I came across this artice on Richard Rorty today, over at the Los Angeles Times.
Richard Rorty was, in many ways, the american postmodern. He rejects epistemology early on, and situated "truth" as, in his famous expression - ""Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying."
You can't get more postmodern than that.
As the article points out though, he would review other philosophers works, and, to put it mildly, "misinterpret" what they have said:
These positions irritated many people. But what absolutely killed
philosophy professors was Rorty's interpretation of the great figures
of the Western tradition. The average philosophy professor may spend a
decade or a career trying to elucidate the works of Martin Heidegger or
W.V.O. Quine. Rorty lined up such figures in support of his own
positions in a fundamentally careless way. He quoted them out of
context and ignored everything he couldn't use.
This truly
enraged people. The Dewey scholars hated him, as did the Wittgenstein
scholars, the Davidson scholars, the Nietzsche scholars, the Derrida
scholars and so on. Every one of them thought they could prove that
Rorty was wrong about their particular boy, and that he'd have to
listen and take back all the things he had said. In this, they didn't
understand him at all.
Another example"
As Rorty spoke, Gadamer just shook his big, eminent, bereted head. When
it was over, Gadamer said, in German-accented English: "But Dick,
you've got me all wrong." Rorty gave the grin and the shrug and said:
"Yes, Hans. But that's what you should have said."
Wilber, of course, is coming from a different worldview. In his case, making room for transcendent truths, without negating the current truths of science and modernity. A version of perennialism, although one based on perceptual spaces.
Also interesting then, that so many Wilber scholars not associate with Wilber, share some of the concerns of misrepresentation of other scholars, that drove people crazy about Rorty.
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A thought on Richard Rorty, Ken Wilber - different conclusions, using similar methods?
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