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The Rorty Reader
The first comprehensive collection of the work of Richard Rorty (1931-2007), The Rorty Reader brings together the influential American philosopher's essential essays from over four decades of writings. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to Richard Rorty's life and body of work and brings key essays published across many volumes and journals into one collection, including selections from his final volume of philosophical papers, Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007). Moreover, it contains the previously unpublished essay, "Redemption from Egotism", and includes in-depth interviews and several revealing autobiographical pieces.
This collective represents the fullest portrait available today on Rorty's relationship with American pragmatism and the trajectory of his thought.
This collective represents the fullest portrait available today on Rorty's relationship with American pragmatism and the trajectory of his thought.
- GenresPhilosophy
572 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
8 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rorty
115 books419 followersRichard Rorty (1931–2007) developed a distinctive and controversial brand of pragmatism that expressed itself along two main axes. One is negative—a critical diagnosis of what Rorty takes to be defining projects of modern philosophy. The other is positive—an attempt to show what intellectual culture might look like, once we free ourselves from the governing metaphors of mind and knowledge in which the traditional problems of epistemology and metaphysics (and indeed, in Rorty's view, the self-conception of modern philosophy) are rooted. The centerpiece of Rorty's critique is the provocative account offered in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979, hereafter PMN). In this book, and in the closely related essays collected in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982, hereafter CP), Rorty's principal target is the philosophical idea of knowledge as representation, as a mental mirroring of a mind-external world. Providing a contrasting image of philosophy, Rorty has sought to integrate and apply the milestone achievements of Dewey, Hegel and Darwin in a pragmatist synthesis of historicism and naturalism. Characterizations and illustrations of a post-epistemological intellectual culture, present in both PMN (part III) and CP (xxxvii-xliv), are more richly developed in later works, such as Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989, hereafter CIS), in the popular essays and articles collected in Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), and in the four volumes of philosophical papers, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991, hereafter ORT); Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991, hereafter EHO); Truth and Progress (1998, hereafter TP); and Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007, hereafter PCP). In these writings, ranging over an unusually wide intellectual territory, Rorty offers a highly integrated, multifaceted view of thought, culture, and politics, a view that has made him one of the most widely discussed philosophers in our time.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 11, 2019
ETA: I would also advise reading "Trotsky and the wild orchids", which occurs near the end of the book (page 500), a position it holds because of the organization by chronological order. But that essay is an excellent survey/introduction to the history of Rorty's thought in his own words, which was almost more helpful than the actual introduction. Certainly it is shorter. I think it definitely would have been useful to read it first to put the rest of the readings in context.
***
I came across Rorty when I was doing research on the subject of human rights. After reading four other books on the subject (Nussbaum, Sunstein, Bietz, Morsink) I came across a reference to Rorty's "Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality" Amnesty Lecture and read it. Overall the experience was like playing four games of chess (other authors) and then being hit by a snowball in the face (Rorty).
One of my first reactions was "why was I not previously informed of this man's existence?" Part of the reason is that I was a science major; but nevertheless it seems like I should at least have heard of him in passing and been vaguely familiar with his ideas. Another initial reaction was "how did this man end up this way?" Not as a value judgement, but just as matter of pure curiosity: he was both alien and made perfect sense at the same time.
Really my first recommendation, if you're considering reading this book, is to go spend twenty minutes reading the Amnesty Lecture. It's in this book, but it's also easily available on the internet. My personal reaction was to check out this book from the library to get a more whole picture of who Rorty is and what his influences were. Voparil's introduction is readable and helpful to put the works in succession and biographical sequence. Because there is so much to read in the world I partially read the first half of this book, but read more or less solidly through the last half, and ended up buying his book _Achieving Our Country_, which I hope to read soon.
In the end, for me, the primary interest in Rorty is the combination of his study of language as a tool, his skill as a writer, and his interest in making the world a less cruel place. For those reasons, I find his late writings more compelling, when he started to cut loose from purely academic-philosophical tasks in favor of those that are more generally humanistic and political. If you are not a professional philosopher, or at the very least were not a philosophy major or otherwise have not read a lot of Wittgenstein, Quine, et al, you may still find that you need to keep Wikipedia handy to fill in meaning into the various references he makes, even in the more "political" writings. Because Rorty is such a commanding, voice-filled writer (as compared to, say, Rawls, who writes with all the verve and style of board game rules), the overall effect is to pique interest in what the writers that Rorty refers to signify. Rorty's name- dropping creates a desire to make that whole web of Rorty's understanding your own, rather than to confuse or disorient. Rorty's skill in writing and interest in storytelling should be a model for any person inclined towards making philosophy relevant outside of a siloed academic context.
Like most people apparently -- or so says the introduction -- I find that I don't agree with everything Rorty writes. In particular, as a person who studied biology, and for whom the context of humans-as-animals helps in making sense of the world, I find Rorty's desire to cut loose *all* human behavior from "natural" causes . . . well, disorienting, and seemingly wrong. (If Rorty weren't gone I would have loved to read a review by him of, say, Sapolsky's Behave). But then there is the other half of what he writes where I am learning something, a way of thinking, that is new and that I haven't considered before. And for the half where I disagree, Rorty often has reasons, framings, not so much as to why a naturalistic way of thinking is *wrong*, but as to why it is not *useful* . . . and often I have to concede that is is at least partly right.
Anyway, go read the Amnesty Lecture already if you haven't. Then go read some book -- this one or another -- by Rorty. He should be more widely read.
***
I came across Rorty when I was doing research on the subject of human rights. After reading four other books on the subject (Nussbaum, Sunstein, Bietz, Morsink) I came across a reference to Rorty's "Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality" Amnesty Lecture and read it. Overall the experience was like playing four games of chess (other authors) and then being hit by a snowball in the face (Rorty).
One of my first reactions was "why was I not previously informed of this man's existence?" Part of the reason is that I was a science major; but nevertheless it seems like I should at least have heard of him in passing and been vaguely familiar with his ideas. Another initial reaction was "how did this man end up this way?" Not as a value judgement, but just as matter of pure curiosity: he was both alien and made perfect sense at the same time.
Really my first recommendation, if you're considering reading this book, is to go spend twenty minutes reading the Amnesty Lecture. It's in this book, but it's also easily available on the internet. My personal reaction was to check out this book from the library to get a more whole picture of who Rorty is and what his influences were. Voparil's introduction is readable and helpful to put the works in succession and biographical sequence. Because there is so much to read in the world I partially read the first half of this book, but read more or less solidly through the last half, and ended up buying his book _Achieving Our Country_, which I hope to read soon.
In the end, for me, the primary interest in Rorty is the combination of his study of language as a tool, his skill as a writer, and his interest in making the world a less cruel place. For those reasons, I find his late writings more compelling, when he started to cut loose from purely academic-philosophical tasks in favor of those that are more generally humanistic and political. If you are not a professional philosopher, or at the very least were not a philosophy major or otherwise have not read a lot of Wittgenstein, Quine, et al, you may still find that you need to keep Wikipedia handy to fill in meaning into the various references he makes, even in the more "political" writings. Because Rorty is such a commanding, voice-filled writer (as compared to, say, Rawls, who writes with all the verve and style of board game rules), the overall effect is to pique interest in what the writers that Rorty refers to signify. Rorty's name- dropping creates a desire to make that whole web of Rorty's understanding your own, rather than to confuse or disorient. Rorty's skill in writing and interest in storytelling should be a model for any person inclined towards making philosophy relevant outside of a siloed academic context.
Like most people apparently -- or so says the introduction -- I find that I don't agree with everything Rorty writes. In particular, as a person who studied biology, and for whom the context of humans-as-animals helps in making sense of the world, I find Rorty's desire to cut loose *all* human behavior from "natural" causes . . . well, disorienting, and seemingly wrong. (If Rorty weren't gone I would have loved to read a review by him of, say, Sapolsky's Behave). But then there is the other half of what he writes where I am learning something, a way of thinking, that is new and that I haven't considered before. And for the half where I disagree, Rorty often has reasons, framings, not so much as to why a naturalistic way of thinking is *wrong*, but as to why it is not *useful* . . . and often I have to concede that is is at least partly right.
Anyway, go read the Amnesty Lecture already if you haven't. Then go read some book -- this one or another -- by Rorty. He should be more widely read.
July 12, 2020
Rorty is a radical thinker. He rejects the entire corpus of philosophy by arguing that it rests on the false assumption that the mind mirrors reality. In its place, he offers a no-nonsense pragmatism which emphases what works (makes human life better) rather than what “represents reality”. His political philosophy complements his metaphysics and epistemology: since we don’t know what reality is actually like, the best we can do is constant reform and experimentalism on the path to a liberal utopia.
This reader catalogues his thought, helpfully arranging selected writings into his metaphysics, epistemology, cultural politics, and more. Despite disagreeing with the entire tradition of Western philosophy, Rorty was one of the great synthesises and had read almost everybody. Whatever one thinks of Rorty’s positions, he is a joy to read and truly lives up to his status as an intellectual.
This reader catalogues his thought, helpfully arranging selected writings into his metaphysics, epistemology, cultural politics, and more. Despite disagreeing with the entire tradition of Western philosophy, Rorty was one of the great synthesises and had read almost everybody. Whatever one thinks of Rorty’s positions, he is a joy to read and truly lives up to his status as an intellectual.
August 25, 2018
Encompassing and uplifting. I've been in love with the idea of Rorty for years. (He is: the renegade Analytic, the outrageous unifier, the literary soul, the pessimistic utopian, the great puncturer, and the bravest postmodernist by far - because he just comes out and says it, bites the bizarre bullets.)
Here he is illuminating about philosophy of mind, poetry, foundationalism, the public/private divide, feminism, America, MacKinnon, Derrida, Davidson, and Dewey (obvs), among lots of other things. One can usually taste meanness in postmodern writing - stemming, I suppose, from our sense of being undermined by it - but never in Rorty. He is utterly clear, original and sometimes funny, and yet the realest postmodernist of all.
Not sure what I'd think of it these days.
Here he is illuminating about philosophy of mind, poetry, foundationalism, the public/private divide, feminism, America, MacKinnon, Derrida, Davidson, and Dewey (obvs), among lots of other things. One can usually taste meanness in postmodern writing - stemming, I suppose, from our sense of being undermined by it - but never in Rorty. He is utterly clear, original and sometimes funny, and yet the realest postmodernist of all.
Not sure what I'd think of it these days.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews