Richard Rorty

From Geography

Richard Rorty was born in 1931 in New York City and passed away at age 75 on June 8, 2007 in California. He was an analytical philosopher, who graduated from the Chicago of Rudolf Carnap in 1949, and taught at Princeton, as well as the University of Virginia and Stanford. Rorty left the University of Virginia in 1998, accepting an appointment in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He received several academic awards and honours, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1973-74) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1981-1986).

His inventive work on philosophy, politics, literary theory and more made him one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers. One of his most well known books, “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”, published in 1979 presents his point of view concerning the purpose and goals of philosophy; he believed human beings should focus on what they do to cope with daily life and not on what they discover by theorizing.

In his book, he accused his colleagues of staying under the Platonic dream of finding the true language in which nature was written and also have the arrogance to impose on others their preferred language in the form of official philosophy of universal truth. Rorty ended advocating for the dissolution of academic philosophy in the various forms of human conversation, art, literature and more.

He rejected the search for truth accusing that it is not more but a scientific dogmatic dream and simultaneously appeal to John Dewey and pragmatism Classic in support of that position is a total misrepresentation of the pragmatist tradition. In consequence, Rorty’s pragmatism is often described as “vulgar pragmatism”. What is really important is that Richard Rorty defended that post philosophical literary pragmatism aims only to “continue conversation”, states that “truth” comes to mean "what you can defend against anyone who is present", and “rationality” is nothing more than "respect for the opinions of those around”.

References:

Blackburn, S. (2003, April 20). Richard Rorty. Prospect - Issue 85

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Cohen, P. (2007, June 11). Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75. The New York Times

Vargas-Mendoza, J. E. (2007) Richard Rorty: apuntes para un seminario. México: Asociación Oaxaqueña de Psicología A.C.