Richard Rorty
I have to read Rorty. After diving into philosophy for a few weeks and feeling sometimes trapped by language, one has to feel liberated by a guy who “opts out of the traditional objective/subjective dialogue in favor of a communal version of truth. For him, ‘true’ is simply an honorific knowers bestow on claims, asserting them as what “we” want to say about a particular matter.”
Reviewing some of his other works (on Wikipedia), I find much appealing. His ideas on language and knowledge being contingent remind me of Karl Popper’s ideas on falsifiability and the way no narratives, even scientific, can be said to be true, only more or less credible. I’m also connecting this to the virtues of ethnography, the responsibility for societies to maintain constant self-examination and discourse to keep from going morally sick, and… well, it forms a web with a lot of thoughts for me.
More reading & reflection required. But first, apparently I’m being told I have to go watch the Muppets doing Bohemian Rhapsody!
