On Mon, 25 May 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote:
> >Umm...He's taken seriously, but strongly disliked, by philosophers, but
> >not for stuff like this.
>
> Why then?
>
The philosopher's index CD rom shows that there is in fact a small
philosophical cottage industry devoted to criticizing Rorty's work. Off
the top of my head, I can think of one thing I've read in support of Rorty
(Kolenda's _Rorty's Pragmatic Humanism_) alhough there's got to be more.
Perhaps John St. Clair will know of other positive pieces on Rorty.
Rorty is taken seriously because he has done a pretty systematic slamming of what philosophy is supposed to be about. He's said that epistemology is stupid, universal claims are useless, and that philosophy itself, in the wake of the Analytic tradition, is nothing more than an empty shell of what it used to be. He thinks that philosophy should inspire as well as cut through fuzzy thinking. If you make it to the last chapter of R.'s book, you'll be able to read that for yorself. He also suggests that the "inspirational" work once thought to be philosophical is actually more successfully done by novels and "muckraking journalists." He also remarks that philosophers are not even useful as ethicists. Ethics should be done by those who have read about lots and lots of ethical dilemmas. So, he thinks literary theorists make better ethicists.
Rorty is one of the most well-known philosophers in the country, along with West, Nussbaum, and Walzer (or is he poli sci?). Nussbaum takes philosophy seriously and works within the discipline, West doesn't really do much within philosophy, but doesn't say anything about it either way. Ditto Walzer, who I don't even think is a philosopher. Rorty is well-known, and an egomaniac (his picture is on the front cover of two of his books.) He's a big famous philosopher standing outside a philosophy dept. (professor of the humanities at UVA) pointing into philosophy depts. and loudly proclaiming that there are a bunch of bozos inside. I kind of like him when he starts going off on philosophy departments.
No wonder the philosophers all hate him. Actually, Richard Bernstein (New School) likes him, but I think that's only because they went to college together.
Frances