Reading Rortys Philosophy & Mirror of Nature

Chubby sort of fellow
Rorty sketch (from marxists. org)

I’m still here in Italy on vacation, but I’ve kept on reading PaMoN, and currently I am on Part II (Theory of Knowledge).

Before we get into the nitty gritty, i have something to admit. For years I’ve always admired Rorty, and I’ve read his later works (Consequences of Pragmatism, several essays from Philosophical Papers, the later collected works) in order to combat those blinkered Platonists and recalcitrant analytical philosophers on the internet. It was too much fun slapping them silly for clinging on to outdated and outworn models of philosophy, when the game has obviously passed them by! But I never read his magnum opus, PMoN, till now. Yeah, yeah. Continue reading Reading Rortys Philosophy & Mirror of Nature

Reconstructing philosophy

This blog is a summary of Rorty’s salient points in his essay, The Historiography of Philosophy.

There are several ways to reconstruct the writings of philosophers: the rational, the historical, and the holistic. The paradigmatic examples are, respectively; P. F. Strawson of Kant, John Dunn‘s of Locke, and Heidegger’s Question of Being. Continue reading Reconstructing philosophy