Rorty, Richard

Richard McKay Rorty (1931-2007) is commonly described as one of the most influential thinkers of his era. A philosopher with a remarkably broad intellectual range, his work included the development of a distinctive brand of pragmatism as well as significant contributions to literary criticism, political theory, and other scholarly fields. He was also a public intellectual, writing for such publications as The Nation and The Atlantic. Rorty was born on October 4, 1931, in New York City. The son of writers and activists James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush Rorty (and the grandson of prominent Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch), he later wrote in an autobiographical sketch, "At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice." His family moved to Flatbrookville, New Jersey, when he was a child. Rorty enrolled in the University of Chicago at age 15, eventually earning his B.A. (1949) and M.A. (1952) in philosophy, studying under Rudolf Carnap, Charles Hartshorne, and Richard McKeon. After completing his Ph.D. (1956) at Yale University with the dissertation, "The Concept of Potentiality," supervised by Paul Weiss, Rorty served two years in the army before receiving his first academic appointment at Wellesley College. From 1961 to 1982 Rorty taught in the philosophy department at Princeton University before moving to the University of Virginia as Kenan Professor of the Humanities. In 1998, Rorty accepted his final academic position at Stanford University in the Department of Comparative Literature. While Rorty gained scholarly attention with his article, "Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories," (1965) and his edited anthology The Linguistic Turn (1967), his most provocative work was yet to come. By combining what he learned from analytic, continental, and pragmatist philosophers, Rorty developed an "anti-Philosophy" that emphasized the historical contingency of philosophy as one literary genre beside the sciences and arts. His version of anti-essentialism and anti-foundationalism was developed in such important works as Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979); Consequences of Pragmatism (1982); Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989); Achieving Our Country (1998); Philosophy and Social Hope (2000); and four volumes of his philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991), Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991), Truth and Progress (1998) and Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007). The social and political consequences that emerge from this version of neopragmatism, Rorty contended, are those of a romantic liberalism that promotes justice and democracy by reducing cruelty and increasing solidarity through the redescription of our contingent vocabularies. Richard Rorty died of pancreatic cancer June 8, 2007, in Palo Alto, California.

Historical Background

Richard McKay Rorty (1931-2007) is commonly described as one of the most influential thinkers of his era. A philosopher with a remarkably broad intellectual range, his work included the development of a distinctive brand of pragmatism as well as significant contributions to literary criticism, political theory, and other scholarly fields. He was also a public intellectual, writing for such publications as The Nation and The Atlantic .

Rorty was born on October 4, 1931, in New York City. The son of writers and activists James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush Rorty (and the grandson of prominent Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch), he later wrote in an autobiographical sketch, "At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice." His family moved to Flatbrookville, New Jersey, when he was a child.

Rorty enrolled in the University of Chicago at age 15, eventually earning his B.A. (1949) and M.A. (1952) in philosophy, studying under Rudolf Carnap, Charles Hartshorne, and Richard McKeon. After completing his Ph.D. (1956) at Yale University with the dissertation, "The Concept of Potentiality," supervised by Paul Weiss, Rorty served two years in the army before receiving his first academic appointment at Wellesley College. From 1961 to 1982 Rorty taught in the philosophy department at Princeton University before moving to the University of Virginia as Kenan Professor of the Humanities. In 1998, Rorty accepted his final academic position at Stanford University in the Department of Comparative Literature.

While Rorty gained scholarly attention with his article, "Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories," (1965) and his edited anthology The Linguistic Turn (1967), his most provocative work was yet to come. By combining what he learned from analytic, continental, and pragmatist philosophers, Rorty developed an "anti-Philosophy" that emphasized the historical contingency of philosophy as one literary genre beside the sciences and arts. His version of anti-essentialism and anti-foundationalism was developed in such important works as Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979); Consequences of Pragmatism (1982); Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989); Achieving Our Country (1998); Philosophy and Social Hope (2000); and four volumes of his philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991), Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991), Truth and Progress (1998) and Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007). The social and political consequences that emerge from this version of neopragmatism, Rorty contended, are those of a romantic liberalism that promotes justice and democracy by reducing cruelty and increasing solidarity through the redescription of our contingent vocabularies.

Richard Rorty died of pancreatic cancer June 8, 2007, in Palo Alto, California.

Historical Background