Richard Rorty

Lore & Background

He was the most influential of the late 20th century pragmatists along with Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom. Inspired by the work of Willard Van Orman Quine and Wilfrid Sellars, who used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s, Rorty developed a brand of pragmatism known sometimes as neopragmatism. Rorty's work gained influence through his systematic challenge to foundationalist epistemology, arguing that the mind does not mirror reality and that knowledge is instead a matter of social linguistic practice.

Reader's Guide

Rorty's significance lies in his role as the most influential late 20th century pragmatist. He was part of a renewed attention to pragmatism after Quine and Sellars used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s. Rorty's neopragmatism gained influence through his arguments that knowledge is a linguistic and contingent affair, rejecting the traditional view that knowledge requires correct internal representations of external objects. He combined pragmatism with insights from analytic and continental philosophy.

Did You Know?

• Richard Rorty was the most influential of the late 20th century pragmatists along with Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom.
• Rorty's neopragmatism gained influence after Willard Van Orman Quine and Wilfrid Sellars used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s.
• Rorty rejected the traditional view that knowledge requires correct internal representations of external objects.
• Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict analytic tradition and a 'neo-classical' pragmatism that adheres to the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey.