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does not want philosophy to be
everything,
he does not want it to be
anyone
thing either.
If
academic philosophy makes any transcenden–
tal claims, Rorty criticizes it for believing that there is a "foundation"
for truth; but if philosophers then profess they are merely specialists
by virtue of their logic or argumentative skill, Rorty dismisses them
as narrow academics who have turned their backs on highbrow
culture. Rorty defines his own position as "pragmatic," but drives
pragmatists crazy by comparing Dewey to Heidegger. Indeed, in a
recent essay in honor of Sidney Hook, he writes that he would like to
see "pragmatism (stripped of 'method') and 'Continental' philosophy
(stripped of 'depth')" come together.
The reason Rorty's position
seems
so incoherent, I think, is that
people refuse to take him at his word: that he thinks not only the
quest for certainty, but philosophy itself, is washed up. He contrasts
"Philosophy" - and its transcendentalist aims - with "philosophy,"
and by the latter he only means the other voices in the Western cul–
tural conversation - art, literature, music, criticism, science . His
dream is of a "post-Philosophic culture . . . in which men and women
felt themselves alone, merely finite, with no link to something
Beyond." Rorty's conclusion, then, is far more radical than Good–
man's or Putnam's: the latter two want merely to rid philosophy of
its reductionism and foundationalism, while Rorty seems to want to
rid philosophy of . .. philosophy.
IV.
Americans are not nihilists: no matter how hard we try to un–
derstand and even claim the existential doctrines of Europe, some–
thing in American life (or imagination) militates against it. While
there are many bad reasons why continental philosophy has never
flourished here, the one good reason is that its premises are so utterly
foreign to our experience - in a way that European literature and
art, for instance, are not.
Perhaps more than anything else, it is their "Americanness"
that strikes one first about Goodman, Putnam, and Rorty. In the
European context, the critiques they level against analytical philoso–
phy would have driven them to French post-structuralism or Ger–
man hermeneutics for succour. But this has not happened here. Ex–
cept for the work of Rorty, who Americanizes every European he
discusses, the rising antifoundationalism in American philosophy is,
