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In the pragmatics of Richard Rorty there is a continuation of the thinking that texts are made distinct by the valuing community. This can be found in Consequences of Pragmatism (1982). Rorty aligns his activity with "culture criticism" (xI) and describes his own context as postphilosophical. The task of the "culture critic" (xI), as Rorty refers to himself, is to study the comparative "advantages and disadvantages of various ways of talking which our race has invented" (xI). In other words, for Rorty, the value of the text depends upon the valuing community; our culture, purpose, and institutions "cannot be supported except conversationally" (167). Rorty is entirely skeptical of what he refers to as "vocabularies," by which he means philosophical theories of the type that attempt "to ground some element of our practices on something external to these practices' (167). He cites Platonic and Kantian philosophies as examples of such theories. Rorty refutes the tag of relativism when directed at cultural criticism (167). But he does embrace the "meta-philosophical relativists' (167) William James and John Dewey for the way "they think there is no way to choose, and no point in choosing, between incompatible philosophical theories' (167). Perhaps it is due to Rorty's relativistic-type objection to philosophy that a tendency to curtail the activity of philosophical thinking and the construction of concepts has prevailed.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137015785_2

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