On Edification and Cultural Conversation: A Critique of Rorty

Abstract

Being a philosopher today in the wake of the shipwreck of Neo-Kantianism and other such foundationalist ventures is for Richard Rorty a matter of entering into a cultural conversation. The aim of this conversation is to edify in the sense of finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of expressing ourselves and coping with the world.¹ Rorty alleges that this concept of philosophy emerges from the thought of Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey as they demolished the idea that the goal of philosophy is to represent the world as accurately as possible. For Rorty this does not mark the end of philosophy but the transformation of its role as a discipline. From being a kind of super science philosophy has been transformed into a forum for cultural debate in the hands of these thinkers. However, participation in this conversation requires a special kind of philosophizing, which Rorty designates as edifying. He identifies this mode of philosophizing on the basis of a set of distinctions inspired by the work of Thomas Kuhn. Thus, he distinguishes normal from revolutionary philosophers on the basis of whether a thinker participates in well-established communal efforts to solve philosophical problems or tries to alter the direction or the basic methods of the discipline. Then he goes on to distinguish systematic philosophers from edifying ones.