From Foundation To Pragmatism

Rorty believes that the whole traditional philosophy is，since the ancient Greece，a kind of foundational philosophy. Its basic features are known. It argues that any partof the culture only refer to the foundation in order to get real understanding, we onlyrefer to the foundation in order to understand our culture.Rorty against this kind ofunderstanding.by Silas and Quinn, he introduces a holistic and pragmatic understandingon knowledge. According to this understanding, the function of philosophy is notknown, but edification. The purpose of edification is to maintain a conversation, ratherthan discover objective truth. To do this, we need to dialogue with people living indifferent cultures and different historical periods. Thus, we constantly to describe theworld, to reinvent ourselves, to make us to become better and more interesting and moreeffective.This paper consists of four parts of the introduction and three chapters.The firstpart is introduction, overview the rorty·s leap from foundation to pragmatism.The firstchapter examines the rorty·s critique of modern philosophy. The second chapterinvestigates the two means of Rorty’s criticism of traditional philosophy: Sellars·scritique of the Myth of the Given and Quine·s attack on analysis. The third chapterdiscusses the rorty’s theory of pragmatism.