Rorty, Richard (1931—2007)
American philosopher, often (though wrongly) associated with postmodernism because of his focus on language and its inherent ambiguity and his concomitant rejection of the idea that there is anything other than language by means of which thought can express itself. Rorty is probably best thought of as a pragmatics, albeit one of a very peculiar stripe (his claim to this title has been challenged by a number of critics, particularly Susan Haack), because he treats concepts as mere tools of expression, which can only be evaluated in terms of their specific usefulness in a given context and in relation to a specific problem. He might also be referred to as an anti-foundationalism because he rejects the argument that there must be some concepts that are self-justifying (the usual examples of such concepts are history, memory, and society). Similarly, he rejects the notion of an objective reality that can be called upon to explain existence in the last instance. Rorty is one of the most cited philosophers of the twentieth century, and a vast body of secondary literature devoted to his work has accumulated in the past two decades ensuring that his work will continue to be discussed for years to come. The child of two so-called ‘New York intellectuals’ James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush, whose politics were left-of-centre but fervidly anti-communist, Rorty grew up in an intensely intellectual environment in rural New Jersey where his parents bought a house as a deliberate retreat from city life. At 15, he went to Hutchins College at the University of Chicago, completing both his BA and MA there, focusing on philosophy. He then went to Yale to complete a PhD under the direction of metaphysician Paul Weiss. His first academic post was at Wellesley College, but he soon moved to Princeton, where he remained for more than two decades. In 1982, riding high on the critical success of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), undoubtedly his best known and most influential work, Rorty took the radical step of moving to the English Department at the University of Virginia, giving himself leave to teach a wider variety of subjects than philosophy departments permitted. He retired in 1998 and took up an Emeritus position at Stanford, where he remained until he succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Further Reading: N. Gross Richard Rorty: The Making of An American Philosopher (2008).