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Rorty (Richard) papers
MS.C.017
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Contributing Institution:
Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries
Title: Richard Rorty papers
Identifier/Call Number: MS.C.017
Physical Description:
24.3 Linear Feet
(61 boxes and 1 oversized folder)
Date (inclusive): 1863-2003
Date (bulk): 1960-2000, bulk
Abstract: Richard Rorty (1931-2007) was a pragmatist philosopher, critical theorist, and public intellectual. This collection comprises
manuscripts, teaching files, professional correspondence, research notes, biographical material, and ephemera. It also includes
some family papers and correspondence, as well as writings dating to his youth. The collection includes digital files transferred
from Rorty's computer disks and made available to researchers electronically.
Language of Material: English
Language of Material: The collection is primarily in English, with some materials in other languages, particularly German and French.
The collection is open for research, with the exception of some materials relating to students in Series 5, Teaching files.
Restrictions on the earliest of these student records will be lifted beginning in 2033.
Property rights reside with the University of California. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and
their heirs. For permissions to reproduce or to publish, please contact the Head of Special Collections and Archives.
All reproduction of materials written by Jacques Derrida must be authorized by designates of his heirs. Contact Special Collections
and Archives for more information.
Richard Rorty Papers. MS-C017. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Date accessed.
For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information about sources consulted in this
collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder descriptions, and box/folder locations.
Gift of Richard Rorty, 2006.
Existence and Location of Originals
External media recieved (2 CD-ROMs), waiting on naming convention
Processed by Dawn Schmitz, with assistance from Brian Garcia, Ali Meghdadi, and Tae Sung, 2009-2010. Modifications to arrangement
of correspondence, Audra Eagle Yun, with scholars Christopher Voparil and Wojciech Malecki, 2012.
In order to facilitate access to the collection, processing work on it was expedited. Manuscripts were filed and described
by working title, professional correspondence was filed by the approximate year and the first letter of the correspondent's
name, date ranges were sometimes approximated, and other steps were taken to ensure the materials could be made available
for research in a timely fashion. In 2012, approximately ten modifications were made to the arrangement of the correspondence
based on feedback from two Rorty scholars, who identified correspondent surnames as they researched the Rorty papers.
Richard McKay Rorty (1931-2007) is commonly described as one of the most influential thinkers of his era. A philosopher with
a remarkably broad intellectual range, his work included the development of a distinctive brand of pragmatism as well as significant
contributions to literary criticism, political theory, and other scholarly fields. He was also a public intellectual, writing
for such publications as
The Nation and
The Atlantic.
Rorty was born on October 4, 1931, in New York City. The son of writers and activists James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush
Rorty (and the grandson of prominent Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch), he later wrote in an autobiographical
sketch, "At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice." His family moved
to Flatbrookville, New Jersey, when he was a child.
Rorty enrolled in the University of Chicago at age 15, eventually earning his B.A. (1949) and M.A. (1952) in philosophy, studying
under Rudolf Carnap, Charles Hartshorne, and Richard McKeon. After completing his Ph.D. (1956) at Yale University with the
dissertation, "The Concept of Potentiality," supervised by Paul Weiss, Rorty served two years in the army before receiving
his first academic appointment at Wellesley College. From 1961 to 1982 Rorty taught in the philosophy department at Princeton
University before moving to the University of Virginia as Kenan Professor of the Humanities. In 1998, Rorty accepted his final
academic position at Stanford University in the Department of Comparative Literature.
While Rorty gained scholarly attention with his article, "Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories," (1965) and his edited
anthology
The Linguistic Turn (1967), his most provocative work was yet to come. By combining what he learned from analytic, continental, and pragmatist
philosophers, Rorty developed an "anti-Philosophy" that emphasized the historical contingency of philosophy as one literary
genre beside the sciences and arts. His version of anti-essentialism and anti-foundationalism was developed in such important
works as
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979);
Consequences of Pragmatism (1982);
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989);
Achieving Our Country (1998);
Philosophy and Social Hope (2000); and four volumes of his philosophical papers:
Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991),
Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991),
Truth and Progress (1998) and
Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007). The social and political consequences that emerge from this version of neopragmatism, Rorty contended, are those
of a romantic liberalism that promotes justice and democracy by reducing cruelty and increasing solidarity through the redescription
of our contingent vocabularies.
Richard Rorty died of pancreatic cancer June 8, 2007, in Palo Alto, California.
[Insert historical note. Use DACS Ch. 10 for content guidance].
| 1931 | Born on October 4th, in New York City |
| 1946 | Enrolls in University of Chicago just before his fifteenth birthday |
| 1949 | B.A., University of Chicago |
| 1952 | M.A., University of Chicago |
| 1956 | Ph.D., Yale University (dissertation: "The Concept of Potentiality") |
| 1957-1958 | Army of the United States |
| 1958-1961 | Instructor and Assistant Professor, Wellesley College |
| 1961-1982 | Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University |
| 1967 | The Linguistic Turn (ed.) published by the University of Chicago Press |
| 1968-1969 | American Council of Learned Societies fellowship |
| 1973 | Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (edited with Edward Lee and Alexander Mourelatos) published by VanGorcum |
| 1973-1974 | Guggenheim Fellowship |
| 1979 | Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature published by Princeton University Press |
| 1979 | President, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division |
| 1981-1986 | MacArthur Fellowship |
| 1982 | Consequences of Pragmatism published by the University of Minnesota Press |
| 1982-1998 | University Professor of the Humanities, University of Virginia (named Professor Emeritus, 1998) |
| 1985 | Philosophy in History (edited with J.B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner) published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1986 | Northcliffe Lectures, University College, London |
| 1987 | Clark Lectures, Trinity College, Cambridge |
| 1989 | Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1990-1991 | National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship |
| 1991 | Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers I published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1991 | Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers II published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1992 | The Linguistic Turn published in second, enlarged edition by the University of Chicago Press |
| 1994 | Hoffnung statt Erkenntnis: Einleitung in die pragmatische Philosophie (three lectures delivered in Vienna and Paris in 1993) published by Passagen Verlag |
| 1997 | Truth, Politics and 'Post-Modernism' (Spinoza lectures, University of Amsterdam) published by Van Gorcum |
| 1997 | Massey Lectures, Harvard University |
| 1998-2007 | Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University (named Professor Emeritus, 2005) |
| 1998 | Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America published by Harvard University Press |
| 1998 | Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers III published by Cambridge University Press |
| 2000 | Philosophy and Social Hope published by Penguin |
| 2005 | The Future of Religion (edited with Gianni Vattimo) published by Columbia University Press |
| 2006 | Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself, Interviews with Richard Rorty (edited and with an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta) published by Stanford University Press |
| 2007 | Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV published by Cambridge University Press |
| 2007 | Awarded the Thomas Jefferson Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences by the American Philosophical Society |
| 2007 | Dies on June 8 in Palo Alto, California, at age 75 |
| 2010 | The Philosophy of Richard Rorty (edited by Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn) published by Open Court |
| 1931 | Born on October 4th, in New York City |
| 1946 | Enrolls in University of Chicago just before his fifteenth birthday |
| 1949 | B.A., University of Chicago |
| 1952 | M.A., University of Chicago |
| 1956 | Ph.D., Yale University (dissertation: "The Concept of Potentiality") |
| 1957-1958 | Army of the United States |
| 1958-1961 | Instructor and Assistant Professor, Wellesley College |
| 1961-1982 | Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University |
| 1967 | The Linguistic Turn (ed.) published by the University of Chicago Press |
| 1968-1969 | American Council of Learned Societies fellowship |
| 1973 | Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (edited with Edward Lee and Alexander Mourelatos) published by VanGorcum |
| 1973-1974 | Guggenheim Fellowship |
| 1979 | Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature published by Princeton University Press |
| 1979 | President, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division |
| 1981-1986 | MacArthur Fellowship |
| 1982 | Consequences of Pragmatism published by the University of Minnesota Press |
| 1982-1998 | University Professor of the Humanities, University of Virginia (named Professor Emeritus, 1998) |
| 1985 | Philosophy in History (edited with J.B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner) published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1986 | Northcliffe Lectures, University College, London |
| 1987 | Clark Lectures, Trinity College, Cambridge |
| 1989 | Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1990-1991 | National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship |
| 1991 | Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers I published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1991 | Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers II published by Cambridge University Press |
| 1992 | The Linguistic Turn published in second, enlarged edition by the University of Chicago Press |
| 1994 | Hoffnung statt Erkenntnis: Einleitung in die pragmatische Philosophie (three lectures delivered in Vienna and Paris in 1993) published by Passagen Verlag |
| 1997 | Truth, Politics and 'Post-Modernism' (Spinoza lectures, University of Amsterdam) published by Van Gorcum |
| 1997 | Massey Lectures, Harvard University |
| 1998-2007 | Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University (named Professor Emeritus, 2005) |
| 1998 | Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America published by Harvard University Press |
| 1998 | Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers III published by Cambridge University Press |
| 2000 | Philosophy and Social Hope published by Penguin |
| 2005 | The Future of Religion (edited with Gianni Vattimo) published by Columbia University Press |
| 2006 | Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself, Interviews with Richard Rorty (edited and with an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta) published by Stanford University Press |
| 2007 | Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV published by Cambridge University Press |
| 2007 | Awarded the Thomas Jefferson Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences by the American Philosophical Society |
| 2007 | Dies on June 8 in Palo Alto, California, at age 75 |
| 2010 | The Philosophy of Richard Rorty (edited by Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn) published by Open Court |
Collection Scope and Content Summary
Richard Rorty (1931-2007) was a pragmatist philosopher, critical theorist, and public intellectual. This collection comprises
manuscripts, teaching files, professional correspondence, research notes, biographical material, and ephemera. It also includes
some family papers and correspondence, as well as writings dating to his youth. The collection includes digital files transferred
from Rorty's computer disks and made available to researchers electronically at
Richard Rorty born digital files, 1988-2003 .
Included are: manuscripts and typescripts of published writings, conference papers, invited lectures, public speeches, and
other intellectual work; incoming and outgoing professional correspondence, including manuscripts sent to him by colleagues;
teaching files including lecture notes, syllabi, assignments, and exams; professional activities files; research notes and
other materials; and some biographical material including posters and programs for public lectures and symposia, printed materials
such as reviews of Rorty's work and articles about him, and a very small number of photographs. The collection also includes
a significant amount of family correspondence, dating to Rorty's childhood, as well as his earliest writings. There are also
some papers relating to his parents and some members of his extended family.
This collection is arranged in 8 series:
- Series 1. Early life and family papers, 1863-2000 (Bulk, 1942-1979), 2.4 linear feet
- Series 2. Writings, 1961-2000, 3.4 linear feet
- Series 3. Correspondence, 1955-2001 (Bulk, 1961-1995), 10.8 linear feet
- Series 4. Notes and research materials, 1962-1999, 1.6 linear feet
- Series 5. Teaching files, 1958-2002, 3.6 linear feet
- Series 6. Professional activities, 1965-1999, 1.4 linear feet
- Series 7. Biographical material, 1964-1997, 0.9 linear feet
- Series 8. Born-digital files, 1988-2003, 0.2 linear feet and 1027 digital files
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Theorists.
Theorists.
Philosophers.
Philosophers.
Philosophy, American -- 20th century
Philosophy, American -- 20th century
Critical theory -- Archives.
Critical theory -- Archives.