Consequences of Pragmatism (review)

126 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:1 JANUARY 1985 that Moore's position is basically inconsistent in that he could give up neither his common-sense realism nor sense-data. Given even what O'Connor says about Moore's overall position, such an interpretation is not inconceivable. If one goes a step further and looks at such works as Some Main ProblemsofPhilosophyas an indication that Moore knew he had philosophical problems which he could not resolve, this alternative interpretation sounds even plausible. In a way, a resolution of the question of whether Moore held onto a consistent metaphysical position or not depends on how strong a metaphysical position Moore is thought to have held. A strong thesis would take in all of the major aspects of his metaphysics, including sense-data, which he held onto for most of his career. In contrast, a weak thesis would somehow select certain aspects of his metaphysics so that, on the one side, they were all consistent with one another and, on the other, these aspects were not so general as to be contentless. O'Connor opts for the weak thesis, with some justice, since Moore's writings overall leave us with the impression that if he had to have given up either common sense or sense-data, he would have given up the latter. Still, because O'Connor's account stresses the consistencies in Moore, it seems that what is missing in his presentation is the sense of struggle which Moore would probably have gone through before finally making such a choice. What is also missing is a convincing presentation showing that many commentators would disagree with O'Connor's main thesis that Moore had a metaphysical position. Granted, as O'Connor points out, that W. H. Walsh (in Metaphysics) would disagree, given that for him metaphysics is something far more speculative than what is found in Moore's works. Nonetheless, many commentators would have been willing to grant from the start that Moore was a common-sense metaphysician (even though admittedly his method is piecemeal). Their only question would have been whether he was a consistent common-sense metaphysician or not. NICHOLAS FOTION Emory University Richard Rorty. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Pp. xlvii + 237- $29.5 ~ (cloth), $11.95 (paper). Written between 1972 and ~98o, these twelve essays complement the theses Richard Rorty defends in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. The essays discuss individual authors--Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Dewey, Derrida, Cavell; philosophical positions-transcendentalism , nineteenth-century idealism, analytic philosophy, textualism, skepticism , relativism; and a rather technical issue of fictional discourse. Although the essays cover disparate topics, Rorty's main theme is never lost sight of; he returns to it again and again, utilizing the material under examination to reinforce his central claims. As in his other book, Rorty's target is the traditional view of philosophy as a very special discipIine which discovers how the world really is. According to this view, the aim of philosophy is to produce a system of representations which correspond to Nature's Own Language, a system that captures the antecedent reality as it is in itself independently of contingent, historically conditioned vocabularies. Rorty sees the BOOK REVIEWS 127 main axis of traditional philosophy--Parmenides-Piato-Descartes-Kant--as still continued in logical positivism and in philosophy of'language, which hope to find the apriori structure of any possible inquiry. The anti-Kantian movement, initiated by Hegel and carried further by Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, has shown the delusory nature of this hope. Some of the most effective arguments against ahistoricism and eternalization of vocabularies Rorty finds in the writings of James and Dewey and claims that "the best hope for philosophy is not to practise Philosophy" (xv) when the latter is seen as promising to reveal a Secret or to give us knowledge of the Truth. According to Rorty, James was right in saying that "the true" is "the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief" and that there is nothing general to discover about "truth." In a post-Philosophical culture philosophers would be all-purpose intellectuals "ready to offer a...