The purpose of this thesis lies in searching for better way of communication in the plural society like today by indicating that Rorty's philosophy tries to achieve 'freedom', an active goal rather than 'therapy', a passive attitude.
It shows that Ro...
The purpose of this thesis lies in searching for better way of communication in the plural society like today by indicating that Rorty's philosophy tries to achieve 'freedom', an active goal rather than 'therapy', a passive attitude.
It shows that Rorty had an active goal like 'freedom' in that he emphasizes the limitless conversation. He insisted that edifying philosophy is a continuation of conversation rather than a truth-seeking process while he called his philosophical stance an 'edification.'
Rorty diagnosed that the objectively conventional philosophy, especially modern epistemology has been trapped in the ideal of certainty. He claimed that such a certainty is nothing but a product of mirror metaphor based upon representationalism. Further Rorty maintained that knowledge is not a problem of recognition, but a problem to deal with the ways of life and attempted to give up the symbol of knowledge itself. Through this he said that truth is not determined in accordance with the object, but produced by free conversation, which is nothing more or less than a product of accidental agreement.
According to Rorty it is essential that we redescribe our given situation in a better way under fixed, simple circumstances. Redescription is to invent a new, creative metaphor. He called a person good at performing these works an ironist and present him as an ideal type of person. However Rorty was criticized that he maintained relativism, which mean 'anything goes' by stressing out limitless freedom such as incessant redescription and creation of new metaphors. He fought back against this criticism saying that his stance is not a relativism but an ethnocentrism. According to him we can't get out of our language and culture like we can't get out of our own skin. So consequently we can't help being ethnocentric.
But an argument that we are ethnocentric cannot contain indefinitely expanding conversations, so it is not seen that Rorty resolved the problem of relativism. The writer thinks that the problem of relativism cannot be overcomed as long as Rorty insists that everything is accidental or if not so, then inevitable. Concerning such a drawback the writer notes that we can reflect upon Rorty's philosophy in the view of experimentalism by expanding the concept of brutality mentioned relatively recently by Rorty into his general philosophy. From the point of experimental view, the assertion saying that 'brutality should be avoided' can be a base for an endlessly expansible freedom and limiting point simultaneously rather than something contradicting his philosophy seen as a possibility.
So Rorty's philosophy which both emphasized the free conversation and set the condition for its limiting point strongly indicates that in the plural society where all the different individuals coexist one another we should appreciate everyone's freedom to the utmost and it should be done in a way which doesn't intrude others by any means.