Richard Rorty Intellectual Biography – Phil 204w

Richard Rorty Intellectual Biography – Phil 204W

Jialin Yu (Alan)

2166675

          Ingenious, ecumenical, utopian and cosmopolitan, Richard Rorty is an American philosopher who is truly an anomaly. The core of his philosophy evolves around the rehabilitation and transformation of pragmatism. Controversial as it is, Rorty’s brand of pragmatism scintillates a mixture of fervor, repudiation, confusion and hostility. He has contributed more than any other contemporary U.S philosophers to revive and transform the bearing and name of pragmatism. Yet at the same time, Rorty has also done more than anyone else to obscure it.

          Drawing references from almost anything, Rorty showcases his ability to move from literature to arts, from Wittgenstein to Derrida, from a Nabokov novel to a Philip Larkin poem or from Dewey to Rawls.^[1] Not only was he a voracious reader, he writes with an artistic flair that is both disarming and captivating, exuding an effortless self-effacing charm. A foe to many, and a friend to only a few, Rorty is now remembered for his nonchalant criticisms, consummate revelations, and multilateral thoughts. In this paper, I will detail his early life and education followed by the influences on his philosophy and his major works. And I will end with his contemporary influences and comments from his critics.

Early Life & Education

          Richard Rorty was born on October 4th, 1931, in the city of New York.^[2] He was the only son of James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush who were radical writers, critics and activists. James and Winifred were impacted, and to an extent, a part of, a group later known as the New York intellectuals. James Rorty^[3] sympathized with the Communist party and was the editor for The New Masses, a Communist journal that published controversial writers such as John Dos Passos and Ezra Pound. Winifred, like James, also purports the Communist ideals and wrote specifically on race relations and leftist social causes.^[4] They later broke with the Communist movement and were key figures in the wave of Bohemianism that swept the city in the first decades of the twentieth century. Living in such an overheated arena of politics during their time, James and Winifred Rorty made enemies following their break so they, along with Richard who was still an infant at the time, left New York and moved to Flatbrookville, a remote and rural area in the Delaware Water Gap district of New Jersey.^[5] 

          Growing up there facilitated a change in Rorty’s character. He was simultaneously exposed to the fervor of American patriotism and influenced by his parents’ leftist^[6] social stance. Inadvertently, the concept of social justice was cemented into young Rorty’s mind; he ironically recalls that “I grew up knowing that all decent people were, if not ‘Trotskyites’^[7] at least socialists.”^[8]  His time would be divided between his books which remained an obsession for the rest of his life and the wild orchids of New Jersey, which instilled in him an innate appreciation for nature, flowers and birds; the only kinds of beauty that lived up to the books. This unique combination gave rise to the early making of the Socratic gadfly he would later become yet was also the reason for his shy and withdrawn disposition growing up at school. Rorty later confessed that he was asocial and was constantly bullied and his turning into some form of intellectual was his way of getting back at the bullies but instead, he lost touch even more by immersing in the world of intellectuals.^[9]