Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Princeton Classics)

by Richard Rorty

I shall be claiming that if we press Quine’s and Davidson’s criticisms of the language-fact and scheme-content distinctions far enough, we no longer have dialectical room to state an issue concerning “how language hooks onto the world” between the “realist” and the “idealist” (or the “pragmatist”). The need to construct such an issue seems to me one more manifestation of the Kantian need for an overarching permanent neutral matrix within which to “place” and criticize past and future inquiry. This nostalgia for philosophy as an architectonic and encompassing discipline survives in contemporary philosophy of language only because of the vague association of “language” with “the a priori” and of the latter with “philosophy.” Insofar as there is a real issue between “realists” and “pragmatists” in contemporary philosophy of language it seems to me a metaphilosophical one—the issue about whether philosophy can retain its Kantian self-image once the notion of language as the source of a priori knowledge is dropped. On this point, to be sure, I shall be siding with the “pragmatists.” But I hope that my discussion may help to frame this metaphilosophical issue in less Aesopian language than that in which it is usually stated.

December 2, 2020. Page 266.