Richard Rorty on the future of philosophy
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
Richard Rorty is considered one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He is credited with reviving the philosophical school of American pragmatism and challenging the accepted pieties of analytic philosophy. He championed “quietism,” which he says attempts “to dissolve, rather than solve” sets of problems that should now be considered obsolete. This November 23, 2005, interview is among his last; he died in 2007.
Rorty came to Stanford as a fellow at the Humanities Center in 1996 and then joined the faculty of the Comparative Literature Department in 1998. Beginning in the 1970s, he challenged the notion of philosophy as a discipline that could discern timeless truths about the world. Such attempts were motivated by western philosophy's misguided reliance on Platonic metaphysics, the notion that there are underlying structures, realities or truths that stand firm against the vagaries of history and social mores. Rorty insisted that we have only a linguistic and causal relationship with the world, so any attempt to find some kind of transcendent, unmediated knowledge about it is futile. He famously urged that intellectuals shift their focus from "the problems of philosophy" to "the problems of men."
His Entitled Opinions conversation with Harrison moves to the limits of philosophy in describing the nature of reality, and then whether philosophy should tackle human aspirations for greatness or stick to maximizing human happiness. In an occasionally testy exchange with Harrison, Rorty makes a controversial defense of bourgeois liberal democracy, arguing that the rest of the world should be more like America, and America should be more like Norway. The potential cost for cultural diversity? “That's the price we pay for history,” he says. He takes a number of provocative positions in the conversation. Does he stand alone? As he notes, loneliness is the lot of mankind: “If you don't have any sense of loneliness you probably won't be interested in religion or philosophy; if you do, you will.”
Description
Type of resource | sound recording-nonmusical |
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Form | interviews |
Extent | 1 audio file |
Place | Stanford (Calif.) |
Date created | September 22, 2017 |
Language | English |
Digital origin | born digital |
Creators/Contributors
Interviewee | Harrison, Robert | |
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Interviewee | Rorty, Richard | |
Speaker | Harrison, Robert | |
Speaker | Rorty, Richard |
Subjects
Subject | Philosophy |
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Genre | Interviews |
Bibliographic information
Note |
Richard Rorty was born in New York City in 1931 and was educated at the University of Chicago, where he received his B.A. and M.A., and at Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. He became professor of comparative literature at Stanford in 1998. He died in Palo Alto in 2007. Rorty received fellowships from the ACLS, Guggenheim, MacArthur, and NEH foundations and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His first landmark book "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979) set the foundation for his later work, arguing that the general distinction between objective and subjective realities is meaningless. Later books include: "Consequences of Pragmatism" (1982), "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" (1988), "Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th Century America" (Cambridge), "Philosophy and Social Hope" (2000). |
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Finding Aid | |
Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/vs192fh4915 |
Location | SC1089 |
Repository | Stanford University. Libraries. Department of Special Collections and University Archives |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Collection
Entitled opinions (about life and literature) : audio recordings, 2005-2011 (inclusive)
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