A Study On Richard Rorty's Cultural Idea And Literary Theory

Richard Rorty was the most influential philosopher in contemporary west, whose neo-pragmatism had had a significant impact in all areas of culture. As a philosopher, Rorty had broad interest in religion, philosophy, law, politics, literature, etc. He explained philosophy in a popular way instead of the obscure style, in order to make philosophy easier for public acceptance. More importantly, he tried to synthesize pragmatism, analytical philosophy and continental philosophy to oppose the traditional mirror-philosophy and advocated a new philosophy - "edifying philosophy". As one of the post-modernist theories, Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism is radical with the feature combining anti-essentialism, anti-Semitism and anti-traditional epistemology, which makes it unpopular in the philosophical circles. However, his neo-pragmatism has attracted much attention because of its anti-traditional theory position and innovation. It brings to other disciplines theoretical resources and innovative research methods. Combining with his new idea of pragmatism, Rorty discussed the role that culture played in the latter philosophical literature quite a lot. He also concentrated on all levels of literature. The primary objectives of this thesis are to sort Rorty's culture and literary theory, clarify its limitations and discover its unique function and value.ChapterⅠgenerally introduces Rorty's academic career, as well as the significance, methods and innovation of the dissertation. Rorty's family members and social contacts had an important impact on his thought formation and development. John Dewey and Hook, both classical pragmatist, and Trilling, the literary critic, were frequent visitors to his house. His grandfather and parents were more concerned about the relationship between private and public organizations, which had a direct impact on his pragmatism and leftist political thought. Rorty's academic career had gone through three stages, with classical pragmatism playing the role of a link. At the beginning, he gained his acdemic status as an analysis philosopher; later, facing the difficulty situation of analytic philosophy, he turned to classical pragmatism and continental philosophy for support, and shaped the new idea of pragmatism on the basis of synthesizing kinds of resources; at the last phase, he focused on the utility of cultural politics and the construction of democratic society. The viewpoint of the dissertation is that Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism enlightens us on understanding the development of contemporary culture, studying the characteristics of contemporary literature, and especially understanding the exchange between different cultures. The dissertation emphasizes on not only describing Rorty's theory and core idea, but also interpreting his theory appropriately, through an approach which is the unification of demonstrating description and theoretical deduction.. Meantime, a comparison between diachronic and synchronic orientation is also applied to show the inheritance and innovation. Learning from predecessors' researches, this dissertation attempts to start from summarizing the characteristics of Rorty's neo-pragmatism comprehensively to analyze his opinion of the post-philosophical culture, and thus to describe literature's unique look, special value and significance in this culture.ChapterⅡdiscusses the basis of Rorty's cultural idea and literary theory - the neo-pragmatism philosophy. Rorty's new pragmatism has three sources, including classical pragmatism, analytical philosophy and continental philosophy after Nietzsche, from which he had drawn essentials respectively Rorty inherited the main idea of James' the truth view and Dewey's instrument theory. Instead of treating the experience as the fundamental, he turned to the language analysis philosophy relying on. Rorty absorbed from Heidegger, Gadamer and others' thoughts in continental philosophy, and abandoned the attempts of analytic philosophy which made language as the research foundation, while turning to emphasize the principles of history and holism, the dialogic nature of philosophy and so on. By synthesizing these theories, Rorty defined his neo-pragmatism philosophy basically as fundamentally opposed to hypostases theory and the traditional epistemology and truth. This philosophy is no longer the pursuit of timeless existence which is independent of human beings, and no longer the thought of that the truth is to tally with the reality and to discover thing's nature. Instead, it defines the truth as an effective tool to help people cope with the world and living. Rorty pointed out that the neo-pragmatism philosophy should always follow the principles of history and holism, insist in the distinction between public and private areas and admit the contingencies of human beings and society on the basis of language - obviously, it possesses a typical feature of post-modernism with a heavy ideal color. Rorty always based on the theory of his neo-pragmatism philosophy when concerning and discussing subjects such as irony and cruel, social morality and solidarity and post-philosophy culture.ChapterⅢsets forth and analyses Rorty's post-philosophy culture. After Rorty took up his foundational status of philosophy culture, he wanted to set up a kind of literary culture, which, as the outstanding feature, raised up the status of literature by reducing the authority of philosophy and transit literature into the oriented subject of culture, which embodies its main character. This post-philosophy culture was based on a tolerance sense and based out of the pursuit of general nature. On the one hand, it was the criticism on traditional philosophy; on the other hand, it was a blue print for a better life in the future. Then Rorty discussed the relationship between some traditional disciplines in the new culture. He believed that the inherent structure of this culture was fixed on the relationship between philosophy, literature and science -the internal rhythm. This dissertation analyses how he dealt with the relationship between philosophy and literature, science and literature (art) in detail. He not only admitted the opposition between these subjects, but also emphasized on their integration. Under the help of other philosophers' theoretical results, based on his new pragmatism view, Rorty attempted to show that philosophy and science all belonged to the way of describing, and both of them had the typical characteristics of literature. Philosophy and science are all in the process of being literature, which is a basic condition for establishing the literary culture. In fact, Rorty's literary culture is a kind of literary Utopia on the political and social levels. Rorty defined a pragmatist as a liberal of irony in this literature, who combined the pursuit of self-perfection in the level of private and the need for moral solidarity in the level of public. This Utopia supplied sufficient condition and guaranteed for people to achieve self-creation and moral solidarity. Literature played a central role in this process of Utopian's setting up, as well as people's pursuit in public and private levels. During the process of weaving the net which was made of oneself's belief and desire, the literary metaphor has become an important means of changing one's belief. During the process of promoting the moral unity of society, the empathy which literature is rich in has dealt with the relationship between others and oneself excellently. The establishment of Rorty's literary culture is the embodiment of philosophy and sciences being literary. It simultaneously concerns both individual and collective dimensions, and its goal is to seek for happiness. It is full of the spirit of democracy and freedom.ChapterⅣfocuses on the literary theory of Rorty's neo-pragmatism. According to the Rorty's idea of literary culture, the dissertation combs his concerns on all levels of the literature. Firstly, using the metaphor found in the philosophical text with Derrida, Rorty made philosophy a literary genre. Since all other disciplines may be regarded as some kinds of describing vocabularies pragmatically, they all could be covered by literature, which enlarged the boundary of literature and literary criticism. Secondly, in the literary culture, literature has special functions that it provides both resources and methods for self-creation and cruelty avoidance. The resources it provides are that literary books enlarge our acquaintance so that we can have more possibilities and information to achieve self-creation and get moral solidarity by empathy. The methods are making metaphor and redescription. Thirdly, corresponding with the functions, literature has two values. On one hand, literature has inspirational and redemptive value for personality that could make them have hopes in future and live much better. On another hand, literature has the value of proving moral solidarity for society that could make people concern about the suffering shared and get the maximum solidarity. Literary criticism is as same important as literature for Rorty, because the functions it has are much the same as literature's. Rorty agreed with the criticism mode called strong-textualism and identifies with Bloom's "strong misreading" concept of criticism. That mode considers criticism as creation and opposes the attempt to search for the intrinsic meanings of text and general principles of criticism. This neo-pragmatic literary criticism is closely related to deconstruction criticism. Through the analysis, the dissertation wants to indicate that the connotations of some literary elements what Rorty inherited and used—such as metaphor, imagination and empathy—are traditional, but the functions of them are new getting from Rorty. Rorty's literary theory embodies his neo-pragmatism and its final objective is also increasing people's abilities to cope with the world to get more and more freedom and happiness.ChapterⅤof this dissertation summarizes and analyses the problems and inspirations of Rorty's neo-pragmatism thought. Since "decentralization" and "non-stability" that it incarnates are the main features of post-modern theory, it is a kind of post-modern theory. The features make it has lot of internal contradictions and inconsistencies, meanwhile provide us with many inspiration. About philosophy, Rorty could not solve the self-referential problem shared with other post-modernist, nor could he demonstrate clearly how to judge the "usefulness" of things. But his synthesis of a variety of thought resources and insistence on the idea of democracy of classical pragmatism contribute to a better understanding of the current development of philosophy and its role in society. As to culture and literature, despite ignoring the research of literature itself in traditional sense, he emphasized the imagination and empathy in literature, which is very helpful and important for us to release the living predicament caused by technical rationality and to adopt an appropriate pattern of cultural exchange. The correct attitudes and methods that should be adopted were indicated: with a polyphyletic presupposition and the tolerance and equal attitudes, bidirectional projection of feeling in empathy should be applied to achieve the exchange and inosculation between different cultures.