The Putnam-Rorty Debate and Insurrectionist Ethics

Editor(s)

Roberto Gronda; Giancarlo Marchetti

Document Type

Chapter

Publication Date

7-30-2026

Abstract

Once central to the pragmatic tradition's contemporary vitality, the spirited exchanges between Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty have come to perplex interpreters. Joseph Margolis referred to it as “that dead end of a dispute … which went nowhere philosophically” yet nevertheless “revitalized the academy's interest in pragmatism in the most remarkable way.” Several decades of careful evaluation by scholars of their explicit positions and arguments around realism, justification, truth, and correctness, have illuminated very little about their ultimate disagreement. My primary claim is that learning from the debate demands foregrounding their greatest ethical and political fears, and grasping their attempts to construe the norms of pragmatism to protect against them. Putnam's portrayal of Rorty as a relativist and the philosophical maneuvers he conducts to refute him obscure what they share: an appreciation of our normative embeddedness within ethical forms of life. This framing allows for productive dialogue with Leonard Harris's insurrectionist challenge to pragmatism, revealing limits of neopragmatist normativity that an insurrectionist ethics can rectify.

Publication

Interpreting Putnam

Publisher

Routledge - Taylor & Francis Group

Pages

272-292

Chapter

12

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Publication History

Publishing 2027; eBook Published: 30 July 2026

Comments

Routledge Studies in American Philosophy

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