Abstract
In this chapter we focus on Rorty’s core commitments with respect to language, and consider their role in Rorty’s stormy relations to mainstream analytic philosophy. Further, we bring out key features of Rorty’s position by tracing his engagement with Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine, Davidson, and Kuhn.
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Notes
- 1.
“With the examples of Aquinas and Hegel before him, any philosopher who can neither distinguish away, nor aufheben, his opponent’s heuristic terms may fairly be judged to be incompetent. The existence of such incompetence […] is the only reason for ever losing a philosophical argument” (Rorty 1961b, p. 299).
- 2.
Herman Cappelen makes openly reference to Rorty: Though in Rorty’s time “conceptual engineering” was not a topic, Cappelen states that Rorty uses his points for “somewhat tangential purposes.” “Rorty is, at least on one reading, saying that old school philosophy should be replaced by conceptual engineering“ (Cappelen 2018, p. 69).
- 3.
Rorty is aware to be an idiosyncratic reader. Regarding his appropriation of Davdison’s thought, he states: “I should remark that Davidson cannot be held responsible for the interpretation I am putting on his views, nor for the further views I extrapolate from his.” (Rorty 1989, p. 10 n. 3)
- 4.
See on this in detail the chapter on realism, antirealism, and antirepresentationalism.
References
Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing language. An essay on conceptual engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Davidson, Donald. 1984a. On the very idea of a conceptual scheme. In Inquiries into truth and interpretation, 183–198. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Davidson, Donald. 1984b. What metaphors mean. In Inquiries into truth and interpretation, 245–264. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Davidson, Donald. 2001. Three varieties of knowledge. In Subjective, intersubjective, objective, 205–220. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Davidson, Donald. 2005. A nice derangement of epitaphs. In Truth, language, and history, 89–107. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dummett, Michael. 1996. Origins of analytical philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Levine, Steven. 2019. Pragmatism, objectivity, and experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis-Kraus, Gideon. 2003. An interview with Richard Rorty. https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-richard-rorty/?fbclid=IwAR02LWwhyWLC08Ssn_tLQQs4u8V1mrB1t8b20ekNyL2A8uw1UHcimG2ZYmg. Accessed on 08.06.2020.
Penelas, Federico. 2010. ¿Es posible la filosofía analítica postrortiana? In Presente y futuro de la Filosofía, Eds. Alejandro Cassini und Laura Skerk, 61–79. Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1951. Two dogmas of empiricism. The Philosophical Review 60:20–43.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1960. Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1990. Pursuit of truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1961a. Pragmatism, categories, and language. Philosophical Review 70:197–223.
Rorty, Richard. 1961b. Recent metaphilosophy. Review of Metaphysics 15(2):299–318.
Rorty, Richard. 1967. The linguistic turn. Essays in philosophical method. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1970. Wittgenstein, privileged access, and incommunicability. American Philosophical Quarterly 7:192–205.
Rorty, Richard. 1972. Indeterminacy of language and truth. Synthese 23:443–462.
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Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1991. Unfamiliar Noises. Hesse and Davidson on Metaphor. In Objectivity, relativism, and truth. Philosophical papers, Vol. I, 162–172. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1992a. Introduction: Metaphilosophical difficulties of linguistic philosophy. In The linguistic turn. Essays in philosophical method. With two retrospective essays, Eds. Richard Rorty, 1–39. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1992b. Twenty-five years after. In The linguistic turn. Essays in philosophical method. With two retrospective essays, Eds. Richard Rorty, 371–374. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1998a. Davidson between Tarski and Wittgenstein. Crítica: Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 30(88): 49–71.
Rorty, Richard. 1998b. Introduction. In Truth and progress. Philosophical papers, Vol. III, 1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2007a. Analytic and conversational philosophy. In Philosophy as cultural politics. Philosophical papers, Vol. IV, 120–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2007b. Philosophy as cultural politics. Philosophical papers, Vol. IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2007c. Wittgenstein and the linguistic turn. In Philosophy as cultural politics. Philosophical papers, Vol. IV, 160–175. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sellars, Wilfrid. 1997. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Staten, Henry. 1986. Rorty’s circumvention of Derrida. Critical Inquiry 12(2): 453–461.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
Recommended Literature for Further Reading
Gross, Neil. 2008. Richard Rorty: The making of an American philosopher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gross’s official biography also gives an account of the biographical side of Rorty’s relation to analytic philosophy.
Penelas, Federico. 2010. ¿Es posible la filosofía analítica postrortiana? In Presente y futuro de la Filosofía, Eds. Alejandro Cassini und Laura Skerk, 61–79 Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad de Buenos Aires. Penelas shows that one can be an analytic philosopher and insist on argumentation as method, while still attending to Rorty’s meta-philosophical believes by interpreting Rorty’s concept of redescription as a dialectic-argumentative method.
Sandbothe, Mike. 2003. Davidson and Rorty on truth. In A house divided: Comparing analytic and continental philosophers, Eds. Carlos Prado, 235–258. Amherst: Humanities Press. Sandbothe provides a meticulous reconstruction of Rorty’s and Davidson’s discussions over the years regarding the concept of truth.
Voparil, Chris, und Richard Bernstein, Eds. 2010. The Rorty reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Especially illuminating are Chris Voparil’s introduction and Rorty’s papers in Part II “Conversations with Analytic philosophy”.
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Huetter-Almerigi, Y., Ramberg, B.T. (2023). Analytic Philosophy of Language (Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine, Davidson, Kuhn). In: Müller, M. (eds) Handbuch Richard Rorty. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16253-5_67
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