Quotessence
Home / Authors / Richard Rorty Books
Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty Books

Philosopher

Related Quotes

“Nowadays, to say that we are clever animals is not to say something philosophical and pessimistic but something political and hopeful - namely, if we can work together, we can make ourselves into whatever we are clever and courageous enough to imagine ourselves becoming. This is to set aside Kant's question "What is man?" and to substitute the question "What sort of world can we prepare for our great grandchildren?”

IfsMenWorldEnoughTogetherPoliticalAnimalImagineBecomingPhilosophicalCleverHopefulWorking TogetherCourageousSubstitutesGrandchildrenPessimisticTogether We CanGreat Grandchildren
Book:Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers
Create image

“Complaints about the social irresponsibility of the intellectual typically concern the intellectual's tendency to marginalize herself, to move out from one community by interior identification of herself with some other community - for example, another country or historical period... It is not clear that those who thus marginalize themselves can be criticized for social irresponsibility. One cannot be irresponsible toward a community of which one does not think of oneself as a member. Otherwise runaway slaves and tunnelers under the Berlin Wall would be irresponsible.”

ThinkingDoeCountryWould BeMovingSocialCommunityClearExampleWallPeriodsMembersIntellectualConcernHistoricalSlaveOneselfTendenciesComplaintsInteriorsIrresponsibleBerlinIdentificationRunawayIrresponsibilityBerlin Wall
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.”

IfsWayTryingLongPhilosophyProcessCommonProjectsArgumentAbsolutesPhilosophicalAvailableIntuitionCommon SenseAccomplishedConceptionRelativeSwingsSkepticismNeatDogmatismTiresomePendulumsCultural Change
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“There is nothing to be known about anything except an initially large, and forever expandable, web of relations to other things. Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on for ever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction: you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations.”

WaySpeakTermKnownForeverRelationJust OneNexus
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“[Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams - dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society - in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science.... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.”

LongStillsCountryFactsDreamWantedLawPoliticalLeftChanceMoralAchieveGods WillOur CountryDecentCivilizedSubstitutesHumanistEducatorUtopianWaltKnowledge Of GodCivilized SocietyMoral Law
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends.”

IfsMadeAbleWishStatementsProseVersesIncapableClose FriendsChestnutsHeidegger
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister - corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.”

HardCareUsedAttentionYouthCivilizationIntellectualFoundationAssumingDearPhilosopherBrandsTapeBasementsSinisterUnderminingDuct Tape
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“I illustrate with a quotation from the atheist philosopher Richard Rorty, who died recently and is, I suspect, now having a lengthy conversation with his maker. Rorty argued that secular professors ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.”

ReligiousViewsStudentsCollegeOughtConversationDiedAtheistPhilosopherSuspectsMakersProfessorsSecularQuotationsHomophobicLengthy
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“There are credentials for admission to our democratic society [...]. You have to be educated in order to be a participant in our conversation So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours.”

TryingChildrenSeemsEyeOrderCommunityReligiousViewsConversationDignityOur ChildrenDemocraticSillyEducatedYour ChildrenIntoleranceTolerateParticipantsFundamentalistAdmissionDemocratic SocietyDiscreditCredentialsReligious CommunityDiscredit You
Author:Richard Rorty
Create image

“To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that languages are human creations.~ The suggestion that truth~ is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language his own.”

WorldHumansAgeLanguageCreationTruth IsElementsSentencesLegacySuggestionsHuman Language
Book:Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Create image