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9. Gadamer and Rorty: From Interpretation to Conversation
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147 9 Gadamer and Rorty: From Interpretation to Conversation C. G. Prado In the half-century since its publication, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method has had significant influence on various Anglophone academic disciplines, especially aesthetics, literary criticism, art history, and intellectual history, but it has had quite limited influence on Anglophone analytic philosophy.1 The canonical and methodological divide between the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy has ensured that Gadamer’s work, like that of Michel Foucault and others, has not been much drawn on, much less assimilated, by perhaps the large majority of Anglophone philosophers.2 What is perhaps most puzzling about this relative lack of influence, this distance maintained or indifference shown, is how it seems to include Richard Rorty, an Anglophone philosopher very much at odds with his analytic colleagues and one often identified with continental and even postmodernist thought by admirers and detractors alike. Though his background, much of his training, and his early work were largely analytic , Rorty had nothing but praise for Gadamer and hermeneutics in his groundbreaking Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.3 However, after the publication of Mirror, Rorty pursued his own highly influential work until his untimely death in 2007 without developing a close alliance with what he had earlier praised so highly. Contrary to what one would expect, citations and mentions of Gadamer and hermeneutics are surprisingly rare in the bulk of Rorty’s extensive writings. This lack of engagement was not due to Rorty sharing any part of the disdain many analytic philosophers feel toward continental philosophical thought and writings. He certainly did not dismiss hermeneutics as did most of his colleagues, namely, as not really philosophy because “much of what is done by philosophers in France and Germany looks to analytic philosophers like, at best, ‘mere’ intellectual history—something quite different from the kind of problem solving that is the philosopher ’s proper business.”4 This reference to “proper business” was heavily 148 C . G . P R A D O ironic, and it is abundantly clear in Mirror and Rorty’s ongoing critique of epistemology-centered philosophizing that he did not himself support the sort of problem-solving approach that analytic philosophers take to be the practical heart of their academic profession. It is entirely natural, then, to expect that Rorty’s engagement with hermeneutics in general and Gadamer in particular would be considerably more extensive than it turned out to be in the years that followed the publication of Mirror. Of course, admiration does not entail emulation. Rorty’s recognition of the value of Gadamer’s work and of hermeneutics did not entail his taking both up as his own way of philosophizing. This is a point too often overlooked by those who accept the analytic-continental split and incline strongly to see any philosopher who is critical of one camp as committed to the other, and any philosopher who is favorably disposed toward one or the other camp as committed to its canon and methods. This way of looking at intellectual and professional allegiances simply does not work with Rorty. This was evident as early as the publication of Mirror and the shift it represented from Rorty’s previous analytic writings, such as his “Incorrigibility as the Mark of the Mental” and “Dennett on Awareness.”5 But more important is that this one-of-us-or-one-of-them way of looking at philosophy utterly fails to recognize the hard fact that underlies Rorty’s non-emulatory admiration of Gadamer and hermeneutics. I believe that the fact in question is the major reason why Rorty did not assimilate Gadamer’s hermeneutics into his own work as so many others did, or develop Gadamer’s hermeneutics as he might have. What the fact comes to is that Rorty had no need of emulating anyone or embracing any style of philosophizing. Regardless of what one ultimately may think about the value and fruitfulness of Rorty’s work, of his dedication to keeping the conversation going rather than providing rules for it, the philosophical stance Rorty presented in Mirror and developed in many later articles and books was of a similar order of novelty and import as what Gadamer offered in Truth and Method. As did Truth and Method, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature represented an intellectual milestone and an academic turning point. That this was the case was evident in the strongly pro or con reviews of the book. The reviews, favorable or...