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American Pragmatism
Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Patriotism
Carol Nicholson on the need for a different kind of national pride.
Richard Rorty, one of the most original and influential philosophers writing in America today, is best known for his iconoclastic critique of traditional epistemology. His rejection of the notion of universal truth shocks philosophers on the right, who see this doctrine as destructive of knowledge and civilization, and infuriates many on the left, who believe that the notion of objective truth is necessary as a basis for social change. Even sympathetic critics have charged Rorty with giving a merely negative critique, which fails to come to grips with the moral and social problems of our time. In this magazine Gideon Calder wrote: “Rorty’s political writings, though avowedly progressive in intent, are often charged with bland endorsement of the status quo, and denial of all scope for adequate criticism” (Philosophy Now, October/November, 2000). Rorty has begun to address concrete political and economic issues in recent works such as Achieving Our Country (Harvard, 1998), in which he raises question such as: “Why does the American left seem to lack patriotism?” and “What can be done to restore national pride in America?”
Rorty’s strategy in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature was to deconstruct traditional epistemology by undermining its central metaphor, the idea that the purpose of the mind is to reflect reality.
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