Rorty's Work Research Articles

Pragmatist and Prophet: A Review of Ronald Kuipers’s Richard Rorty

James Joyce once quipped that he wrote Ulysses to keep the critics busy for three hundred years. Given that work's length and notorious complexity, we can safely predict that Joyce scholars will not be short of work for at least a few generations to come. Some philosophers have also managed to secure a long afterlife for themselves, similarly employing the Joycean strategies of sheer volume and difficulty (think of Heidegger and Denida) to create an ongoing cottage industry of exegetes, interpreters, and under-laborers required as basic guides through their primary texts.If Richard Roity's work continues to survive and flourish in the arena of professional philosophy, it will not be for these reasons. His writing is clear and elegant, utterly shorn of fussy, jargon, and any motivated graduate student could easily work through his published books and major articles in a good summer. No: Roity's contributions will live on because, in sum, he articulates what has mattered in and cultural politics in the last century like no other humanistic intellectual, all the while helping us to think about who we are and what we might do with our lives in a strikingly original fashion. Given the accessibility of his work, accordingly, the best introduction to Rorty is Rorty himself. But the second best introduction would be to read Ronald Kuiper's new book, published in Bloomsbury's Contemporary American Thinkers series.In any slim, introductory account of a serious thinker's work, questions of what to include or exclude are always particularly urgent. In this case, Kuiper's decision to say more about fewer topics, rather than offer a superficial gloss of many, is a wise one. Rorty was simply involved in too many conversations with too many interlocutors to cover them all responsibly, so despite how fascinating Roity's exchanges with other contemporary thinkers were (from Norris to Habermas, Taylor to Putnam), coverage of these debates was quite rightly left on the cutting-room floor.This is not to say, however, that Kuipers does not situate Rorty within the traditions of American pragmatism and analytic philosophy. On the contrary, the task of clarifying Roity's philosophical relationships with Dewey, Sellars, Quine, and Davidson is, in many respects, the central task and the greatest accomplishment of this volume. To pull thus off, Kuipers approaches Rorty's work both chronologically and thematically. This blend of tactics allows him to provide cusp, yet surprisingly detailed overviews of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in chapters 2 and 3 respectively, before considering Roity's philosophy of religion (chapter 4), and his ongoing reflections on truth, coming in the wake of Bjorn Ramberg's Davidsonian criticisms of his earlier, dismissive position (chapter 5). Kuipers begins, however, with an attempt to grasp Roity's philosophical labor through the lens of lus biography.While Rorty's autobiographical essay, Trotsky and the Wild Orchids, furnishes an important, first-hand account of lus early interests, and functions as a helpful back story to his mature philosophical positions, much of Kuiper's opening chapter is a gloss of Neil Gross's sociological case study of how Roity's intellectual shaped lus formation as a professional philosopher. The crystallization of his self-concept helps to explain Roity's turn away from tecluucal, analytical after the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature toward his later free ranging pragmatism and Ins ongoing interventions within cultural politics, broadly understood. But as Kuipers argues, following Gross, Roity's shift is neither as dramatic nor as unexpected as it might superficially appeal', given what we know of his adolescent world-view and the decisive influence exerted upon lus young mind by lus leftist parents, who exposed young Bucky (their pet-name for Richard) to the turbulent world of New York intellectuals and radicals in the 1940s. …

Taking Other Human Beings Seriously: Rorty's Ethics of Choice and Responsibility

In final chapter of Philosophy and Mirror of Nature Rorty worried - presciently we might now add - that edifying philosopher sympathetically depicted in those pages will be treated as a relativist, or who lacks moral senousness, for failing to recognize the attainment of truth as a matter of necessity.''1 The thought he leaves us with in closing sentence of that book reaffirms tliis wony: the only point on winch I would insist is that philosophers' moral concern should be with continuing of West, rather than with insisting upon a place for traditional problems of modem philosophy within that conversation (PMN 394). A decade and a half later Rorty responded to wony more directly, offering a conception of moral senousness fitting for pragmatists who seek to replace objectivity-as-accuraterepresentation with objectivity-as-intersubjectivity and abjure realist senousness: other human beings (TP 83).This essay aims to give an account of underlying moral concerns animating Rorty's thought, of which tliis notion of moral senousness is an expression. These concerns, which are present from Ins earliest published work to lus last volume of essays, center on a conception of ethical responsibility, both toward others and for our choices and commitments as philosophers. To make taking other human beings seriously highest priority of democratic mquiiy is to situate social practice of justification in a sociopolitical context that subordinates nonnative, in Sellarsian and Brandomian sense, to moral in order to introduce into game of giving and asking for reasons a conception of ethical responsibility. Bringing these neglected moral concerns into view sheds new light on seemingly problematic stances Rorty adopted with regard to truth as goal of inquiry, warranted assertibility and constraints on inquiry, availability of entena of judgment, possibility of rational critique, and society lets us say. Indeed, a common thread of Rorty criticism, whether from analytic philosophers, Deweyan pragmatists, or 'new pragmatists', is fundamental inadequacy and even inesponsibility of lus positions on these topics. The charge that he lacked seriousness also is one Rorty himself confessed hurt most (PSH 5). While to a certain extent my account is meant to serve as a corrective, my aim is less to defend Roily from criticism than to show how introducing tlus largely neglected concern with taking other human beings seriously alters received picture and adds coherence to his stance.In all commentary sparked by Mirror and subsequent writings, little attention has been paid to fundamental moral concerns that animate Rorty's work.' In his post -Mirror writings this dimension emerges more explicitly in lus effort to modulate philosophical debate from a methodologico-ontological into an etluco-political key (ORT 110). Yet it is present even in Ins earliest published essays on metaphilosophy where Rorty already was calling attention to questions that are a matter of moral choice and cannot be decided by theoretical reflection or philosophical argumentation. On interpretation I shall offer idea of philosophy as a form of cultural politics in Roily's later work is his most explicit attempt to call attention to moral and political space within which choice occurs, and to locate philosophers, and their commitments to what count as problems, in tlus space.4 Tins interpretation extends BjOm Ramberg's insight that Rorty's attempt to take philosophical questions as questions of cultural politics is best understood as a project of directly confronting ourselves and our practices in ethical and political terms.5 What Ramberg grasps in context of Rorty's use of Davidson is that understanding Rorty's position entails need to reverse direction of support between his moral and philosophical commitments. …

Engaging the Present: The Use of Reading Rorty

1. IntroductionRichard Rorty's place in contemporary political theory is contentious. He has and continues to be a figure that inspires strong reactions. However, reasons for this have not remained constant. While Rorty in past has been understood both as a dangerous philosophical radical, undermining grounds of Western thought and politics, and as a myopic apologist for status quo, disagreement around reading him today surrounds his relevance. Rorty was once incendiary and dangerous. Presently however, he seems commonplace and uncontroversial. While many would still strongly agree or disagree with his ideas, they would not feel need to engage with him in any detail. Consequently, outside pragmatism, Rorty has generally fallen out of wider conversation of social and political thought. While he is often mentioned, he is rarely seriously engaged on any issue. He is a common object of casual dismissal but an infrequent subject for productive engagement. However, when approached in a certain way, engagement with Rorty can yield fundamental critical and reconstructive resources for thinking politics in present.This article confronts this critical situation by arguing for necessity of reading Rorty into contemporary political theory. However, point is not simply to read Rorty but to read him in a certain manner, in relation to a certain question. Against typical readings of him as an end-of-philosophy anti-theorist, we must examine Rorty exactly in terms of sphere that he considered most important for philosophy: metaphilosophy - that is, reflection on activity of philosophy and its role and capacities in human life (Bernstein 2010, 11; West 1989, 199).Rorty uniquely confronted crisis in philosophical foundations and resulting question of role and capacities of a philosophy without grounds in wider political and cultural life. His work was thus consistently oriented to this widest of all philosophical issues. Such a project increases his significance not only because of his ability to engage such intractable issues but for his skill at speaking across traditional boundaries in constellation of Western Political thought (and beyond as well) while doing so. Rorty engaged Analytic thinkers, Pragmatists, Critical theorists and Continental philosophers (amongst others) in an inclusive philosophical dialogue that managed, simultaneously, to speak to all these groups. It is in this sense that he was accurately described as the most influential contemporary American philosopher (Klepp 1990).However, Rorty's importance goes beyond addressing wide issues and many groups. Both of these reasons speak to his relevance only if those issues and groups are still important to political thought.1 Rorty does offer a path away from crisis in foundations which confronts that problem without ignoring it or slipping back into some appeal to a neutral perspective. Further, he does do this by engaging and drawing on many perspectives and attempting to speak to all aforementioned groups. However, how he achieves both these aims is important point, especially for his relevance to contemporary thought. Rorty reorients thought to present. It is both subject and object of his philosophy; that which it speaks to and about. His perspective attempts to subsist without grounds by directly engaging present social and political world, its assumptions and limitations.Further, unlike genealogical approaches which also claim such an orientation, Rorty's does so without an explicitly critical orientation to present. Rather, as will be demonstrated below, Rorty's thought summarizes present. It theorizes it and renders explicit its own self-justification. Due to this unique relation, whereby he draws out and reveals philosophical content underlying much of contemporary liberal democratic politics, Rorty's work offers a distinctive critical and reconstructive site for political and social theory. …

Richard Rorty e a "agenda pós": críticas, interpretações, redescrições

O artigo trata da recepção da obra de Richard Rorty no campo da educação, com ênfase na descrição realizada pela pedagogia marxista brasileira. Apresenta, neste contexto, os usos que a pedagogia marxista tem operado do filósofo húngaro Georg Lukács e do seu colega de ofício Roy Bhaskar (indiano há muitos anos radicado na Inglaterra), como possibilidades para se contrapor à presença de Rorty na produção do conhecimento em educação. Analisa se as críticas a ele dirigidas (contra-iluminismo, irracionalismo, relativismo ontológico, falácia epistêmica, empiricismo etc.) se sustentam quando cotejadas com outra leitura de sua obra, a nossa própria. A redescrição realizada indica os limites e as insuficiências da descrição a que se opôs.

Revisiting Rorty: Contributions to a Pragmatist Feminism

In this paper, I contribute to the ongoing investigation of the similarities and dissimilarities between feminism and pragmatism—a project explored more than fifteen years ago in the Hypatia special issue on Feminism and Pragmatism (1993)—by looking at the value of Richard Rorty's work for feminist theorists and activists. In this paper, I defend Rorty against three central feminist criticisms: 1) that Rorty's defense of liberal irony relies upon a problematic delineation between public and private, 2) that Rorty's endorsement of reform over revolution is too conservative to be of use for feminism, and 3) that the role of the ironist in social progress is not useful for, nor does it accurately reflect the history of, the feminist movement. I argue that these criticisms can be mitigated by being located within the broader context of Rorty's philosophical and political commitments, which we are now in a better position to understand and thus revisit. More specifically, I contend that bringing together Rorty's private discourse of redescription with his public discourse of justification provides for feminists new methods for animating social progress. I conclude by offering examples of how adopting a Rortyan perspective would be well-suited to achieving further feminist aims.

Postmodern Liberal Literature: Richard Rorty's “Liberal Ironists”

Summary This article explores the notion of postmodern liberal literature through the filter of the political theory of Richard Rorty. It is generally assumed that the rival claims to validity of liberalism and postmodernism are mutually contradictory and therefore irreconcilable. Rorty's work, however, is characterised by the attempt to accommodate the most valuable insights of postmodern theory within the political ideals of liberalism. For Rorty, it is perfectly possible to be both a political liberal and a postmodern sceptic, or “ironist”, at the same time: hence his coinage of the term “liberal ironist”. Rorty argues further that the figure of the liberal ironist is best represented by writers of literature, in the narrow sense of poets, dramatists, and especially novelists. Ironist writers are, in Rorty's view, primarily interested in the private goals of self-creation and redescription within the context of an acute awareness of the contingency of their belief system. Nevertheless, in so far as their work also concerns itself imaginatively with issues of human pain and suffering, it will have utility within the public sphere of political action, and so influence moral progress. Even if Rorty's ambitious project is ultimately unsuccessful as a political theory per se, many of the insights which he provides may nonetheless be shown to have great value and significance for contemporary cultural and literary studies. To demonstrate this, the article will consider a number of writers, from a variety of backgrounds, whose work displays the characteristics, on Rorty's terms, of liberal ironism.

Rorty and the Priority of Democracy to Philosophy

Rorty and the Priority of Democracy to Philosophy E. D. Hirsch Jr. (bio) I missed knowing Richard Rorty at Yale in the 1950s when we overlapped as graduate students in different fields. Our acquaintance and, later on, our warm friendship started with an encounter at a lecture he was giving at Stanford, in the academic year 1980–81 when I was at the nearby Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I came to hear his talk because I had just read Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature with great admiration for the quality of its thinking and writing. Our first encounter was quintessential Rorty; it prefigured the pattern of many subsequent conversations. His lecture included a strong attack on the ideas of Hans Reichenbach, my hero at the time because of his powerful argument in a book of 1920 saying that Einstein had refuted Kant's notion of the a priori.1 Rorty was objecting to something different—Reichenbach's idea that philosophy's main job was to stay one step ahead of the sciences, and should try to make coherent sense of what they are currently telling us about reality.2 After the lecture, during the question period, I skeptically asked an earnest question whose import I now don't remember at all. It had this structure: "If that's the case, then how can we blah, blah, blah?" The thing I still remember vividly is Rorty's response: "Yeah, that's the sixty-four-dollar question."3 Rorty's quizzical and impish manner was the same whether in a lecture hall or in a seminar, where he enthralled his students, or in private conversation. He took philosophy very seriously in one sense, and in another, not very seriously at all. He loved the professional gossip in the field. He admired and produced good technical work. He defended the integrity of the subject, and its professional standards—especially against a proscience interloper like Steven Weinberg. He loved the thrust and parry. But, despite his high craftsmanship and productivity, he was as ironical about the pretensions of philosophy as he was about himself. He was immensely serious about the subjects he wrote on. But self-irony, gentle satire, and wittiness were as much a part of his deepest character as was his genuine seriousness. He was an homme sérieux, but his seriousness was complex. In this piece I want to record just a few unknown things about Rorty's sixteen productive years at the University of Virginia, and then stress a theme in his thought. [End Page 35] The way he came to Virginia was in this wise. While I was at the CASBS at Stanford, I read Mirror, heard Rorty's stimulating lecture, and learned that he wanted to leave Princeton. I remember saying to the head of the Stanford philosophy department, who was also spending a year at the Center, that "You really should hire this guy. It would be a real coup for you." I was an innocent. I didn't know that philosophy departments were not seeking intellectual diversity in those days. The head of the Stanford department was a committed analytical philosopher. From his responses I inferred that if Rorty was really, really good that was all the more reason to avoid him—not that anyone with such views could be truly excellent. The possibility that such a person would excite the young and set them to thinking and talking, maybe in the wrong direction, was all the more reason not to hire him. Rorty's work still causes this aversion reaction among some analytical philosophers. The early 1980s were big years for literary theory. Upon my return to the Virginia English department in the fall of 1981, I resumed my duties as chairman, and I had no difficulty in persuading the department that we needed to hire a theorist, who, unlike me, could deal intelligently, knowledgeably, and sympathetically with deconstruction and other postmodern ideas. This was a welcome idea to my colleagues. They agreed that the department should offer expertise in these recent currents of thought. Often a university department will resist a truly distinguished appointment because it endangers the status...

Does Ron Barnett have a problem with pragmatism?

Barnett, in several of his published works, often refers to pragmatism in rather ungenerous terms. Most recently he criticized pragmatism as an allegiance to anything goes. In response to that caricature this paper shows that the most prominent of current pragmatists—Richard Rorty—offers his strong allegiance to a range of principles which actually coincide with many of those Barnett himself actually espouses. These principles—or ideals of the university as Barnett calls them—include cheerfulness, tolerance, reasonableness, generosity and a will to go on. The paper examines what Barnett has to say about each of these in his latest book and then shows where they have their counterparts in Rorty's work. Overall the paper suggests that Barnett has a problematically limited view of Rortyan pragmatism.

Rorty's pragmatism and bioethics.

In spite of the routine acknowledgement of Richard Rorty's ubiquitous influence, those who have invoked his name en route to advancing their case for a pragmatist bioethics have not given us a very clear picture of exactly how Rorty's work might actually contribute to methodological discussion in this field. I try to provide such an account here. Given the impressive depth and scope of Rorty's work during the past two decades, I make no pretense of presenting either a comprehensive or novel interpretation of his project. My primary aim here is simply to sketch what I take to be the implications of Rorty's neopragmatism for our methodological debates within bioethics. I conclude that the yield of Rorty's pragmatism for current methodological debates in bioethics is primarily negative, knocking the props out from under any pretensions to foundations and universal principles of right and wrong. His "professorial pragmatism" and philosophical trash disposal efforts would clearly sweep away some approaches based upon appeals to nature or universal human dignity, and his deflationary nominalist view of principles would threaten the foundations of some influential principlist approaches to bioethics.

L'arroseur arrosé : Popper, « la télévision, un danger pour la démocratie »

This article presents the epistemological roots of Popperian engagement against television. Driven by radical technological determinism, the Austrian philosopher of science saw television as a lethal threat to democracy. In his view, television professionals act irresponsibly by prioritizing violent programmes simply for the sake of increasing their market share, without any concern for the effects on society. He consequently suggested profound reform of the institution. The article shows that this denunciation adapts the philosopher's nominalist and individualistic theses, the basis of his theory of rational critique. It strives, moreover, to compare this theory to Habermas1 and Rorty's work, and notes that Popper exhibits very little knowledge of reception studies. The article concludes that his problématique is, paradoxically, based on induction - a philosophy which the epistemologist opposed throughout his life.

James Rorty's Social Ecology

The environmental consequences of modern industrial society necessitates an investigation into the organizational basis of an ecologically sustainable society. From the 1930s through the 1950s, the pioneering social ecologist James Rorty examined these issues in ways that are still relevant today. Rorty's broad-ranging analysis explored the relationships among economics, society, culture, and ecology. Although not an uncritical proponent of technology, Rorty believed that science and technology could help create a society in balance with the natural environment. At its strongest, Rorty's analysis situated technology within a capitalist social and cultural system and examined the ways in which the profit-motive impeded the application of science and technology to social problems. At its worst, however, Rorty's work belied an overly optimistic faith in technological solutions to environmental degradation. The work of James Rorty demonstrates that there is a complex history of environmentalism and ecological thought that needs to be recovered and assessed.

"Just Do It": Pragmatism and Progressive Social Change

REX IHAT use is pragmatism for achieving progressive social vYv change? This question has been central to the recent renaissance of pragmatism within the legal academy. Not surprisingly, the scholars who have examined this question have shared a core concern: the persistent marginalization and disempowerment of certain groups in our society.' More striking, however, is the substantial agreement of these scholars that pragmatism is useful for alleviating oppression in modem America.2 In this Essay I suggest, despite the popularity of claims to the contrary, that pragmatism is of scant use for achieving progressive social change. My analysis focuses on the writings of Richard Rorty for two reasons. First, he is the acknowledged philosophical leader of the recent revival of interest in pragmatism. Second, an examination of Rorty's work uncovers important, and previously undiscussed, incon-

Prado's The Limits of Pragmatism

Carlos Prado has been much influenced by the thought of Richard Rorty, whose ideas have found application in Prado's earlier philosophical writings on the nature of fiction and on aging. In this book, Rorty's ideas are themselves the object of study. Prado is not attempting a complete examination of Rorty's work, and as a result, Rorty's relations to certain other philosophers he admires—earlier American pragmatists and contemporary uropean thinkers—are not explored to any great extent. The focus, instead, is on the theory of truth, on the issue of objectivity in science, and on Rorty's relation to Donald Davidson and other philosophers of the analytic tradition.

Reconsidering Richard Rorty

Richard has, of course, been a part of the contemporary philosophical and rhetorical scene for some time now. As, in fact, someone whose views I oppose pointed out to me recently: Rorty has been around long enough now to be attacked by any number of people for his naive view of the nature of discussion, that is, the nature of rhetoric. This same person also subsequently informed me that even (blank) [a well-known literary and rhetorical theorist whom he judged a particularly keen thinker] has moved Rorty. Needless to say, this essay is not at all about Rorty's so-called naivete (although I shall return to my colleague in the conclusion), nor is it about moving beyond anyone. It is, instead, about the usefulness of both Rortian attitudes toward philosophy and a Rormian perspective on the history of Western theories of knowledge, in illuminating the exceptional position in which rhetoric finds itself today. It is an essay about joining or, perhaps, his having already joined us, rather than about passing him--joining him, as Michael Oakeshott would have it (and as, in fact, cited by in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, in a passage which appears later in this essay), not in a universitas, a group united by mutual interests but rather in a societas, persons whose paths through life have fallen together united by civility rather than a common goal (318). That I might illustrate that this is not only a sensible but also a profitable course of action, I will in the pages following first give a brief overview of Rorty's life and published works (at least as they bear upon the possibilities of Rorty-asrhetorician or, better still, Rorty-as-harbinger-of-rhetoric), then outline what I take to be the main thrust of his work (what some would call his activity as a historian of ideas), then relate this thrust to present-day philosophy (as sees it growing and changing in the light of our awareness of that history--a central Rortian point: it is the historical-philosophical frame which gives both clarity and coherence to any explanation of where, intellectually, we have been or might go), and--finally--speak to what I at least find to be Rorty's considerable and enduring importance to the contemporary rhetorical scene. In doing the above, I may well offer more detail than is really needed by some already well-versed in Rorty's work. If this is the case, I ask the indulgence of these readers--in order that I might have the opportunity to address, and attempt to persuade, those who lack such a familiarity. First, life and works.

Rorty and the New Hermeneutics

Wittgenstein's genius, John Wisdom has suggested, was uniquely revealed in his ability to formulate such questions as ‘Could one play chess without the queen? Would it still be chess?’ The central questions raised by Richard Rorty's work may be cast in a parallel form: ‘Could one do philosophy without the notion of truth as “correspondence with the Real”? Would it still be philosophy?’ Both pairs of questions, Wittgenstein' and Rorty's, are quintessentially anti-essentialist. The scope and ingenuity of Rorty's ‘philosophy without mirrors’ has challenged philosophers to reconf ront basic questions about the nature and purposes of philosophical inquiry.

Gadamer, Rorty, hermeneutics, and Truth: A response to Warnke

Georgia Warnke has recently criticized Richard Rorty's claim that appropriation of Gadamer's work supports Rorty's position that hermeneutics aims not at truth but at ‘edification’. On Warnke's view, however, Gadamer's work suggests that hermeneutical understanding necessarily involves the search for truth and consensus. But such an opposition between Rorty's and Gadamer's hermeneutics on this issue can be seen as primarily a matter of their intentions rather than of their actual explications of hermeneutics, which, when investigated, disclose dangers of both relativism and dogmatism. Rorty's work seems to require, against his intentions, a concept of validity. Gadamer's hermeneutics, when analyzed in terms of three key themes discussed by Warnke ‐ prejudice and tradition, the anticipation of completeness, and the fusion of horizons ‐ yields no coherent account of ‘truth’ without a kind of ‘bias’ in favor of the hermeneutical ‘object’. We still await an adequate account of validity in hermeneutical unders...

“In Other Words”: The Philosophical Writings of Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty's work is the most important (and accessible) by an American philosopher since Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Anticipated by an essay introducing The Linguistic Turn (1967), expressed most forcefully in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and supplemented by The Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), Rorty's intention has been to undermine the tradition of modern philosophy founded on Descartes' mind?body dualism, Locke's account of the explanation and justification of knowledge and Kant's enumeration of the constitutive principles of thoughtin a word, founda tionalism. Rorty's enterprise is revolutionary, for he claims that the foundational ist position can no longer deliver significant results. In the Anglo-American tradition, logical positivism and analytic philosophy, and on the continent, phenomenology, have come to the end of the road. Whatever praise Rorty may mete out to them in passing, he has come primarily to bury them. But Rorty's writings have more than intramural (to philosophy) interest. Like Jacques Derrida, he has no interest in replacing foundationalism with something better. Rather he hopes for philosophy's demise or that it will go the way of theology and become a quaint speciality. In concrete terms Rorty urges other discourses/disciplines to refuse to take a backseat to philosophy. This is not simply because philosophy deals with trivial problems. That would imply that philosophy then had only to get its head screwed on right and then reclaim its position as the privileged discourse. Instead, Rorty thinks that in principle philosophy can lay no claim to be a foundational discipline, because it, like all other types of discourse, is founded upon certain metaphorical descriptions of mind-body and word-world relationships. In other words, it is just as dependent on presuppositions, just as written, as other sorts of discourse. Roughly what Derrida is doing to the continental tradition and what Hayden White has attempted with modern historiography in Metahistory (1973), Rorty is also