Richard Rorty Questions All, Including Us

Abstract

Richard Rorty left many publications attached to his signature, yet his work is even vaster than what fits in a bibliography. His main books are Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 1979; Consequences of Pragmatism, 1982; Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, 1989; and Achieving our Country, 1998.1 They all managed to be highly controversial. In a brief but masterful autobiographical text, ‘Trotsky and the Wild Orchids’, published in 1992, he affirmed: ‘If there is anything to the idea that the best intellectual position is one which is attacked with equal vigor from the political right and the political left, then I am in good shape.’2 There is something of the Romantic hero in him, walking steadily and unperturbed from book to book amidst strong criticism. James Tartaglia warns his readers about ‘the well-known fact that [Rorty’s] interpretations are very controversial’, observing that scholars who are specialists on the work of philosophers often mentioned by Rorty – such as Wittgenstein and Heidegger – consider his interpretations mistaken. Tartaglia adds that Quine and Kuhn ‘personally disowned Rorty’s use of their work’.3 There can be no doubt, though, about his preparedness to intervene in, and often generate, debates about epistemology, analytic and continental philosophy, nor about his familiarity with philosophical tradition. He was equally eminently qualified to discuss the place of philosophy in the university and the nation. When his friend and fellow philosopher