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Brief Lives

Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

Alistair MacFarlane holds up a mirror to the life of the famous Pragmatist.

When Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature was published in 1979, it took the world of philosophy by storm. Princeton University Press was barely able to keep up with demand, and it became one of the all-time best sellers in philosophy. Many professional philosophers were outraged by its attack on analytical philosophy, but others, mostly in related disciplines, were enthusiastic. The outrage sprang from Rorty’s challenge to the claim that philosophy was able to ground all knowledge by providing an understanding of knowledge itself. The enthusiasm sprang from his attack on the hegemony of philosophy over all other routes to knowledge.

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