Dewey’s concept of “experience” has baffled many a reader. It is, however, assuredly the key to Dewey’s distinctive philosophical contribution. Notoriously, Rorty urges that Dewey would have been well-advised to abandon “experience: in favor of “discourse” (that is, the “linguistic method of philosophy”), which he draws largely from Davidson and Sellars. For various reasons, Rorty betrays his deep misunderstanding of Dewey’s pragmatism, the lack of any close relationship between Sellars’s notion of the “given” (as a philosophical target) and Dewey’s notion (...) of the saving discovery of what is “denoted” (in inquiry) as the “given”; and the extremely problematic (possibly even incoherent) treatment of linguistic meaning in Davidson’s most pertinent papers (which Rorty seems to regard as pragmatist in an important sense and is guided by). In any event, neither Davidson nor Rorty can be rightly supposed to extend or improve Deweyan pragmatism: Rorty, in fact, explicitly and unconditionally repudiates the “linguistic turn”; and Davidson finally subverts the very theory of language on which any reading of Rorty’s “pragmatist” account of Davidson’s theory of meaning would be at all feasible. The exposé of these disorders may contributes to a more careful formulation of the pragmatist undertaking, which lies elsewhere and depends on a measure of convergence between Dewey and Peirce. (shrink)

This is the best collection of essays on Rorty’s philosophy that has been published in the last decade. It will be of great interest not only to Rorty specialists but to anyone concerned with the difficulties contemporary analytic philosophy faces in its search for a viable self-understanding. The contributors are Barry Allen, Akeel Bilgrami, Jacques Bouveresse, Robert Brandom, James Conant, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, Bjørn Ramberg, and Michael Williams. Rorty himself has also written an (...) essay, plus individual and fairly extensive replies to each of his critics. (shrink)

I try to show that Richard Rorty, although is not a moral philosopher like Kant, nerveless, has moral philosophy that must be taken seriously. Rorty was not engaged with moral philosophy in the systematic manner common among leading modern and contemporary moral philosophers. This paper has two parts: first part, in brief, is concerned with principles of his philosophy such as anti-essentialism, Darwinism, Freudism, and historicism. Second part which be long and detailed, considers many moral themes in Rorty's thought such (...) as critique of Kantian morality, solidarity, moral progress, cruelty and concept of other, etc. Subsequently, I will try to answer the research question of the article namely, has Rorty a moral philosophy? (shrink)

This paper introduces Richard Rorty’s notion of the liberal ironist and his vision of a liberal utopia and explores the implications of these for philosophical questions concerning morality, as well as morality in general. Rorty’s assertions of the contingency of language, society and self are explored. Under the contingency of language, the figure of the ironist is defined, and Rorty’s conception of vocabularies is discussed. Under the contingency of society, Rorty’s definition of liberalism, his opposition of literary culture to materialist (...) and metaphysical culture, and his notions concerning utopian politics are discussed. Under the contingency of self, Rorty’s critique of Kantian and his appropriations of Deweyan and Freudian conceptions of morality are presented. Other key factors discussed are Rorty’s theory of the separation of the private and public spheres of life and his ideas concerning cruelty and human solidarity. In this way, a critical analysis of Rorty’s proposed balance between private, ironic doubt and public, liberal social hope is presented and assessed in terms of its merit as a system of thought suited to the needs of post-metaphysical, liberal societies. (shrink)