foundationalism (contingency) to a defense of individual freedom that combined traditional liberalism with the motif of self-creation in European high culture (as in Nietzsche and Proust) to an argument that democracy can exist without foundations and is compatible with self-creation (solidarity). In this and other writings of the late 1980s and 1990s, Rorty evinced a growing suspicion of the way in which, as he saw it, many American intellectuals were using European theory in order to argue for a politics of difference that would undermine a sense of national identity.
Rorty is noted for his wide-ranging critique of the modern conception of philosophy as a quasi-scientific enterprise aimed at reaching certainty and objective truth. His views were widely known in Europe and Japan; his writings were translated, and he became a thinker of truly international interest.
Membership
Richard Rorty was a member of the American Philosophical Association (president Eastern division in 1979) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
American Philosophical Association
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United States
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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United States
Personality
Rorty was an amateur poet and to the end of his life expressed wish to have spent more time with the verse.
Physical Characteristics:
Rorty suffered from pancreatic cancer which became a cause of his death in 2007.
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Wilfrid Sellars, Ludwig Wittgenstein
Connections
Richard Rorty married Belgian-born American Harvard University professor Amélie Oksenberg, with whom he had a son, Jay, in 1954. Rorty divorced Oksenberg and then married Stanford University bioethicist Mary Varney in 1972. They had two children, Kevin and Patricia.