The Lingual Structure of Reality Critical Investigation of Ricard Rorty’s View

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Researcher in Academy of Philosophy and Theology, Research Center of Islamic Sciences and Culture, Qom, Iran.

Abstract

The contemporary world observes an increasing leaning from the thinkers in various intellectual and cultural spheres towards an approach to reality, interpreting reality as something in relationship to human beings and his goals and purposes, not independent of them. Richard Rorty is among the adherents of such a thought. The present article uses an analytical-critical method to show how Rorty has defended this view and to evaluate his view. According to the present study, it is clarified that Rorty adduces the features he considers for language to negate the possibility of accessing pure and naked reality; thus, he considers the available reality as made by ourselves in cooperation with others, which has a quite lingual structure. In my view, however, despite the fact that believing in lingual structure of reality places us in a better situation for defending concepts such as activity, freedom, self-consciousness, ownership, thinking and genuine life, Rorty’s emphasis on solidarity, instead of objectivity and truth, entails a dominion of culture over the rational sciences. Consequently, we observe a leaning towards the principality of ‘will’ (including both individual and social) according to which, philosophy turns into something a posteriori and relied on will.

Keywords


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