| Richard Rorty's view of truth is generally disregarded as relativism. This article makes a survey about Rorty's view of truth, starting from its source and along with the development of his thought. Rorty made a critical analysis on "truth as correspondence" by applying the analytic philosophy, classifying the premises of "truth as correspondence" as glassy philosophy, which is actually a kind of ocular metaphor. Rorty believed the essence of a language was a metaphor, therefore all theories were alternative descriptions; glassy philosophy was also a kind of description, which was accepted by the people by sheer chance of time and history. Therefore, Rorty advocated we might get rid of mirror of nature, abandon the truth view that was formed under this kind of framework of theory and observe the truth issue from a new angle. As for analytic philosophy itself, Rorty pointed out it was also a philosophy taking language as mirror of nature, and he also promulgated the process of its dispel: Both Quine's critical analysis to "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and Sellars' critical analysis to "the Myth of the Given" discovered that there exists no absolute truth; Davidson's critical analysis to the third doctrine of empiricism—analytical distinction of "Scheme-content" leads to another foundation on which analytic philosophy bases—Kant's distinction of intuitions/concepts thoroughly disintegrated and analytic philosophy itself dispelled.The author believes that Rorty's view of truth can't be disregarded as relativism .Also he proposed questions concerning with philosophy itself, the truth itself and language itself, which are of great importance and are indispensable to our present study of philosophy. Thoughts of pragmatism, language and metaphor, etc., in his truth view, which reach the same goal or conclusion from different approaches with the postmodernism of modern Europe continent and, represent the intrinsic tendency of the development of philosophy, are worthy of further investigating.
|
PDF Full Text Request