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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780521358774
ISBN number: 0521358779
Label: Cambridge University Press
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 236
Printing Date: November 30, 1990
Publishing house: Cambridge University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 161474
Studio: Cambridge University Press
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In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.
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Rated by buyers 
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I'm sure Richard Rorty has some important things to say but to me his writing comes across as "philosophical shop talk." He writes of -ism this and -ism that but seldom makes a direct point.
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The very first volume, Objectivism, Relatativism and Truth, is mainly concerned with Donald Davidson and John Dewey. Dewey I was vaguely familiar with(and still am) while concerning Davidson I was completely ignorant. My light-hearted critique Rorty is similar to a critique of Sartre. Sartre begins with the fact that there isn't a God, what do we do now. In many ways Rorty begins with that same position and though that doesn't effect my critique, it should be noted that we begin everything from different positions.
Rorty, like Rawls, takes religious belief very lightly. He is apparently friends with Alaisdair MacIntyre so he understands that theism is intellectually sustainable. In fact, in volume 2 he cites MacIntyre saying that "dramatic narratives may well be essental to the writing of intellectual history." I only bring this up to show Rorty's understanding of theism and yet his disregard of it in taking the position of a postmetaphysical philosopher.
My memory is unfortunately fleeting concerning the very first volume which I no longer have, but thanks to the amazon excerpt I can bring up a few quotes.
Rorty's chief concern is the rivalry between platonic realists and Jamesian pragmatists. This is how he puts it:
Those who want to ground solidarity in objectivity - call them "realists" - so they have to contstrue truth as correspondence to reality. So they must construct a metaphysics which has room for a special relation between beliefs and objects which will differentiate true from fals beliefs...
By contrast, those who wish to reduce objectivity to solidarity - call them "pragmatists" - do not require a metaphysics or an epistemology. They view truth as, in William James' phrase, what is good for us to believe.
So this is basically it. He goes on for a few hundred pages, and then 200 more in the second volume, but it all basically comes down to this difference and his support of pragmatism. The support occurs because it is more beneficial for him to be a pragmatist, so I guess he is in line with his own philosophy, but then again, he doesn't consider philisophy an occupation worth much (he is now a humanities professor). Rorty doesn't much get into benifit, what that is, why that matters, but rests on a culture understanding with a desperate endeavor to avoid ethnocentrism.
Volume 2 goes into Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida but mainly to show how they aline with Dewey and James, a noble quest if there ever was one. Mainly he goes about readings of their early works, trapped within the prison of metaphysics, or free into the...ambiguity? of pragmatism. I'd say delight but then that would put them all out of jobs. Maybe its just a grudge and Rorty wants to make all of the philosophy faculties of the world close because they gave him a wedgie in grad school.
So why not pragmatism? Well, the pragmatist is trapped in either solopsism or hedonism, two positions I do not envy and from which I do not see an escape nor do I think there is an endeavor at one. But more than anything, pragmatism is a system that does not affect anyone else so frankly, it's not why pragmatism, but why should I care, and after reading enough of him the answer is evident, I don't.
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A reader, Lechman, wrote here that "All scientists and engineers would reject Rortys ideas as extremely sloppy and antiscientific." Having not read this particular book [I gave it 4 stars to keep the score as I found it], I still can comment that Rorty's claims against science have nothing anti-scientific about them. As a pragmatist, Rorty would certainly not hold science to be without value, and I seriously doubt that he--in this book or in any other--challenges how scientists go about their work. Really, it's just not much of concern to science whether scientists believe themselves to be revealing metaphysical truth or not--they'll still get their work done.
But the question remains, 'what is the truth-value of the results produced by science?'. Many modern people, stuck in circular thinking, endeavor to justify science with scientific premises. Even the biggest advocates of science in philosophy realize that that's not tenable.
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As interesting and successful as Rorty is, he fails to make me feel comfortable identifying myself with the postmodernist liberals. Rorty holds to some sort of a skepticism. At best, he doesn't seem to care about any sort of representationalistic epistemology. Also, he tries to reduce any representationlistic epistemology to a simplistic "mirror" epistemology. To me, that is a straw-man argument.
Despite Rorty's claims not to be a relativist, I would assert that he is. No doubt, we all, in the end, use arguments that could be accused of being a mere petitio principii (i.e. begging the question). However, when one is an evolutionaristic anti-essentialist at the same time, one cannot escape cultural relativism, at best. There is no common ground among language games, according to Rorty's philosophy. If so, there is no moral obligation for one to play one language game, or hold to one web of belief, as opposed to another.
Well, anyway, it was a good read. Rorty is definitely another one of those innovative and interesting postmodernists (along with others like Foucault and Derrida). One difference, though, is that Rorty is much more optimistic than his peers. Of course, this optimism is groundless, though not reasonless.
Rated by buyers 
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I was amazed by this book. Having read several of his works since I would recommend that you should start reading Rorty with this book.
You do not need to be a philosopher to read this book, or even be very interested in philosophy. All that is required is an interest in any of: History, science, politics and literature. I am pretty sure that Rorty's ideas about the common ground that these disciplines can be seen to occupy will be invigorating.
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