Abstract
Richard Rorty is first introduced as both the best known and the most controversial neopragmatist. This introduction then offers a sketch of Rorty’s version of pragmatism that focuses on his democratic anti-authoritarianism, whose transformative aspiration must be taken seriously. The introduction then outlines the main themes of Rorty scholarship for users of the Handbuch, e.g. the questions of truth, realism, relativism, and religion. The debates in the scholarship revolve around Rorty’s transformative aspiration and around what are taken to be the (too rigid) key distinctions he draws: argumentation/redescription, causation/justification, and private/public.
One goal of this companion is to continue the conversation among researchers about Rorty. However, it is primarily intended to provide a systematic and comprehensive overview. The presentation of a systematic and comprehensive overview of Rorty’s work informs the resulting structure and individual parts of the volume. The introduction concludes with acknowledgments and general remarks about Rorty’s neopragmatism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
As an assistance for the use of the Handbuch reference is made in the brackets to the contributions relevant to the respective topic (in the case of authors with two contributions, indicating the section). All chapters are briefly introduced individually in the introductions to the individual sections of the volume.
- 2.
In neopragmatism, the focus is on language or linguistic practice and no longer, as with the classics of pragmatism Peirce, James, and Dewey, on (experimental) experience. Unfortunately, hardened fronts still exist between the adherents of both “waves” of pragmatism. For a creative proposal of their reconciliation, see Koopman 2009.
- 3.
- 4.
This Rorty can be seen at work in Brandom 2000, among others.
- 5.
For a brilliant overview of the different dimensions of Rorty’s neopragmatism, see the contribution by Jeffrey Stout in this volume.
- 6.
Rorty defends the high social utility of natural science and also its exemplary character as a model of communicative solidarity. At the same time, he opposes with vehemence and belligerence its scientistic worship as a kind of Enlightenment version of religion. Thereby it is only tried to inherit the expert authority of the priest by that of the natural scientist, for example, in the figure of the neuroscientist. See on this, among others, Rorty 1991b, pp. 35–39, 1998b, p. 289, 2007, pp. 40, 103.
- 7.
According to Hilary Putnam (1995, p. 21), the complex basic idea of fallibilism without relativism is perhaps the fundamental insight of the pragmatists.
- 8.
For more on the meaning of “romanticism” in Rorty, see Müller 2014a, pp. 109–113.
- 9.
Rorty adapts the notion of “strong poet” from the literary scholar Harold Bloom and expands its meaning (Rorty 1989, pp. 24, 53).
- 10.
This interpretation is developed in Müller 2014a.
- 11.
See, e.g., Schaper 1994. In his project of linguistic self-creation, however, the ironist is dependent on others. Taking this as a starting point, renowned Rorty interpreters try to derive the ethical-political character of irony in Rorty, see, e.g., Bacon 2007; Ramberg 2014; Voparil 2010. At the same time, these three texts each offer an excellent introduction to Rorty and to Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.
- 12.
The critique of the figure of the liberal ironist has to take into account that it is the product of a contextualist utopian thinking, see Müller 2014b.
- 13.
Support could be provided by practical policy measures alone, such as government concern for security and prosperity (Rorty 1989, p. xiv).
- 14.
On Rorty’s view of the constitutive importance of this level for philosophy as a whole, see also the early text Philosophy as Ethics (Rorty 2020, pp. 13–24).
- 15.
On the relationship to the neutral antifundamentalism of John Rawls’ political liberalism, see Müller 2014, Chap. V.3.
- 16.
Rorty also provokes there with the thesis that Mill’s theory is the “pretty much the last word” to political theory.
- 17.
- 18.
Rorty tirelessly promoted a social democratic politics of reform within liberal democracy. As early as 1997, he warned against neglecting increasing social inequality by limiting oneself to identity politics. This would make the rise of right-wing populism and the election of a “strong man” increasingly likely (Rorty 1998a, pp. 87–88)!
- 19.
Alluding to Karl Marx’s 11th Feuerbach thesis, Rorty emphasizes the primacy of action over contemplation (Rorty 1995, p. 198). With Marx, Rorty is concerned with changing the social world, but unlike Marx, he believes this can be achieved through transformative redescription (of concepts).
- 20.
According to Rorty, the theoretical benefit of his neopragmatism lies in particular in the dismissal of skepticism. Moreover, it makes it possible to finally reconcile our moral self-image with Darwinism (e.g., Rorty 1999, p. 66).
- 21.
See in this regard in particular Rorty 2021.
- 22.
- 23.
Rorty has corrected and clarified his position over the years, most notably in discussion with Donald Davidson. To his “mature position” see above all Pragmatism, Davidson and Truth (Rorty 1991b, pp. 126–150).
- 24.
Again and again, reference is made to the casual formulation in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that truth is not “more than what our peers will, ceteris paribus, let us get away with saying” (Rorty 1979, p. 176). This formulation was one of the provocations from which Rorty (2010c, p. 45) later distanced himself. It is part of his emancipatory project of turning the focus toward our practice of justification.
- 25.
For Rorty, the absoluteness of the concept of truth in contrast to the relative concept of justification does not imply the necessity of a consensus theory that operates with the idea of idealized justification. This way leads again into a metaphysical dead end. On the longstanding “family dispute” between Rorty and his neopragmatist counterparts Hilary Putnam and especially Jürgen Habermas over this question, see Müller 2014, Chap. IV.
- 26.
Michael Bacon rightly points out that this juxtaposition, owed to rhetoric, includes: “Objectivity is solidarity, agreement with one’s peers in the light of our interaction with the world” (Bacon 2007, p. 21, emphasis added).
- 27.
- 28.
In terms of content, Rorty’s ethnocentrism accordingly also places itself in the universalist tradition of its own liberal justificatory community (see above). For the communitarian dimension of Rorty’s thinking see Müller 2019.
- 29.
Bernstein thus pointedly alludes to Rorty’s use of Sellars’s critique of empiricism.
- 30.
- 31.
On the motivation and also assessment of this transformative turn, see Müller 2017.
- 32.
According to Rorty, no universal concept of rationality can be reconstructed from language either. For the debate on this with Jürgen Habermas, see Müller 2014a, Chap. IV u. V.2.
- 33.
Bernstein also rightly points out there that Rorty’s own redescription of liberalism in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, for example, works with arguments, contrary to the announcement there (Rorty 1989, p. 9).
- 34.
This thesis refers primarily to Rorty’s talk there of a “general turn against theory and toward narrative” (Rorty 1989, p. xvi).
- 35.
Rorty’s “pragmatism without method” (Rorty 1991b, p. 63) rejects the idea of a neutral philosophical method across vocabulary boundaries. On this skepticism of method, see, e.g., Rorty 2007, p. 143. On the diagnosis of a kind of methodophobia and hostility to theory in Rorty, see Müller 2014a, pp. 147–148, 555–559.
- 36.
Brandom also points out there the irony that Rorty, as an anti-Kantian, uses a Kantian distinction to undermine representationalism.
- 37.
According to Rorty, it is not realism and anti-realism that confront each other in contemporary philosophy, but atomistic representationalism and holistic anti-representationalism (e.g., Rorty 2007, pp. 134–135, 143). Disregarding his transformative claim, Rorty has been interpreted not only as a representative of idealism, but also of reductive realist naturalism. In this respect, it happens to him like his hero John Dewey.
- 38.
On this criticism, see, e.g., Blackburn 2006, pp. 151–161. There Blackburn also criticizes that the opposition of coping and copying cannot be maintained on closer examination.
- 39.
- 40.
In substance, this insight is already present in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. There, for example, the importance of socialization is vehemently emphasized (e.g., Rorty 1989, p. 185). Also, the cultural significance of the figure of the strong poet presupposes the connection between the private and the public (e.g., Rorty 1989, pp. 24–26, 37, 1991a, pp. 72, 121).
- 41.
See esp. Janack 2010. This volume also documents that Rorty was the only known representative of the liberal “malestream” to seek dialogue with feminist thinkers himself.
- 42.
Of course, the claim to comprehensive exposition can only be realized approximately. Unfortunately, some contributions did not reach the editor in time or had to be cancelled due to illness of the author.
- 43.
On the history of the misunderstanding between German thought and American pragmatism, see Joas 1992.
- 44.
Richard Bernstein sadly passed away on July 4, 2022.
- 45.
For more about the individual Handbuch sections and the contributions of the volume, see the respective section introductions.
- 46.
My special thanks go to Marianne Janack for her careful proof reading of this English version of the introduction.
References
Bacon, Michael. 2007. Richard Rorty. Pragmatism and political liberalism. Lanham: Lexington.
Bacon, Michael. 2012. Pragmatism. An introduction. Cambridge: Polity.
Bernstein, Richard J. 1987. One step forward, two steps backward: Richard Rorty on liberal democracy and philosophy. Political Theory 15(4): 538–563.
Bernstein, Richard J. 2010. The pragmatic turn. Cambridge: Polity.
Bernstein, Richard J. 2016. Ironic life. Cambridge: Polity.
Blackburn, Simon. 2006. Truth: A guide for the perplexed. London: Penguin.
Bobbio, Noberto. 1989. The great dichotomy: Public/private. In Democracy and dictatorship. The nature and limits of state power, 1–21. Oxford: Polity.
Boffetti, Jason. 2004. How Richard Rorty found religion. First Things 143(May): 24–30.
Brandom, Robert, ed. 2000. Rorty and his critics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Brandom, Robert. 2000a. Introduction. In Rorty and his critics, ed. Robert Brandom, ix–xx. Oxford: Blackwell.
Brandom, Robert. 2000b. Vocabularies of pragmatism: Synthesizing naturalism and historicism. In Rorty and his critics, ed. Robert Brandom, 156–182. Oxford: Blackwell.
Curtis, William M. 2015. Defending Rorty. Pragmatism and liberal virtue. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Dewey, John. 1984. The quest for certainty. In The later works, 1925–1953: Volume 4: 1929, ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dickstein, Morris. 1998. Introduction: Pragmatism then and now. In The revival of pragmatism: New essays on social thought, law, and culture, ed. Morris Dickstein, 1–18. Durham: Duke University Press.
Erez, Lior. 2013. Reconsidering Richard Rorty’s private-public distinction. Humanities 2: 193–208.
Haack, Susan. 2006. Introduction. In Pragmatism, old & new. Selected writings, eds. Susan Haack and Robert Lane, 15–67. Amherst: Prometheus.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. Postmetaphysical thinking: Philosophical essays. Trans. William M. Hohengarten. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1999. Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Philosophische Aufsätze. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Truth and justification. Trans. Barbara Fultner. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2008. Richard Rorty und das Entzücken am Schock der Deflationierung. In Ach, Europa. Kleine politische Schriften XI, 15–23. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2009. ‘…And to define America, her athletic Democracy’: In Memory of Richard Rorty. In Europe. The faltering project. Trans. Ciaran Cronin, 3–16. Cambridge: Polity.
House, D. Vaden. 1994. Without god or his doubles: Realism, relativism, and Rorty. Leiden/New York: Brill.
James, William. 1975. Pragmatism: In The works of William James, vol. 1, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skruskelis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Janack, Marianne, ed. 2010. Feminist interpretations of Richard Rorty. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Joas, Hans. 1992. Amerikanischer Pragmatismus und deutsches Denken. Zur Geschichte eines Mißverständnisses. In Pragmatismus und Gesellschaftstheorie, 114–145. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Kleemann, Georg M. 2007. Private Götter, öffentlicher Glaube. Richard Rorty und die Religion. Theologie und Philosophie 82(1): 21–45.
Koopman, Colin. 2009. Pragmatism as transition. Historicity and hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty. New York: Columbia University Press.
Misak, Cheryl. 2013. The American pragmatists. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Müller, Martin. 2014a. Private Romantik, öffentlicher Pragmatismus? Richard Rortys transformative Neubeschreibung des Liberalismus. Bielefeldt: transcript.
Müller, Martin. 2014b. Richard Rortys Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989). Die begründungstheoretische Verbindung von Utopie und Ironie. In Idealstaat oder Gedankenexperiment? Zum Staatsverständnis in den klassischen Utopien, ed. Thomas Schölderle, 287–304. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Müller, Martin. 2017. From irony to robust serenity – Pragmatic politics of religion after Rorty. Contemporary Pragmatism 14(3): 334–349.
Müller, Martin. 2019. Richard Rorty und das kommunitarische Denken. In Handbuch Kommunitarismus, ed. Walter Reese-Schäfer, 301–318. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Nagl, Ludwig. 2007. Die unerkundete Option: Pragmatistische Denkansätze in der Religionsphilosophie. Anmerkungen zur Habermas’schen Skizze nachkantianischer Religionsbegriffe (Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard). In Glauben und Wissen. Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas, eds. Rudolf Langthaler and Herta Nagl-Docekal, 186–215. Wien: Oldenburg/Akademie.
Putnam, Hilary. 1992. Realism with a human face, ed. James Conant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Putnam, Hilary. 1995. Pragmatism: An open question. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ramberg, Bjørn T. 2000. Rorty und die Werkzeuge der Philosophie. In Die Renaissance des Pragmatismus. Aktuelle Verflechtungen zwischen analytischer und kontinentaler Philosophie, ed. Mike Sandbothe, 127–168. Weilerswist: Velbrück.
Ramberg, Bjørn T. 2014. Irony’s commitment: Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. The European Legacy. Toward New Paradigms 19(2): 144–162.
Reder, Michael. 2013. Religion in säkularer Gesellschaft. Über die neue Aufmerksamkeit für Religion in der politischen Philosophie. Freiburg: Alber.
Rorty, Richard. 1961/2014. Pragmatism, categories, and language. In Mind, language, and metaphilosophy: Early philosophical papers, eds. Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia, 16–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1982. Consequences of pragmatism. Essays: 1972–1980. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1991a. Essays on Heidegger and others. Philosophical papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1991b. Objectivity, relativism, and truth. Philosophical papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1993. Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum. Vier philosophische Essays. Übers. v. Joachim Schulte. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Rorty, Richard. 1995. Philosophy & the future. In Rorty and pragmatism: The philosopher responds to his critics, ed. Hermann J. Saatkamp, Jr., 197–205, 230. Nashville/London: Vanderbilt University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1997. Truth, politics, and “post-modernism”. Spinoza lecture 1: Is it desirable to love truth? Spinoza lecture 2: Is “post-modernism” relevant to politics? Assen: Van Gorcum Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1998a. Achieving our country: Leftist thought in twentieth-century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1998b. Truth and progress: Philosophical papers. Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1999. Philosophy and social hope. New York: Penguin.
Rorty, Richard. 2000. Response to Bjørn Ramberg. In Rorty and his critics, eds. Robert B. Brandom, 370–377. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rorty, Richard. 2004. Philosophy as a transitional Genre. In Pragmatism, critique, judgment: Essays for Richard J. Bernstein, eds. Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser, 3–28. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2005. Anticlericalism and atheism. In Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo. The future of religion, ed. Santiago Zabala, 29–41. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2006. Take care of freedom and truth will take care of itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty, ed. Eduardo Mendieta. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2007. Philosophy as cultural politics: Philosophical papers. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2010a. Intellectual autobiography. In The philosophy of Richard Rorty, eds. Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn, 3–24. Chicago: Open Court.
Rorty, Richard. 2010b. Religion in the public square: A reconsideration. In The Rorty reader, eds. Christopher J. Voparil and Richard J. Bernstein, 456–462. Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Rorty, Richard. 2010c. Reply to Cheryl Misak. In The philosophy of Richard Rorty, eds. Randall E. Auxier and Lewis E. Hahn, 44–45. Chicago/La Salle: Open Court.
Rorty, Richard. 2011. An ethics for today: Finding common ground between philosophy and religion. Introduction by Gianni Vattimo. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2016. Philosophy as poetry. Introduction by Michael Bérubé. Afterword by Mary V. Rorty. Charlottesville/London: University of Virginia Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2020. On philosophy and philosophers. Unpublished papers, 1960–2000, eds. Christopher Voparil and W. P. Malecki. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 2021. Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism (ed. Eduardo Mendieta. Preface by Robert B. Brandom). Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press.
Sandbothe, Mike. 2000. Die pragmatische Wende des linguistic turn. In Die Renaissance des Pragmatismus. Aktuelle Verflechtungen zwischen analytischer und kontinentaler Philosophie, ed. Mike Sandbothe, 96–126. Weilerswist: Velbrück.
Schaper, Susanne. 1994. Ironie und Absurdität als philosophische Standpunkte. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Talisse, Robert B., and Scott F. Aikin. 2008. Pragmatism. A guide for the perplexed. London/New York: Continuum.
Tartaglia, James. 2007. Rorty and the mirror of nature. London: Routledge.
Voparil, Christopher J. 2010. General introduction. In The Rorty reader, eds. Christopher J. Voparil and Richard J. Bernstein, 1–52. Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Recommended Literature for Further Reading
Bacon, Michael. 2007. Richard Rorty. Pragmatism and political liberalism. Lanham: Lexington; the best introduction to Rorty’s thinking and its basic anti-authoritarian motivation.
Curtis, William M. 2015. Defending Rorty. Pragmatism and liberal virtue. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press; an excellent overview of the major debates and an original interpretation of Rorty as virtue liberal.
Malachowski, Alan, ed. 2020. A companion to Rorty. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. The insightful research contributions of leading Rorty interpreters collected here are an excellent addition to this volume.
Müller, Martin. 2014. Private Romantik, öffentlicher Pragmatismus? Richard Rortys transformative Neubeschreibung des Liberalismus. Bielefeldt: transcript. This comprehensive account of Rorty’s transformative neopragmatism as a combination of romanticism and pragmatism simultaneously applies the pragmatic test to it.
Müller, Martin. 2022. Richard Rorty: A short introduction. Wiesbaden: Springer VS; a brief, albeit systematic introduction that emphasizes the transformative character exemplified by Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.
Ramberg, Bjørn T. 2007. Richard Rorty. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty. Accessed 29 Nov 2020; a very brief but very thorough overview of Rorty’s life and work.
Reese-Schäfer, Walter. 2006. Richard Rorty zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius; the best German-language introduction to Rorty.
Rondel, David, ed. 2021. The Cambridge companion to Richard Rorty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press The contributions of the distinguished authors in Rondel’s companion are also must-reads for Rorty scholars.
Voparil, Christopher J. 2010. General introduction. In The Rorty reader, ed. Christopher J. Voparil and Richard J. Bernstein, 1–52. Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Voparil’s introduction in this standard reader provides an excellent overview of Rorty’s path of thought.
Website of the Richard Rorty Society. https://richardrortysociety.org. Accessed 29 Nov 2020. This most important website for Rorty research provides, among other things, event information and valuable links.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Müller, M. (2023). General Introduction to the Handbuch Richard Rorty. In: Müller, M. (eds) Handbuch Richard Rorty. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16253-5_80
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16253-5_80
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-16252-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-16253-5
eBook Packages: Social Science and Law (German Language)