ABSTRACT
Richard Rorty’s legacy to the discipline of philosophy is perhaps most strikingly summed up in the claim that its proper moral concern is with ‘continuing the conversation of the West’ – that is, not with traditional epistemological ideals of reason, truth and objectivity but with the more creative or ‘edifying’ attempt to challenge conceptual convention and propose valuable new styles of thought. He celebrates the achievements of ‘abnormal’ philosophical discourse, represented for example by Heidegger and (the later) Wittgenstein. The Oxford philosopher R.G. Collingwood is an exact contemporary of the two thinkers just mentioned and shares Rorty’s contrarian and historicist attitude, as well as his interest in the status of philosophy as a branch of literature. On the other hand, Collingwood looks like a clear case of allegiance to the teleological and rationalist values which Rorty challenges. This chapter explores some worrying implications – for political engagement as well as for pure theory – of replacing the rationalist conception of philosophy with a Rorty-style successor that would no longer conceive of itself as engaged in (truth-orientated) ‘enquiry’.
