Abstract
Rorty has made many comments about the nature of philosophy and its professionalized status throughout his career, and these comments often reflect his worries about the extent to which philosophy as a discipline has become irrelevant to contemporary social and political problems and to human lives. This essay focuses on his ideas about philosophy as a kind of writing, a way of tracing a tradition, and on the questions about what makes philosophy like and unlike poetry and prophecy.
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Notes
- 1.
See “Inquiry as Recontextualization: An Anti-dualist Account of Interpretation”, in Rorty 1991, pp. 93–112.
- 2.
- 3.
Rorty seems to use this term to mean something like “a line of business” or an area of expertise.
References
Bérubé, Michael. 2016. Introduction: The assent of man. In Philosophy as poetry, ed. Richard Rorty, vii–xxix. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Feyerabend, Paul. 1993. Against method, 3rd ed. New York: Verso.
Lang, Berel. 1983. Philosophy and the art of writing. East Brunswick: Associated University Presses.
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1982. Consequences of pragmatism. Essays: 1972–1980. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1991. Objectivity, relativism, and truth: Philosophical papers, Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1991/2010. Feminism and pragmatism. In Feminist interpretations of Richard Rorty, ed. Marianne Janack, 19–45. University Park: Pennsylvania State University.
Rorty, Richard. 1998. Truth and progress: Philosophical papers, Vol. 3. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2007. Philosophy as cultural politics: Philosophical papers, Vol. 4. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2016. Philosophy as poetry. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Rorty, Richard, and Pascal Engel. 2007. What’s the use of truth? Eds. Patrick Savidan, Trans. William McCuaig. New York: Columbia University Press.
Recommended Literature for Further Reading
Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rorty draws many of his idea for how the history of a discipline is written, and the functions of defined problems and solutions from this book. It is essential reading for understanding Rorty’s early work on metaphilosophy.
Tartaglia, James, ed. 2009. Richard Rorty: Critical assessments of leading philosophers, Metaphilosophy and pragmatism, Vol. 2. London: Routledge. This collection of essays includes a wide variety of essays both agreeing with, and disagreeing with, Rorty’s ideas about philosophy and pragmatism. It includes reviews of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, discussions of Rorty’s metaphilosophical accounts and of pragmatism.
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Janack, M. (2023). Rorty’s Metaphilosophical Positions. In: Müller, M. (eds) Handbuch Richard Rorty. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16253-5_33
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