Shattering philsophy's mirror: a conversation with Richard Rorty - philosopher - Cover Story

Commonweal, May 6, 1994 by Gordon D. Marino

For all too long, the mainstream of American philosophers wanted nothing to do with their European counterparts. With the exception of Anglo-analytic thinkers, from whom most of us were trying to take our cues, European philosophers were regarded as pseudo-philosophers. Indeed, I can recall a graduate seminar that I was in only ten years ago in which the professor read a few lines from a random page of Heidegger's Being and Time. We all guffawed as if to say, how could anyone be so thick as to take this metaphysical mumbo-jumbo for philosophy? For different reasons, similar judgments were passed upon American philosophers such as William James and John Dewey. Thanks in large part to therapeutic effects of the work of Richard Rorty, American philosophers have become less snobbish and more inclusive.

In addition to opening the American philosophical mind, Rorty has provoked and help sustain the debate over foundationalism in epistemology and ethics. This debate, which, more than any other, defines philosophy today, is a debate as to whether or not philosophers ought to continue spending their time trying to construct presuppositionless arguments capable of justifying their views to any and all rational creatures. Arguing that such projects are both hopeless and needless, Richard Rorty is the doyen of antifoundationalism. Obviously the relativism of Rorty's view is alien to Thomism and the Catholic natural law tradition. Still, Rorty's philosophical exploration of narrative and historical contingency should be of interest to adherents of biblical and revealed religion. But no matter what side you would be inclined to take in this debate, Rorty is essential reading for anyone eager to get a sense of philosophy in the present age.

Richard Rorty felt the bite of philosophy at a very tender age. In his early adolescence he was already keeping company with Plato, Dewey, and others. For the last forty years or so, he has been reflecting on the question of the value of philosophy. He has, of late, been publishing conclusions such as this:

If we [philosophers] stop preening ourselves on our position

at the top of the hierarchy of disciplines, stop identifying

our professional practices with "rational thought"

or "clear thought" we shall be in a better position to grant

Dewey's point that our discipline is no more able to set

its own agenda than is engineering or jurisprudence.

Such an admission would help us to dispense with the

idea that scientific and political developments require

"philosophical foundations"--the idea that judgment

must remain suspended on the legitimacy of cultural novelties

until we philosophers have pronounced them authentically

rational (Philosophy and the Future).

Contrary to all the sermons I have delivered in my Philosophy 101 class, Rorty proclaims that we do not need philosophy to underwrite our views of justice, knowledge, or almost anything else. If it is good for anything, it is for the rather marginal purpose of squaring apparently inconsistent theories. Thus for some time now, Rorty has been trying to talk philosophers out of their grandiose self-images. In the process, he has become one of the most influential and controversial philosophers in the world. And deservedly so--on both counts.

Not long ago, I traveled to the University of Virginia, where Rorty is the University Professor of Humanities (N.B., not philosophy). Before speaking with him, I was warned by an admiring quondam student that there is a certain irony about Rorty.

Over the years, Rorty has tried to show the extent to which philosophical theories are driven by metaphors. More self-consciously than other members of his guild, Rorty has cast a few images of his own. One of the metaphors that has stuck is the image of philosophy as a conversation. While Rorty may have dedivinized everything else, he has sacralized the idea of conversation. And yet, warned his student, he is not a very good conversationalist--at least not until you get to know him for a few years. A colleague of Rorty's offered a similar assessment, saying that she had met with him a number of times and found it very difficult to draw him into a dialogue. Besides "brilliant," the terms most frequently used to describe Rorty are "shy," "urbane," and "introverted." This character sketch was a recipe for an interviewer's nightmare. I rapped on Rorty's office door with a fear and trembling. My fears were not entirely in vain.

Rorty is occasionally described as genteel. I am convinced that this misconception derives from two sources--the elegance of his writing style and the color photo of him that appears on each of his last three books--twice on the back and once on the cover! In this waist-up snapshot Rorty is clad in a white coat and a blue oxford shirt, opened at the collar. The background is lush green sprinkled with pink impatiens. The image tells you that he must have a mint julep in his hand. Rorty's head is tilted. He looks relaxed and satisfied. There is a broad, warm smile upon his face--a smile that I never saw.