|
 Building
a home philosophy library
Lyn
May and Steve Deery
The
fifteenth in a series of articles advising on how to build your
own home philosophy library.
No.
15 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Richard
Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, represents a
wholesale attack on the concept of metaphysics.
Rorty
is explicitly concerned with theories of knowledge. He argues that
theories of knowledge are concerned with justifying the relationship
between mind and world - in other words, how we know about an external
reality. One way of describing this relationship is to see ourselves
as mirrors that represent reality. Rorty argues that this is wrong.
We are not passive receivers of experience. If we move out of the
grip of, mirror like, internal representations of reality we will
see that all we have is discourse.
Rorty
takes a historical approach in arguing his case. This may be with
good reason. Arguing that there is nothing but discourse is taking
a metaphysical stance towards the nature of reality and yet is used
to criticise the metaphysical enterprise. Without the historical
narrative the paradox becomes blatant.
In
the final chapter, 'Philosophy without Mirrors', Rorty considers
further the kind of discourse he has in mind. It is a discourse
without views, for to have a view is to express how things are outside
of discourse. To have a view is not wrong exactly, for we cannot
talk about right or wrong, but it is in poor taste. And yet this
is expressing a view! Perhaps Rorty should heed Wittgenstein, 'What
we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence'.
Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature has been enormously influential. Rorty
will either make you clarify your own metaphysical position, or
become a critical theorist.
Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty (Blackwell)
£19.99 /$15.75
A
new book will be featured late-March 2002.
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