Falsifying Both Hegel and Darwin 

Grounded on all these assumptions, Mr. Rorty finishes the article's opening paragraph stating that "the combined influence of Hegel and Darwin took philosophy away from the question "What are we?" and brought it to "What can we become?" This pompous historical generalization denies the reader the information that, for Hegel, these two questions were rigorously the same–"Wesen ist was gewesen ist."

Besides this, the Jena philosopher was not distancing himself from Greek thought, but only following the logical development of Aristotle, according to whom the essence of a being is not its static form considered at a given moment of time, but the purpose underlying  its development. Mr. Rorty also leaves out that Darwin never said a word about "what we are" or "what can we become," but was only interested in "what we were." Thus, he mistakes the theory of evolution with evolutionist ideology, which began with the work of Spencer and not Darwin.

In a single paragraph, there are so many absurd implications that maybe it is the shock of  multiple falsehoods rapidly thrown at him that makes the reader dizzy and incapable of realising he's being taken in by a cheap impostor, disguised as a philosopher by  the promoters of intellectual fashion.

Language as the Means to Power

But I do not believe Mr. Rorty writes likes this due to sheer stupidity. He knows he's lying–and the secret behind the fascination he exerts over hordes of ambitious students consists precisely in that, disbelieving any truth, they envy the power of telling good lies. There're a lot of people dreaming of becoming Mr. Rorty when they grow up.

But, do you really want to know who this man is? Do you wish to have an idea of how ridiculous it is to honor him as a philosopher? Going a little beyond what he said in the newspaper, let's follow a brief examination of his more general concepts.

"Language is not an image of reality," Mr. Rorty assures us (he being both a pragmatist and an anti-Platonic philosopher). Should we interpret this sentence in the sense Mr. Rorty calls "Platonic," that is, as a denial of an attribute to one substance?  That would be contradictory: a language that is not an image of reality cannot give us a real image of its relations with reality. Therefore, the sentence must be interpreted pragmatically: it does not affirm anything about language, but only indicates the intention to use it in a certain way.

The main thesis of Mr. Rorty's thought is a declaration of his own intentions. For Mr. Rorty, the sentence "language is not an image of reality" rigorously means this and nothing else: "I, Richard Rorty, am firmly decided to not use language as an image of reality." It is a kind of unanswerable argument: an expression of someone's will cannot be logically refuted. Therefore, there is nothing to debate: keeping within the limits of decency and law, Mr. Rorty can use language as he may wish.

The problem appears when he tries to make us use language exactly as does he. He states that language is not a representation of reality, but rather a set of tools invented by man in order to accomplish his desires.

But this is a false alternative. A man may well desire to use this tool to represent reality. It seems that Plato desired precisely this. But Mr. Rorty denies that men have other desires than seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.  That some declare to desire something else must be very painful to him, for otherwise, there would be no pragmatically valid explanation for the effort he makes to change the conversation.

Given that it is impossible to deny that people exist who insist language represents reality, the pragmatist will perhaps say that those who insist language represents reality are moved by the desire to avoid pain as much as those who prefer to create fantasies; but this objection will have shown precisely that these are not things which exclude each other. The Rortyan alternative is false in its own terms. ²