Richard Rorty
1931-2007 · American Philosophy · Prominent
Drop the picture of the mind as a mirror held up to reality, the American pragmatist Rorty said, and philosophy stops being a hunt for the one true description. It becomes one more voice in a long conversation of mankind. Truth, on his account, is what your community will let you get away with saying. In politics he stayed a liberal pragmatist, and what he hated most was cruelty.
Signature
The position Rorty is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Truth
- Subjective – Objective
- Language
- Language-Game
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (25 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- mildly between Collectivism and Individualism (53 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Universals
- leans Nominalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (25 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (75 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (25 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ignorance
- leans Bliss (75 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Rorty refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Other / Love
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Language-Game
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Socially Constructed
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Cause
What is your primary bond and loyalty?