Scientism, pragmatism, and the fate of philosophy

Abstract

I assume here, what I have argued elsewhere, that Rorty's dissolution of the Tradition is in the main well taken. Foundationalist epistemologically based or metaphysically oriented philosophy, including systematic analytical philosophy, is not a viable enterprise. I then argue that Rorty's replacement is itself not plausible and I further argue that, his affinities with pragmatism to the contrary notwithstanding, his ‘aestheticized pragmatism’ misses (a) the key social functions of philosophy (a reconstructed philosophy) articulated and practised by Dewey with his conception of philosophy as a criticism of criticisms and as social critique and (b) that Rorty's ‘pragmatism without method’ misses what is most distinctive in pragmatism, namely its conception of the expanded role in fixing belief for a flexible and non‐scientistic conception of scientific method in the stream of life. Rorty fails to see here the possibility for some form of critical theory as a successor subject to philosophy which still carries on some of its critical functions. More generally, Rorty, in properly reacting against scientistic images of philosophy and conceptions of the omnipotence of science, treats science too much as a text, as just one language‐game among other language‐games, and fails to appreciate its impact on our knowledge of ourselves and the rest of the furniture of the universe.