Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty appears throughout the text as one of the modern Western philosophers whose ideas the author uses as hermeneutical tools for interpreting the Madhyamika. The author aligns Rorty’s pragmatism—especially his notion of the “strong textualist” and “edifying philosophy”—with the deconstructive, non-systematic style of Nagarjuna and Candrakirti.

Rorty’s “strong textualist” is described as someone who does not ask author or text about intentions, but reshapes the text to serve his own purposes, seeking benefit rather than correctness [[24]]. This attitude is seen as “a preeminently Buddhist hermeneutic” because it rejects the assumption of a privileged vocabulary that “gets to the essence of the object,” an assumption Rorty calls a myth (following Nietzsche and James) [[24]].

Rorty’s distinction between “systematic” and “edifying” philosophy is also central. “Edifying philosophers” aim to help readers break free from outworn vocabularies rather than grounding current intuitions in philosophical absolutes [[125]]. The author uses this to frame the Madhyamika as philosophical propaganda—concepts used as skillful means to turn attention away from self-centered views toward communal, soteriological aims [[125]–[127]].

Rorty’s critique of the Kantian project of grounding culture in ahistorical matrices is invoked to argue against interpreting Madhyamika through neo-Kantian lenses (like Murti’s), and instead to see it as abandoning the quest for “philosophical bases” in favor of practical, contextual reasoning [[44]–[45]]. His existentialist view of objectivity—conformity to current norms of justification without seeking metaphysical foundations—is presented as compatible with the Madhyamika’s rejection of all views [[130]].

Overall, Rorty is cast as a key modern ally for understanding the Madhyamika in terms of pragmatic, anti-foundational, and context-dependent philosophy, helping to bridge the gap between ancient Buddhist thought and contemporary Western philosophical conversations.