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RICHARD RORTY (1931 - 2007)

RICHARD RORTY (1931 - 2007) COLUMNS Alasdair MacIntyre Few, if any, other recent American philosophers’ books have been translated as often as Richard Rorty’s. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature so far has readers in seventeen languages, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in twenty-two. Only a small minority of these are academic philosophers. For teachers and students of other disciplines have increasingly felt obliged to read Rorty and, wherever there is anything like an educated public outside academia, there too he has found an audience. That this is so undoubtedly adds to the sense of outrage at Rorty’s views expressed by some analytic philosophers. Not only are those views taken to be “shocking” (Simon Blackburn’s characterization of Rorty’s account of truth), but they are shockingly influential; they attract great admiration. And count me among the greatly admiring. But count me also among those who were sometimes greatly exasperated. It is a mark both of the complexity and of the importance of Rorty’s thought that both reactions are justified, and that to have one, but not the other, may be a sign of having misunderstood. Begin with Dick Rorty himself, the quiet man in the eye of the cultural storm, whose capacity for friendships and http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

RICHARD RORTY (1931 - 2007)

MacIntyre, Alasdair
Common Knowledge , Volume 14 (2) – Apr 1, 2008
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
© 2008 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
0961-754X
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-2007-066
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Abstract

COLUMNS Alasdair MacIntyre Few, if any, other recent American philosophers’ books have been translated as often as Richard Rorty’s. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature so far has readers in seventeen languages, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in twenty-two. Only a small minority of these are academic philosophers. For teachers and students of other disciplines have increasingly felt obliged to read Rorty and, wherever there is anything like an educated public outside academia, there too he has found an audience. That this is so undoubtedly adds to the sense of outrage at Rorty’s views expressed by some analytic philosophers. Not only are those views taken to be “shocking” (Simon Blackburn’s characterization of Rorty’s account of truth), but they are shockingly influential; they attract great admiration. And count me among the greatly admiring. But count me also among those who were sometimes greatly exasperated. It is a mark both of the complexity and of the importance of Rorty’s thought that both reactions are justified, and that to have one, but not the other, may be a sign of having misunderstood. Begin with Dick Rorty himself, the quiet man in the eye of the cultural storm, whose capacity for friendships and

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2008

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