Abstract

There is more to truthfulness than truthful speech. There is a truthfulness of questions and doubts, a truthfulness that imposes reserve, a truthfulness that remonstrates and provokes without counterassertion. These are a pragmatic philosopher’s kind of truthfulness on the other side of a metaphysical Truth of objects. Rorty’s metaphilosophical criticism does not attack an argument directly. Instead, it questions the reason for taking the argument seriously. For Rorty, the problems are always the problem. For instance, in his many interventions on the topic of philosophical ideas about truth, it is not the value of truth he debunks. It is the value of epistemological discourse about “the truth.” He is not cavalier about truth or its value, though he is about epistemology, rationalism, and sometimes about philosophy itself.