ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at a critical assessment both of Rorty's appropriation and of his critique of Heidegger. In particular, it focuses on the role the concept of primordiality plays in that reading. The chapter explores a tension between instrumentality and world-disclosure that leads to certain inconsistencies in Rorty's pragmatism. It considers an issue that Rorty ignores in his critique of Heidegger: how the environment of artefacts, media and technologies affects our understanding of Being, and accordingly, also primordiality. This awareness is articulated most clearly as an integral concern of the ironic attitude: "Ironists are afraid that they will get stuck in the vocabulary in which they were brought up if they only know the people in their own neighbourhood". Rorty provides an interesting alternative to interpretations that fashion "Being" as a transcendental signifier, a quasi-autonomous higher power or a treasure of authenticity. A phenomenology of pragmata is indispensable for the question of primordiality.
