Richard Rorty - The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres

[@Drumsha555]

Thank you, please keep making videos

[@lbjvg]

“Mighty dead” is such a good phrase.

[@Schopenhauer14]

My M.A. thesis (Philosophy, History, and Progress), was about arguing that the 3 metaphilosophical position outlined in Rorty's 1961 "Recent Metaphilosophy" have corresponding philosophical historiographies outlined in "Four Genres", Metaphilosophical Realism has Rational Reconstruction, Metaphilosophical Scepticism has Historical Reconstruction, and Metaphilosophical Pragmatism has Geistesgeschichte. This means that Geistesgeschichte is the proper genre for philosophy after the demise of realist and skeptical competitors. And the arch of Rorty's entire career can be seen as the probing into the concept of the Geistegeschichte, it's philosophical underpinnings, its practitioners, and so on. This is not obvious from just reading "Four Genres" which seems to offer a case for a pluralism about genres and methods. But there is a footnote, which i think you make reference to, where Rorty says that rational reconstruction and historical reconstruction "cannot be that separate". Following through on the philosophical underpinnings of these genres, Geistesgeschichte just is the synthesis of rational reconstruction and historical reconstruction. The upshot of this is that Geistesgeschichte can give us the benefits of both genres. Rational reconstructions' progressive story gives us a sense of Self-Confidence (Rorty's uses the term "self-justification" in the text), and historical reconstructions' story of difference and divergence, gives us a sense of self-awareness. Geistesgechichte as a synthesis of the two can give us both and avoid the excess of either on its own, as excessive self-confidence leads to dogmatism, and excessive self-awareness leads to despair (while he doesn't use those exact terms he does make this point in Achieving Our Country). But there is one central objection I have received to this reading, and I was wondering what you think of it. It is that the Geistesgeschichte is too much like a rational reconstruction. Another way of putting it, which I do agree with, is that rational reconstructions and Geistesgeschichte are both De Re interpretations. Since Gesitesgeschichte do involve the imputation of auxiliary commitments, because the mighty dead have to play role in an historical process, which they are not necessarily aware of. And once you do that, I am told, you are back at rational reconstruction. Some people who raise this objection, I think just are practitioners of historical reconstruction and trying to defend their turf, but I can't dismiss everyone who has raised this objection to me this way. I have tried to point to them that there are difference in the philosophical underpinnings, like different conceptions of progress they have (originary vs. teleological), or the difference in how they think about conceptual content either along the lines of Verstand (in the case of Rational Reconstruction) or Vernunft (in the case of Geistesgeschichte). These don't seem to convince the objectors who, either don't understand the point, or think that their objection just shows that those distinctions are not really relevant. Do you have view of this?

[@efenty6235]

does he talk about the historical development of these genres?

[@aboubenadhem9066]

It seems lke there’s room for another genre that looks, not so much at the particulars of a given philosopher’s intellectual output or historical milieu, but at the approach they took to produce the former from the latter. That abstracts out their thought process as something that could be applied in new circumstances to produce output not necessarily consistent with their historical output, but that stands in the same relation to those new circumstances that their historical output did to their historical circumstances.

[@dnys_7827]

i had the same thought about peter adamsons podcast when you started talking about "doxography". idk it seems to me like maybe what rorty wants to call "doxography" is just "historical reconstruction" executed badly?

[@VictorGijsbers]

I suspect any of the other three genres done badly could turn into what Rorty calls doxography. If you fail at establishing good arguments and/or interesting historical context and/or a grand narrative, you'll be left with just describing some positions that would seem to be of little interest. I think Adamson is doing a subtle mix of all three of the 'good' genres, and of course also making things interesting through his wit and clarity!

[@ajw99a]

Robert Brandom has a book the mighty dead