Knowra Richard Rorty Richard Rorty Richard Rorty (1931–2007) was an American philosopher who recast pragmatism as a critique of philosophy’s search for foundations and treated knowledge as shaped by language and social practices.
Pragmatism : A philosophical tradition that evaluates ideas through their practical consequences and role in inquiry. Rorty renewed this tradition by making usefulness, rather than representation, central to philosophical thought.
Mirror of Nature : Richard Rorty’s 1979 book criticizing the idea that the mind represents an independently given world. This book develops his central attack on epistemology as a search for mental mirrors of reality.
John Dewey : An American philosopher and educator whose pragmatism emphasized experience, inquiry, and democratic life. Rorty regarded Dewey as a major predecessor for his anti-foundational pragmatism.
Foundationalism : The view that knowledge rests on basic beliefs or principles that need no further justification. Rorty rejects the search for such ultimate supports as the defining task of epistemology.
Liberal ironist : Rorty’s ideal of a person who doubts their final vocabulary while opposing cruelty and humiliation. This figure joins his skepticism about foundations to his ethical commitment to reducing cruelty.
Epistemology : The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, justification, and belief. Rorty challenged its traditional project of finding secure foundations for knowledge.
Antirepresentationalism : The view that knowledge need not be understood as accurately representing reality through language or mental images. Rorty uses it to reject representation as the goal that defines inquiry.
William James : An American philosopher and psychologist who helped establish pragmatism as a philosophical movement. Rorty drew on James’s pragmatic approach to truth and belief.
Correspondence theory of truth : The theory that a statement is true when it corresponds to how things are in reality. Rorty resists treating truth as a relation that explains how language represents the world.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity : Richard Rorty’s 1989 book on language, private self-creation, and liberal solidarity. The book develops his account of how contingent vocabularies can support liberal commitments.
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