Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty was an American philosopher who combined pragmatism with postmodern themes to argue against the idea that philosophy should mirror nature. He championed solidarity over objectivity and literary culture as a vehicle for moral progress.

Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature attacked the foundationalist tradition from Descartes to analytic philosophy. His neo-pragmatism, drawing on Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, held that truth is not discovered but made — warranted by social practice rather than correspondence to reality.