This study will examine the ideas of radical philosopher Richard Rorty, focusing on the views underlying his concept of the "poeticized culture," and specifically investigating Rorty's notions on reason, truth and justice. The thrust of this study will be general agreement with Rorty's views in these and other areas.
The best way to understand Rorty before we agree or disagree with him is to take him on his own terms. Despite the fact that some critics of Rorty have focused on contradictions among those terms, it remains generally true that Rorty remains loyal to his basic tenets about culture.
The first point which is worthy of note about Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, for example, is his openness about the experimental nature of some of his work, the tentative playfulness even: "Parts of this book skate on pretty thin ice--the passages in which I offer controversial interpretations of authors whom I discuss only briefly- This is particularly true of my treatment of Proust and Hegel--authors about whom I hope someday to write more fully, but in other parts of the book the ice is a bit thicker" (Rorty, 1989, p. xi).
So we are dealing here with a man who does not take himself as seriously as most philosophers take themselves or as seriously as all of Rorty's critics take themselves.
The basis of Rorty's unique philosophy is his belief that previous efforts to understand human nature have failed, failed to discover the truth and failed to have a significant enough impact on human behavior either individually or in the form of a community.
The clash in historical efforts to pin down human nature, says Rorty, has been composed of one camp arguing that "perfect self-realization can be attained through service to others . . . They ask us to believe that . . . the springs of private fulfillment and of human solidarity are the same") and an opposing camp (led by such skeptics as Nietzsche who "have urged t...