I’m not exactly sure what attracts me to modern or contemporary philosophy. Most likely, it is the knowledge that the thoughts are still living and changing. Even a remote possibility of contact gives the writing a vivacity much more compelling than the somewhat dusty ancient philosophy.

I will begin my discussion of Modern Philosophy with Richard Rorty. I chose Redemption From Egotism simply becuase it was the first full work I came accross.

Within a few minutes, I immediately came across a few very unsettling thoughts in his comparison of philosophy and literature. In the first section – “Bloomian autonomy and the avoidance of cant” – Rorty agrees with Bloom’s concept that thought can be better stimulated through imaginative literature versus the generally more calculative philosophical writings. While I can accept this aspect of his argument, it is Rorty’s expansion that imaginative works (including fiction) is better suited to “liberate one from one’s own previous ways of thinking about the lives and fortunes of individual human beings.”

It is true that philosophical writings are usually much less exciting than the colorful works of imaginative literature described by Rorty, but this is not the due to a binding requirement that philosophy must be formulaically enumerated based upon ancient conditions. I believe that philosophy is the ultimate imaginative work because the author is not creating a fantastic setting, but is – essentially – modifying our existing setting which is a much more difficult task.

Later parts of his writing seemingly contradict his earlier discouragement of cant¹.

“Grasping the content of what one hears or reads is a matter of fitting what is said into a coherent set of inferential relationships to other utterances.”

His expansion of this statement leads the reader to believe that clarity in writing comes dangerously close to cant, in that truly accesible thoughts must already be – at least partially – available in the reader’s mind. Thus, by Rorty’s definition, a truly original work would be almost unintelligible to a normal audience, who would be searching for comforting cliches littering a groundbreaking work.

Rorty did little to convince me of the merit of modern philosophy. As a result, I am now asking for some input…who do you feel is a great modern thinker?

¹ Described as “what people usually say without thinking, the standard thing to say, what one normally says.