Rorty, Richard, 1931–, American philosopher. b. New York City. After studying at the Univ. of Chicago (B.A. 1949, M.A. 1952) and Yale (Ph.D. 1956), Rorty has taught at Yale (1955–57), Wellesley College (1958–61), Princeton (1961–82), and the Univ. of Virginia (1982–). He edited The Linguistic Turn (1967), which is considered an indispensable introduction to analytic philosophy. However, Rorty soon experienced doubts about the ultimate value of philosophy and published his well-known work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), in which he attacked the traditional idea of philosophy as a form of higher knowledge. His later works, including Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (1988) and Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (1991), have attracted a wide readership.

Rorty, Richard (McKay)

(born Oct. 4, 1931, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died June 8, 2007, Palo Alto, Calif.) U.S. philosopher. After receiving a Ph.D. at Yale University in 1956, he taught at Wellesley College, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and Stanford University. An opponent of epistemological foundationalism, Rorty held that no statement is epistemologically more basic than any other and no statement is ever justified finally or absolutely. He also rejected the idea that sentences or beliefs are true or false in any interesting sense other than being useful or successful within a broad social practice (see pragmatism). Because there is no such thing as certainty or absolute truth, according to Rorty, it is not the purpose of philosophy to pursue such things; its role instead should be to conduct a “conversation” between contrasting but equally valid forms of intellectual inquiry. His publications include Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), and Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (1989).

Rorty, Richard (McKay) (1931– ) philosopher; born in New York City. After studying at the University of Chicago and Yale, and teaching at Yale (1954–56), Wellesley (1958–61), and Princeton (1961–82), he became a professor at the University of Virginia. An esteemed analytic philosopher in his youth, he fell briefly into a period of depression and inertia in the early 1970s. Revived by a "conversion" to pragmatism, he made a forceful and controversial attack on traditional and analytic philosophy in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), calling for a new "postphilosophic" dialogue of many voices. Although regarded by some as iconoclastic and by others as a maverick, he is conceded to have reintroduced American philosophy into the marketplace of contemporary concerns.