Richard Rorty (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)
Book Summary Information
Editor: Charles GuignonEditor: David R. Hiley
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-07-28
ISBN: 0521804892
Number of pages: 222
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Reviews of Richard Rorty (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)
Book Review: An excellent addition to this series for Cambridge UP
Summary: 5 Stars
This collection of critical essays dedicated to Rorty is a fine selection. This diverse group of essayists includes (at least) two personal friends of Rorty: Richard J. Bernstein & Charles Taylor
At approx. 40 pages, Guignon & Hiley's introductory essay to Rorty is an excellent essay on Rorty's development including the sources Rorty draws on to critique the analytic tradition, next it describes his social/political thought, lastly it summerizes who and why has criticized Rorty (good overview). This is an excellent and broad introductory essay for undergrads or general readers. I recommend this essay highly.
The next 3 essays are more focused on of Rorty's development out of the analytic tradition; they look at Rorty's critique of epistemology, truth claims, and scientific antirealism. They focus on Rorty's treatment of Donald Davidson and Thomas Kuhn. Gutting's essay (2nd essay) is a nice summary of Rorty but rather superfluous criticism because Gutting invokes Charles Taylor's critical appraisal to add the argumentative substance, however, since Taylor actually writes the final essay on Rorty (placed in a weird chronology by the way) we end up with a double helping of Taylor's criticism. This is Gutting's mistake because he could have chosen from a huge list of Rorty's critics (e.g. Bernard Williams).
The rest of the book, about Rorty's social/political thought, is a good addition to previous debates between Rorty and these critics (especially Bernstein & Taylor).
Maybe too broadly summarized, Rorty is attacked for these reasons:
1 - Rorty is attacked for thinking a linguistic community can just simply change their language without a corresponding change in their practices and yet still cohere (Warnke's essay say a community's language and practice give greater stability than Rorty acknowledges).
2 - Rorty is attacked for not giving the "foggiest idea" on how to realize his own ideas in an actual community (Bernstein's essay says this but adds that John Dewey suffered the same plight).
3 - Rorty is attacked for trying to make his antifoundationalism compatible with his prohibitions on cruelity (Elshtain makes this argument, and also attacks Rorty's interpretation of Freud, which is interesting).
4 - Rorty is attacked for having a bad interpretation of experience, which, Charles Taylor argues should be a kind of quasi-Heideggerian phenomenology (Taylor is drawing from Hubert Dreyfus's interpretation of Heidegger) where we have substantive implicit background knowledge that lets us "cope" with a real world that we really do progressively come to better understand (a "certain realism" Taylor admits).
Lastly, a good (selective) bibliography of Rorty's work and secondary work on Rorty at this book's end make for an excellent source to spark research for undergrads, educators, and inquisitive general readers.
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