Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an
American philosopher. Educated at the
University of Chicago and
Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the
history of philosophy and contemporary
analytic philosophy, the latter of which came to comprise the main focus of his work at
Princeton University in the 1960s. He subsequently came to reject the tradition of philosophy according to which knowledge involves correct representation (a "mirror of nature") of a world whose existence remains wholly independent of that representation. Rorty had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at
Princeton University, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the
University of Virginia, and Professor of
Comparative Literature at
Stanford University. Among his most influential books are
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979),
Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), and
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).