Dr. Rorty was an American philosopher and a writer.
He wrote many philosophical treaties of great literary value.
In his book entitled 'Achieving our Country', published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts - 1998, Dr. Rorty expresses his concern for the future of America.
On page 4 he says, 'Nations rely on artists and intellectuals to create images of, and to tell stories about the national past'. These accounts need to pose historical truth. History has an important part in the future of nations.
He observes on page 6'… we are living in a Second Gilded Age: even Mark Twain might have been startled by the shamelessness with which our politicians now sell themselves' and on page 9 '… diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse'.
Further, he mentions on p. 11. 'We raise questions about our individual or national identity as part of the process of deciding what we will do next, what we will try to become'. Richard Rorty notes in his book that American people should be able to see as Whitman and Dewey did, the struggle for social justice as central to their country’s moral identity.
John Dewey’s philosophy is a systematic attempt to temporalize everything. Dewey in his book,'The Quest for Certainty', published by Minton, Balch and Company, New York – 1929, in chapter XI –The Copernican Revolution, on page 312 says, ' Man has never had such a varied body of knowledge in his possession before and probably never before has he been so uncertain and so perplexed as to what his knowledge means, what it points to in action and in consequences.' We cannot for example prove consciousness and moral values in a world of physics.
Rorty made a similar observation in his book, 'Philosophy as Cultural Politics', Cambridge University Press 2007 on page 73, 'In the course of the twentieth century there were no cries that called forth new philosophical ideas.
As each generation will solve old problems only by creating new ones, philosophers who think all this is just as it should be can take a certain rueful satisfaction in their own steadily increasing irrelevance'. We need to search restlessly, because the human mind is made out for truth and freedom makes a human being a moral subject.
In 'Achieving our Country' on page 52, Rorty says, 'In democratic countries you get things done by compromising your principles in order to form alliances with groups about whom you have grave doubts'.
After reading Rorty’s book, 'Achieving our Country', we have better views on some of the things which need to be done in our country.
On page 84 he says, 'Unless something very unexpected happens, economic insecurity will continue to grow in America. Indeed, it is easy to imagine things getting much worse much faster. This is because a good deal of the insecurity is due to the globalization of the labor market – a trend which can reasonably be expected to accelerate indefinitely'. This trend not only takes American jobs away but also disowns labor unions.
Of course we need to be cautious when making changes, e.g., 'when literature replaces the Bible, polytheism and its problems return', Achieving our Country, Appendix, p. 117.
Richard Rorty observes at the end of 'Achieving our Country', p. 106, 'Our national character is still in the making. It is in the hands of voting public. It is us who will decide the national character of America.'
© Art Wielgus 2008
