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

by Richard Rorty

The sketch of different modes of philosophizing that we’ve been presenting has aimed at answering the rhetorical question “What do philosophers do?” This question needed to be answered before we could take up the practical questions suggested by our original paradox: Should the professional philosophers be doing something different from what they are doing? Should they be getting more attention than they are? As to the first question, it should be clear that, if there is any truth at all in our description of what philosophers do, it follows that this question is at best silly, and at worst potentially very dangerous. It is a question that will usually be raised only if one’s notion of what philosophy is comes from inspection of a single philosophic school, engaged in working out the consequences of a single set of insights. If one is aware that there are alternatives to these insights, but fails to notice the context of dialogue within which this school lives and has its being, then one can delude oneself into feeling competent to redirect philosophical inquiry. In particular, if one is entirely preoccupied with a single question, and doesn’t take the trouble to find out whether this may not be the first time the question has been raised, then one can easily become exasperated at finding philosophers discussing quite different questions. It is precisely the mark of the amateur in philosophy to picture philosophy as a discipline possessing a certain set of methods and inst...

December 9, 2020. Page 413.