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Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher
by Neil Gross
Product Group: Book
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (2008-05-15)
ISBN: 0226309908
EAN: 9780226309903
Dewy Decimal #: 191
Hardcover: 390 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: 20-EUK4-FLT1
Condition: New
Comments: Brand new book. Gift quality. Expedited shipping is available.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty’s thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that prominence.
The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn’t rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty’s own thought. Doctoral work at Yale led to Rorty’s landing a job at Princeton, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, Rorty quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but by the late 1970s Rorty had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, he argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time.
In clear and compelling fashion, Gross sets that surprising shift in Rorty’s thought in the context of his life and social experiences, revealing the many disparate influences that contribute to the making of knowledge. As much a book about the growth of ideas as it is a biography of a philosopher, Richard Rorty will provide readers with a fresh understanding of both the man and the course of twentieth-century thought.
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Customer Reviews
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Rorty Would Approve
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-08-19
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Sociologist Neil Gross has written a fascinating biography of Richard Rorty that attempts to show the sociological influences that formed Rorty into the politically radical, anti-analytical pragmatist we came to know and admire.
Although the book's title is misleading, since it gives no indication that quite a few pages will be devoted to discussing sociological theory, the strictly biographical portions--the majority of the book--are excellent and are unburdened with sociological speculation. Gross's discussion of Rorty's philosophical theorizing is quite good.
Rorty would have approved of Gross's work. Gross proposes a theory--a story or narrative--of how Rorty came to believe and argue what he did. Gross does this by looking at Rorty's rearing and the sociological pressures and influences of the schools Rorty attended and taught at. This is the kind of hypothetical "explanation" Rorty said we must endlessly debate regarding all so-called truths we affirm in a world in which we cannot encounter the "given" without wrapping it in the assumptions and theories of our time and place. Gross's sociological explanation of how Rorty came to be Rorty acknowledges, as Rorty claimed, that there are no sharp divisions between philosophy, sociology, or any of the other disciplines of academic study.
A separate chapter is devoted to each of Rorty's parents; then several chapters on Rorty's training at the University of Chicago and Yale; a chapter on his appointment to Wellesley College; then two chapters on his teaching at Princeton and his move to the University of Virginia.
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The New sociology meets Richard Rorty
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-06-15
9 out of 12 customers found this reveiw helpful
Neil Gross, speaking for the "new sociology of ideas", has written this compelling and challenging book in order to explore social factors that explain an intellectual's life-time professional career choices. Using Richard Rorty as an empiric choice to illuminate sociology theory, the author first traces Rorty's transition from metaphysician to analytic philospher and finally to a "leftist American patriot" (as a devotee of the pragmatists - James, Dewey, and Pierce); secondly, the author interprets and understands Rorty's decisions by dissecting out his "intellectual self-concept" - the author's own methodologic tool. Was the author successful in showing how sociology could explain Rorty's decision-making process? Yes. By giving us, the reader, insight into the great philosopher's self-concept..... This book should find a permanent place in the area of Humanities; it is especially recommended for those involved in the new sociology of ideas and of course to all attuned to Richard Rorty.
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