Rorty’s Philosophy of Education: Between Orthodoxy and Vulgar Relativism

ichard Rorty once said that the search for objective truth is [not] the search for correspondence to reality [instead] it is a search for the widest possible inter-subjective agreement.1 This statement, among many others, is a reason why some of his commentators consider his philosophy to be relativist, although it is safe to say that this observation may be due to the lack of an informed understanding of relativism, its epistemological underpinnings and nuances.To totally label Rorty as a relativist and nothing else is, I believe, more of an oversimplification of his not so uncomplicated thoughts; labels which if not well nuanced or contextualized, would surely fall short of capturing the expanse of the philosopher's fundamental contentions.2 Yet the concern over relativism's effects in the practical dimensions of life is understandable.This is especially true if the said-to-be kind of relativism is espoused by a philosopher whose influence has started to sink-in to the different fields of the contemporary intellectual world.Rorty is, perhaps, a good example of this, for without doubt his philosophy (i.e.particularly his epistemology) has arguably shaped the currents of the philosophy of education.Thus, this paper seeks to develop a reflexive-analysis of Rorty's philosophy of education, most particularly those that he has articulated in the essay "Hermeneutics, General Studies, and Teaching."3 The said essay reflects 1 Richard Rorty, "Does Academic Freedom have Philosophical Presuppositions; Academic Freedom and the Furture of the University," in Academe (November-December 1994), 52.2 Rorty would not even admit the label relativist.In Philosophy and Social Hope, he makes use of the term "so-called relativists".Apparently, the usage of the term "so-called" highlights that the charge of relativism is not an admitted or acknowledged categorization by Rorty, in fact, it rebounds to those who would prefer or insist to call the American pragmatist as such.Substantiating this using the philosopher's own words, "[w]e so-called relativists refuse, predictably, to admit that we are enemies of reason and common sense.We say that we are only criticizing some antiquated, specifically philosophical, dogmas.But, of course, what we call dogmas are exactly what our opponents call common sense."Philosophy of Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1996), xvii.3 For brevity sake, the said essay may be cited in this article as HGST.It is compiled together with many other philosophical essays on education by Steven M. Cahn of the Graduate