volbet's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
It's been a very long time since I've been this hooked by a non-fiction book. From the introduction to the conclusion, one page just took the next.
And I'm even somewhat sure I understood what the book was about.
As paradoxical as it sounds, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is is a piece of analytical post-modernism. The vast majority of the book is spend in dialog with Rorty's analytical colleagues and predecessors, but a lot of the conclusions that Rorty draws from these dialogs are very close to the conclusions og the continental philosophers and post-modern theorists of the 1960's and 1970's. Something that Rorty himself point out in the last part of the book.
As much as my viceral reaction to Rorty's anti-epistemical, anti-foundationalist and anti-dualistic is disagreement, I have had an extremely hard time arguing against his arguments. And I had an even harder time making coherent counter-arguments.
Rorty makes a very good case, that the whole idea of epistemology, and the following distinction between Man and nature, are arbitrary developments, that are a product of a historical misadventure.
And I'm even somewhat sure I understood what the book was about.
As paradoxical as it sounds, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is is a piece of analytical post-modernism. The vast majority of the book is spend in dialog with Rorty's analytical colleagues and predecessors, but a lot of the conclusions that Rorty draws from these dialogs are very close to the conclusions og the continental philosophers and post-modern theorists of the 1960's and 1970's. Something that Rorty himself point out in the last part of the book.
As much as my viceral reaction to Rorty's anti-epistemical, anti-foundationalist and anti-dualistic is disagreement, I have had an extremely hard time arguing against his arguments. And I had an even harder time making coherent counter-arguments.
Rorty makes a very good case, that the whole idea of epistemology, and the following distinction between Man and nature, are arbitrary developments, that are a product of a historical misadventure.
piccoline's review
5.0
Five stars doesn't mean I agree with the whole book, naturally. But I really love Rorty's style here. Big ideas, challenging ideas, yet as a non-specialist I was able to follow much (dare I say most?) of what he wrote. I'm also very sympathetic to his argument, that philosophy needs to abandon its quest to be the grounding mode of inquiry for all else, and the related argument that all modes of knowing need to strive for humility and recognition of the fact that they are ways of knowing and (almost certainly not) The Way of Knowing.
Philosophy should work to enable the conversation to continue, rather than provide the grid for how conversation should be carried out.
Rorty writes, persuasively, in favor of edifying philosophy, and in this book I think he has also provided it.
--------------------
Also, thanks to David Foster Wallace, yet again, for another way he's enriched my life. Now I'll go read his story of the same name again, to see if more familiarity with Rorty will provide greater resonance.
Philosophy should work to enable the conversation to continue, rather than provide the grid for how conversation should be carried out.
Rorty writes, persuasively, in favor of edifying philosophy, and in this book I think he has also provided it.
--------------------
Also, thanks to David Foster Wallace, yet again, for another way he's enriched my life. Now I'll go read his story of the same name again, to see if more familiarity with Rorty will provide greater resonance.
gotterdammerung's review
5.0
A mind-blowing work of philosophy that spells the end of an era: epistemology and for that matter, analytic philosophy. If you're into late 20th century philosophy you can't go wrong with Richard Rorty.
jeremiah's review
A beautiful, fat book to disagree with. Maybe Rorty says the outlandish things he does, e.g., that the mind and language are just inventions, that we need to get rid of epistemology, strictly for an edifying purpose —much like Kierkegaard's indirect communication, like the socratic midwifery in Plato's dialogues—to confront the reader, to get the reader into a position where she must face the problems on her own terms, independent of the reigning vocabularies. Is this possible? If so, what would it look it? "Conversation," Rorty suggests.
wacosinker's review
5.0
When I was age nineteen, and after I had taken to heart Mark Twain's maxim not to pray a lie, then after that, this was a book that I read excerpts from in a philosophy class at university. It helped to change my life. Thirty years later it sits on my shelf nearby. How is a theory of knowledge linked to a theory of ethics in a disenchanted world? Rorty advanced the Western Pragmatists edifying conversation. And I remember this conclusion. In less one is being idle with words just for the sake of passing the time, any true conversation that is not edifying is, like the unexamined life, a conversation not worth having.
johnaggreyodera's review
5.0
There are, in my mind, three philosophers who absolutely dominated discourse in philosophy in the twentieth century: Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Rorty. You couldn’t do “continental” philosophy in the years before and after the 2nd world war without referring to Heidegger. Before Wittgenstein’s death, almost all analytical philosophy had to engage with the Tractatus, and after his death, Philosophy had to contend with the Investigations.
When Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature was published in 1979, I believe Rorty came to occupy a similar place to Heidegger and Wittgenstein before him. The book was a true destruction of the system from the inside; a philosophical take down of philosophy by one of the world’s most prominent philosophers. Analytical philosophers soundly rejected the book - for its implications were truly radical and threatened the existence of the discipline as a whole. But even they couldn’t completely ignore Rorty then, except by making it explicit that they were ignoring him - in which case they then weren’t ignoring him at all.
Rorty’s project in the book was simply to take us back to that Hegelian vision (which had influenced Rorty’s idol John Dewey) of philosophy as nothing more than the history of philosophy. He wanted us to move away from a “scientized” philosophy, a philosophy that traded on the objective/subjective distinction, and thought there was some relationship whereby our minds, with our language as a tool, mapped on perfectly to nature, providing us with objective information, truth, about the world (thus acting as a mirror of nature). This way of doing philosophy Rorty took to be a rigorous way of tackling pseudo-problems.
Instead, Rorty called for a movement towards pragmatism; an intersubjective and communal idea of truth and inquiry, such that inquiry was nothing more than the search for agreement between people affected in some ways by some things, and truth that very agreement insofar as it advanced action in the real world that that community contingently considered to be positive. The result of this, Rorty thought, would be a philosophy (if it could be called that at all, and not simply, say, inquiry) that troubled itself with “real” problems (in the language of Dewey- the problems of men) not pseudo problems (the problems of philosophers).
This is seminal reading for anyone who thinks they’re interested in twentieth century western philosophy (and the discipline as a whole) and what’s more, it’s incredibly broad and erudite, and oh so enjoyable to read!
When Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature was published in 1979, I believe Rorty came to occupy a similar place to Heidegger and Wittgenstein before him. The book was a true destruction of the system from the inside; a philosophical take down of philosophy by one of the world’s most prominent philosophers. Analytical philosophers soundly rejected the book - for its implications were truly radical and threatened the existence of the discipline as a whole. But even they couldn’t completely ignore Rorty then, except by making it explicit that they were ignoring him - in which case they then weren’t ignoring him at all.
Rorty’s project in the book was simply to take us back to that Hegelian vision (which had influenced Rorty’s idol John Dewey) of philosophy as nothing more than the history of philosophy. He wanted us to move away from a “scientized” philosophy, a philosophy that traded on the objective/subjective distinction, and thought there was some relationship whereby our minds, with our language as a tool, mapped on perfectly to nature, providing us with objective information, truth, about the world (thus acting as a mirror of nature). This way of doing philosophy Rorty took to be a rigorous way of tackling pseudo-problems.
Instead, Rorty called for a movement towards pragmatism; an intersubjective and communal idea of truth and inquiry, such that inquiry was nothing more than the search for agreement between people affected in some ways by some things, and truth that very agreement insofar as it advanced action in the real world that that community contingently considered to be positive. The result of this, Rorty thought, would be a philosophy (if it could be called that at all, and not simply, say, inquiry) that troubled itself with “real” problems (in the language of Dewey- the problems of men) not pseudo problems (the problems of philosophers).
This is seminal reading for anyone who thinks they’re interested in twentieth century western philosophy (and the discipline as a whole) and what’s more, it’s incredibly broad and erudite, and oh so enjoyable to read!
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