Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Interview

Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty is perhaps the best-known living philosopher in the Pragmatic tradition, and one of the most talked-about thinkers of the present day. He is a philosophy professor at Stanford University. Giancarlo Marchetti chatted with him about his ideas and his hopes.

How did you come to study philosophy?

When I was a teenager, I read Plato and Nietzsche, and thought about the issues between them. I think this is a fairly common way in which people come to take an interest in philosophy. And I happened to go to a university where philosophy was very popular. It was taught in all the courses so it was a sort of natural career to go into.

Who in particular influenced you during your early studies?

Various teachers at the University of Chicago: Leo Strauss, Charles Hartshorne, who was a student of Whitehead, Rudolph Carnap, quite a few different people.

…