RICHARD RORTY (1931-2007)
By Barry Allen
Richard Rorty, America’s foremost philosopher, died last Friday, 8 June, at his home in Stanford, California. Professor Rorty was born in New York City in 1931. He was educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University. He taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at Princeton University. Later appointments took him to the University of Virginia, and to Stanford University, where he recently retired as Professor of Comparative Literature.
Rorty is almost single-handedly responsible for the rise of what is called “Neo pragmatism?in contemporary Western thought. Pragmatism is a philosophy that began in America in the nineteenth century. It was the philosophy of William James and John Dewey. They emphasized action, experimentation, and creativity, over inherited tradition and formal routine. Their Pragmatism was supposed to be the first American philosophy, the first to speak of the American experience, which was felt (in America) to be importantly different from Europe. Pragmatism would be as radically new and different in philosophy as America was new and different in the world.
Unfortunately, Pragmatism didn’t survive the Second World War. After 1950, the center of American philosophy shifted away, under the influence of Logical Positivism and the Linguistic Analysis of Oxford and Cambridge. The works of Dewey and James came to seem quaint and unscientific, and were dismissed by America’s new so-called Analytic philosophers.
Everything changed after Richard Rorty’s first book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). Suddenly, there was a fresh alternative to Analytic philosophy. The title of Rorty’s next book, Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), said it all. For the first time in nearly 50 years, Pragmatism was philosophically vital again.
Rorty went on to publish other books, including Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) and Achieving Our Country (1998). He claimed to be following James and Dewey, though his Pragmatism was not only new but different, changed by the experience of Analytic philosophy, in which Rorty was carefully trained. He learned as much from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap as from James and Dewey.
Yet Rorty did a lot to overcome the opposition that once divided Western philosophy between Analytic and so-called Continental philosophers, the latter emphasizing the ideas of recent European philosophers, like Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. Rorty was well read on both sides, and brought into conversation thinkers normally held apart by the professional organization of philosophy, encouraging each side to see something worth while in the other, which he usually called “pragmatism.?
His “new?pragmatism is a highly original synthesis of classical American pragmatism, Analytic philosophy, and the ideas of recent European thinkers, including Nietzsche and Heidegger. Rorty emphasizes the power of language to transform the world. Anything, he said, can be made to
look good or bad, depending on how we describe it. A self is a network of beliefs and desires, as plastic and changeable as one dares to be. The power of the imagination to invent new objects of hope and renew old ones is greater and more worthy of respect than the usual idols of Western theory—Knowledge, Science, and Truth.
Personally, Rorty was a quiet, gentle man, preferring to listen to others, terse in reply, and to some a little formidable. But he genuinely liked to listen, and would generously read and comment on the work of practically anyone who asked him. He opened his home to a steady flow of scholars from around the world, including many Chinese scholars traveling abroad. He was tireless in his own travel and in discussing his work with others. He visited China on two occasions, in 1984 and 2003, when there was a conference on his work at East China Normal University.
Those who experienced his hospitality knew him to be spontaneously and warmly generous—with his attention, his house, his table, his frankness, and easy sympathy. He loved nature. He was happiest tramping though mountain forests, binoculars ever ready to watch birds. He knew flowers, fruits, and mushrooms, reading the forest trails as he might a favorite passage in a book to which he happily returned again and again. Conversation on the quiet trails could be serious or light-hearted, frank and personal or almost metaphysical, from personal reminiscence to
views on American history and politics, world literature and criticism, or the philosophy of practically any school in the West.
Rorty’s works have been widely translated (most are available in Chinese). Traveling the world lecturing, commenting on others, and leading seminars, he became the face of American philosophy around the globe. His ideas overcame the ideological limitations of earlier American philosophy, and brought Pragmatism into the twenty-first century. American philosophy has lost its greatest advocate, who took Pragmatism beyond America and reinterpreted it for the world.
BARRY ALLEN completed his doctoral work under Richard Rorty's supervision at Princeton University, and was a friend for nearly 30 years. He lives in Canada, and was recently a visiting scholar at East China Normal University, Shanghai
Barry Allen：在罗蒂指导下完成博士论文。他与罗蒂做了近30年的朋友。现为加拿大McMaster大学哲学系教授，最近作为访问学者到上海华东师范大学讲学。
Richard Rorty，美国最重要的哲学家，上周五（即6月8日）在加利福尼亚斯坦福家中去世了。罗蒂教授于1931年出生在纽约城。他就学于芝加哥大学和耶鲁大学。毕业后在普林斯顿大学哲学系任教数年。之后担任过弗吉尼亚大学、斯坦福大学的教职。最近，他作为斯坦福大学比较文学的教授退休。
罗蒂几乎是只手推起现代西方思想界被称为“新实用主义”浪头。实用主义是19世纪时美国兴起的一种哲学，它是威廉·詹姆斯和约翰·杜威的哲学。他们强调行动、实践和创造力，超越继承的传统和形式的常规。他们的实用主义被认为是第一个美国的哲学，第一个为美国经验说话的哲学，这被认为（在美国）与欧洲有着显著差异。正如美国是世界上新兴独特的国家一样，实用主义也是新鲜的、独特的哲学。
不幸的是，实用主义没能在第二次世界大战中幸存。1950年后，美国哲学的中心转移了，在哈佛和剑桥的逻辑实证主义与语言分析的影响下，杜威和詹姆斯的思想显得怪异而且不科学，实用主义为美国新起的所谓分析哲学家所驱逐。罗蒂第一本书——《哲学与自然之镜》（1979）的出版改变了这一切。突然之间，在分析哲学之外，出现了一个新的选择。罗蒂的第二本书的题目——《实用主义的后果》（1982）解释了这一切。在这近50年里，实用主义头一回又在哲学界崭露头角。
罗蒂接着出版了其他著作，包括《偶然、反讽和团结》（1989）、《筑就我们的国家》（1998）。他声称自己继承詹姆斯和杜威，虽然他的实用主义不仅是全新的，而且与前辈的完全不同。罗蒂受过严格的分析哲学的训练，他的实用主义为分析哲学的经验所改变。他从路德维希·维特根斯坦与鲁道夫·卡尔纳普那里所学来的，不比他从詹姆斯和杜威那里继承的少。
罗蒂为了克服将西方哲学划分为分析哲学与大陆哲学的对立作了不少工作。后者强调近来欧洲哲学家的思想，如马丁·海德格尔、雅克·德里达。罗蒂对双方阵营都有深入的研究，为双方展开对话。思想家一般是通过专业的哲学组织分别举行这种对话的。他鼓励双方从彼方寻找有价值的东西，这就是他通常所说的“实用主义”。他的“新实用主义”是美国传统的实用主义、分析哲学、新近欧洲的思想，包括尼采和海德格尔的思想之独特的综合。罗蒂强调语言改变世界的力量。他说，任何东西，都能够被做成好的或者坏的，就看我们如何形容它。自我是信念和欲望的网络，你想有多少可塑性和可变性，就有多少。想象力创造新希望的目标和更新旧事物的力量，与西方理论中的通常偶像——知识、科学和真理比起来，要伟大得多，值得致以更大的敬意。
作为一个人，罗蒂安静、温和，喜欢听人说话，他的回答言简意骇。有些人觉得他不可亲近，但他是真诚地喜欢听人讲。他慷慨地阅读、评价任何人请求他给予指点的作品。他的家门总是向世界各地涌来的学者敞开，包括许多游学的中国学者。他不知疲倦地旅行、与他人讨论他的工作。1984年和2003年，他应邀去中国，在上海华东师范大学有一个关于他的工作的会议。
那些承蒙他的盛情的人们都知道，他的慷慨是自然的、亲切的。从他对人的关心，他的房子，他的桌子，他的坦率，他的同情心，人们真切地体会到这一点。他热爱自然。徒步翻山越岭是他最喜欢的事，他的望远镜时刻准备好观察鸟类。他熟悉花、果子、蘑菇，研究森林里的小路，就好像他在书里看到一页精彩的文字，开心地一遍又一遍地翻来重读。走在这些安静的林间小道，谈话或是严肃的或是轻松的，或是直率的、私人的，或者几乎是形而上的。从回忆往事到评论美国的历史与政治，世界的文学和文艺批评，或者西方任何一所学校里的哲学。
罗蒂的著作被广泛地翻译，他的大部分作品都有中文版。他去世界各地作讲演，评论他人的作品，开讨论会，他是美国哲学在这个地球上的面孔（招牌）。他的思想超越了早期美国哲学意识形态的局限性，将实用主义带入21世纪。美国哲学失去了它最伟大的倡导者，他为世界诠释了实用主义，使之不再囿于美国。
