Abstract

Over more than two decades now, Richard Rorty has been expounding a philosophical position he calls "neo-pragmatism." According to Rorty we should abandon the ideas of truth, objectivity, and human nature, and by so doing we would enhance the liberal democratic creed and make it more tolerant and open. Despite how philosophically daring and counter-intuitive Rorty's denial of objective reality has been, his prominence and popularity remain striking. This work will try to explain how and why his ideas have become so widely influential in contemporary American culture. ;I have tried to find an answer to these questions by looking for Rorty's philosophical lineage in American history, and by searching the political and cultural experience of his own time for reasons which may have made his position appealing to contemporaries. ;The answer I have tried to establish could be broken down into two components. First, historically, Rorty's intellectual ancestry does not lie with the school of pragmatism, but has its roots in wider and more established indigenous ideas: a conception of liberalism that began with James Madison, and a conception of individualism epitomized by Emerson. Above these, a tradition of anti-intellectualism, and the unique power of the American ideological consensus conspired to create hospitable grounds for Rorty's attack on philosophical truth. ;The second part of the answer lies with the academic trend associated with postmodern "theory." Rorty gave philosophical respectability to the idea that Western culture's reverence for truth and objectivity was always an essential part of the violence the West perpetrated against "Others."