On Historicism

Anti-foundationalist philosophy professors like myself do not think that philosophy is as important as Plato and Kant thought it. This is because we do not think that the moral world has a structure that can be discerned by philosophical reflection. We are historicists because we agree with Hegel's thesis that "philosophy is its time, held in thought". What Hegel meant, I take it, was that human social practices in general, and political institutions in particular, are the product of concrete historical situations, and that they have to be judged by reference to the needs created by those situations. There is no way to step outside of human history and look at things under the aspect of eternity.

Philosophy, on this view, is ancillary to historiography. The history of philosophy should be studied in the context of the social situations that created philosophical doctrines and systems, in the same way that we study the history of art and literature. Philosophy is not, and never will be, a science – in the sense of a progressive accumulation of enduring truths.

--Richard Rorty, "Democracy and Philosophy"

Ah! Historicists frighten me, but perhaps even more so does Rorty's assumption that literature and art are confined to that same historicism (I think one aspect of my project will be to encourage the reading of literature in the same way that I think it is possible to read the history of philosophy--i.e. as able to contribute something significant to current political discussions).

P.S. He looks so harmless in this picture, especially with the flowers--one would think that he believed in art and literature...