Like a modern-day Diogenes, Richard Rorty made himself a thorn in the side of professional philosophy. His target was its incorrigible search for “foundations”— the attempt, as Rorty put it, to provide “an ultimate context for thought,” the solid ground in which to anchor traditional philosophical values like objectivity, rationality, and capital-t Truth. Against this vain pursuit, Rorty poses a new meta-philosophy—or as some critics called it, an anti-philosophy—that treats philosophical inquiry as a question of vocabulary, of how we speak and write within a given socio-historical context. Accused of relativism and even of irrationalism, Rorty believed instead he was offering us the means to “cope,” to achieve social consensus and enact human progress in this world. But how can we square Rorty’s humanism with his flat rejection of the pursuit of truth? Why, for Rorty, are Western metaphysics and its attendant questions—what is Being? What is reality?—complete dead ends? And what remains for philosophy, and what does it mean to philosophize, if we cease to seek, per Rorty, to “know things as they really are—to penetrate behind appearance to reality”?
In this course, we will survey Rorty’s philosophical corpus from his groundbreaking 1979 book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature to the posthumously published lectures Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism. In addition to contextualizing Rorty’s thought within a lineage that includes Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and John Dewey, we’ll be keen to assess his consistency and unity, particularly given his impressively diverse interests and concerns. How does his historicism square with his avowed “naturalism”? How does his naturalism fit with his vision of pragmatism as a form of Wordsworthian romanticism to create his vision of a secularized, post-metaphysical intellectual culture? What does Rorty mean by “cultural politics,” and how is his ethnocentrism consistent with his politics of universalist humanism? How does he envision the relation of public and private goods, given that they are, as he says, “equally valid yet incommensurable”? Finally, does Rorty’s thought constitute a philosophy at all or is it rather a kind of anti-philosophy?
This course is available for "remote" learning and will be available to anyone with access to an internet device with a microphone (this includes most models of computers, tablets). Classes will take place with a "Live" instructor at the date/times listed below.
Upon registration, the instructor will send along additional information about how to log-on and participate in the class.