Richard Rorty: Difference between revisions

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{{a|Writer|}}If you fancy yourself lining up against wokeness and [[snowflake]] culture, and think it all boils down to [[post-modernism|postmodernism]], then before turning in for your dogmatic slumbers, you need to spend a bit of time with the late, great, {{author|Richard Rorty}}. It doesn’t.
{{a|writer|}}If you fancy yourself lining up against [[woke]]ness and [[snowflake]] culture, and think it all boils down to [[post-modernism|postmodernism]], then before turning in for your [[dogmatic slumber]]s, you need to spend a bit of time with the late, great, {{author|Richard Rorty}}.  
 
It doesn’t.
{{quote|
{{rorty on truth}}}}
{{quote|
The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings do that.<ref>{{plainlink|https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n07/richard-rorty/the-contingency-of-language|“The Contingency of Language”}}, ''London Review of Books'', 17 April 1986</ref>}}
 
His great works:
 
*{{br|Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature}}
*{{br|Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity}}
*{{br|Philosophy and Social Hope}}
*{{plainlink|https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n07/richard-rorty/the-contingency-of-language|“The Contingency of Language”}}, ''London Review of Books'', 17 April 1986
 
Start with the last: it’s the most accessible.
{{sa}}
*[[Truth]]
*[[Post-modernism]]
*[[Relativism]]
{{ref}}

Latest revision as of 10:57, 1 June 2024

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If you fancy yourself lining up against wokeness and snowflake culture, and think it all boils down to postmodernism, then before turning in for your dogmatic slumbers, you need to spend a bit of time with the late, great, Richard Rorty.

It doesn’t.

“We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

Truth cannot be out there — cannot exist independently of the human mind — because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own, unaided by the describing activities of humans, cannot.”

- Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings do that.[1]

His great works:

Start with the last: it’s the most accessible.

See also

References

  1. “The Contingency of Language”, London Review of Books, 17 April 1986