ABSTRACT
It is sometimes said as a criticism of someone’s views that they ‘cannot see the wood for the trees’, meaning that they have focused so narrowly on a particular issue that they have failed to see the significance of that issue within a wider context. This is certainly not a criticism ever likely to be levelled at Richard Rorty, philosophy’s self-professed specialist in ‘great big pictures’ (Rorty 1982: xl), whose frame of reference is more likely to be the entire history of Western thought than the latest hot topic of debate within the professional journals. That is not to say that Rorty does not go in amongst the trees to debate the fine detail of particular philosophical positions. On the contrary, that he has done so consistently through-out his career is what provides his work with its content and power.
