Richard Rorty and the Expediency of History of Philosophy (Foreword to the Ukrainian translation of Richard Rorty’s article “The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres”)

Abstract

For readers of the journal, we propose the first Ukrainian translation of the article Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres by the American postmodernist philosopher Richard Rorty, in which he considers possible strategies of historic-philosophical researches and their role in the development of philosophical thinking. Richard Rorty claims that the main task of historic-philosophical researches is to constantly change the philosophical canon, not to allow it to catch in certain stereotypical views of well-known philosophers who are part of it, for instance, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel and others. Therefore, he accused doxography in the mummification of “famous philosophers” and neglect of those philosophers who worked on the border of philosophy, science, politics, economics, morality, medicine and even criminology. The involvement of such “non-philosophers”, as they are considered by historians-doxographers, in the philosophical canon expands the philosophical issues and stimulates the formulation of new philosophical questions, which are not on the agenda of the stiffened philosophical canon. Therefore, Richard Rorty rejects doxography as a genre of historic-philosophical researches, but instead of it proposed to use historical reconstruction, rational reconstruction and intellectual history as genres of historic-philosophical researches. Combining them, we will be able to see a vivid picture of the development of philosophy, not just certain canonical figures that cover another history of philosophy, which consists of research on the border of philosophy and other humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.